Caribe Lounge

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Caribe Lounge is located on the 2nd floor of Cafe Caribe.If you ever had lunch at Enzo's Pizza on Market Street Mall, you might find it hard to believe there could be a bar and a DJ getting a crowd on their feet in the upstairs dining room, but that's exactly what's going on in that space these days. The spot is no longer called Enzo's -- it's now Cafe Caribe. The lunch crowd still gets its pizzas there, along with a host of Jamaican specialties like ox tail, curried goat and jerk chicken.
But once that 5 p.m. work whistle blows, the long upstairs bar becomes a hangout for a happy hour crowd. And on weekends, reggae fans come to Cafe Caribe for their beats, especially on Saturdays when the bar hosts "Foundation Saturdays," playing only roots, culture, dub and vintage reggae.
Since owners Doug and Maggie Duncan opened the upstairs about a year ago, the space has been drawing crowds, especially for its special events, like its networking night on Thursdays. Earlier this month, Newark rapper Marchitect hosted a listening party there for an underground project he had been working on called Valley of the Kings. The event drew a lot of fresh faces from Newark who had never been to Cafe Caribe.
Marchitect says he chose Caribe Lounge for the event because he wanted to have his party outside Newark for a change of pace. And he was familiar with the Duncans' food from when they co-owned D&H Jamaican Cuisine in the Newark area. "It went really well," Marchitect says. "Everyone knew their food was blazin' and when they opened up there, everyone assumed it would be blazin' there too. And it is."
While the bar business is still growing, it has this going for it: the kitchen downstairs is open until 2 a.m. The Duncans' goal is to have the upstairs bar area eventually account for 50 percent of their business. /
Right now, it brings in about 20 percent, but that number is gradually rising. For now, it's the special events that draw the crowds.