Dunns River Lounge marks 20 years in Rockville Centre

Dunn’s River Falls, a cascade of fresh water that rushes over terraced travertine boulders into the Caribbean Sea, has been delighting Jamaicans for millennia. If you translate waterfall years into restaurant years, Dunns River Lounge has accomplished a similar feat: This summer it celebrates its 20th anniversary in Rockville Centre.

Owner Naala Royale-Holder was raised in Jamaica, where a climb up the natural wonder was a favorite activity for residents and tourists alike. She chose the name for her establishment accordingly. "Jamaicans get it immediately," she said. "And for people who have traveled to Jamaica, it reminds them of vacation."

Royale-Holder moved to New York to attend Stony Brook University and took a job after graduation at the global food-service provider Aramark, where she eventually became vice president of marketing in the collegiate hospitality division.

"I’d go in and work with the on-site team," she recalled. "We’d figure out how many students were commuters, how many were residents. We’d design a dining program and develop brands — burgers, deli, healthy, vegetarian, global — to suit that population."

But, having mastered the large-scale game, she hungered for something smaller that she could call her own. Then living in Baldwin, she saw an opportunity for something Jamaican in the neighborhood and so, in 2004, she opened Dunns River Lounge in neighboring Rockville Centre.

"Lounge" was the operative word. The kitchen prepared small bites but the emphasis was on the bar. The venue was open initially only on Fridays and Saturdays starting at 5 p.m. and "we’d go to 4 in the morning" at which point tables would have been moved aside for dancing and a reggae band.

Gradually, the days of operation expanded, the hours shortened and the focus shifted from drink to food. Royale-Holder doesn’t buy the theory that it’s alcohol sales that make a place profitable. "You can drink anywhere," she said. "It’s the food that makes you different — and the research shows that people drink more when they are eating."

After 20 years, in 2010 she left her job with Aramark to devote herself full time to Dunns River. "The business was making money by that point," she said, "but I knew I would never see its full potential if I was straddling both jobs."

It was also time to double down on food. Royale-Holder hired Shillingford Johns (aka chef Bobby) who not only had experience cooking Jamaican, he had been head grill cook at Seasons 52. Their menu is centered around Jamaican kitchen classics, a true fusion cuisine that weaves together threads from the island’s indigenous Taino people, Spanish, Portuguese and English settlers as well as the enslaved Africans and Indian and Chinese indentured servants whom the Europeans brought to work the land.

The most famous Jamaican dish, jerk barbecue, is said to have originated during the Anglo-Spanish War in 1655 when African escapees (the so-called "Maroons") fled into the hills and, so they would not be detected by smoke, adapted the Taino practice of cooking meat in covered pits in the ground. Whether traditional pork or chicken (or, as on Dunns River Lounge’s menu, salmon or pasta), jerk seasoning incorporates two native Jamaican ingredients, scotch bonnet peppers and allspice.

Incendiary scotch bonnets are common in Jamaican cooking — forming the basis of any bottled hot sauce — but the "true taste" of Jamaican cooking, Royale-Holder explained, is a combination of allspice, thyme, onions and scallions. "They are in almost every dish," she said. "And everything is served with fried sweet plantains."

Beyond jerk there are braised oxtail, curry goat and chicken and "brown-stewed" dishes featuring chicken, whole red snapper or even tofu that is first fried and then braised to achieve a rich brown color and savor.

Other traditional Jamaican dishes — such as callaloo (leafy greens) and ackee (the national fruit) with salt fish (salt cod) — mix it up with tropical crowd pleasers such as coconut shrimp, guacamole and spring rolls. A recently introduced appetizer, loaded crab toast, became so popular that Royale-Holder decided to give a similar "crostini" treatment to jerk chicken, oxtail and traditional stewed butter beans. (Rastafarianism, which originated in Jamaica in the 1930s, prizes vegetables, and most Jamaican restaurants, including this one, have plenty of vegetarian and vegan options.)

The bar makes lavish use of Jamaican rum. The house rum punch is made according to Royale-Holder’s mother's recipe using Wray & Nephew Overproof white rum, pomegranate syrup, lime juice, whole allspice berries and other ingredients she cannot disclose.

While many businesses struggled during the pandemic, 2020 was a turning point for Dunns.

"We did great business during COVID," Royale-Holder said. "We were one of the few places open and I started to concentrate on takeout for lunch, new for us, and dinner." She had already collected 10,000 customer phone numbers, "and we really took advantage of them, sending text blasts, and we saw takeout double."

Dunns River eventually reopened, adding lunch, and Royale-Holder saw an influx of customers coming from Brooklyn and Queens (New York City restaurants were still takeout-only then). Off-premise catering also flourished.

Thanks to her experience in hospitality, Royale-Holder has always taken a data-driven approach to the business. She periodically invites customers to dine on Mondays, when the restaurant is closed, for tasting focus groups. She uses SurveyMonkey, an online tool, to gauge interest in new initiatives: "Does it make sense to do breakfast?" No, she learned, too many of her customers don’t live in Rockville Centre. "Add music to brunch?" Yes, the reggae brunch has been a big hit.

During the pandemic, Royale-Holder started a loyalty program in which customers earn a point for every dollar spent and every 100 points they get a $5 credit. What the restaurant gets is the phone number and dining history of almost 40,000 customers. Text blasts allow them to click right through to call or order online. "But I send no more than two a month," she said. "I don’t want people to opt out because they are annoying."

Royale-Holder conceded that her corporate background helped her at Dunns River but, she said, it was equally important to surround herself with a good team. "Business smarts, great food, good value, welcoming vibe — all the pieces have to come together for a restaurant to succeed."