Night Market offers something to sink your teeth into

By Luqman Gbenro •

For six days out of the week, the Pembroke Lakes Mall overflow parking lot is a vacant extension of the surrounding parking area. But on Thursdays, from 4 to 9 p.m., food trucks pull in to these ancillary parking spaces and transform them into The Night Market at Pembroke Lakes Mall, Pembroke Pines’ hub of culture and community.

“It’s really fun. We are a very tight-knit group. Someone seems to know everybody, and we always help each other. It’s a really good community,” Ronald Ramsden, co-owner of the If And When Eats food truck, said.

Oxtail quesadillas, jerk salmon and curry chickpeas are a few staples on the If And When Eats menu. Ramsden and his co-owners, Robert Blackwood and Jonathan Cifuentes, create modern takes on dishes they grew up with—a trend shared by many other establishments at the night market.

“My grandma in Puerto Rico always did everything from scratch. And I was always looking at everything she was doing, and that’s what I’m doing right now,” Denise Benique, owner of Puertorican Dream Cakes, said.

With more than seven years of home-baking experience under her belt, Benique has crafted a menu featuring personal favorites like almond cake and popular choices like her cheese pastries and doughnuts. The Night Market is Benique’s opportunity to spread her connection with home through confection.

“It’s history, it’s memories — it’s more than a job. When people come here and they see what they’ve known since [they were] little, they say, ‘Oh my God, it’s been more than 10 or 20 years [since I’ve] seen this,’” Benique said. “They don’t need to go to Puerto Rico [to] have that [because] every piece of what they eat brings back a memory.”

The Night Market has a variety of choices. People from all walks of life and levels of skill unite under a canopy of fairy lights to cook from their hearts.

“We’re a Dominican Puerto Rican food truck, and there’s a lot of different trucks you can try. You can go from Haitians to Jamaicans and [then] jump to Greeks, Americans, and even try Jamaican BBQ. We have a little bit of everything,” Guillermo Vasquez, co-owner of Fye Stars, said.

Vasquez runs his food truck with his wife, Gabriella. Initially, he wanted to impress her with dishes from his home, but the local Dominican options didn’t meet his standards, so he decided to make them himself.

“When I met my wife, I tried to seduce her with Dominican food, and [we] went to a lot of restaurants, and [they] were cooking just to make money,” Vasquez said. “They weren’t showing love to the food, and it was a bad representation of my country. So I started cooking so she’d see the difference, and that’s when we [said], ‘You know what? I can cook.’”

Vasquez’s pride in his heritage and family is the reason why the burger buns, the vegetables, and everything in between are fresh to order. Family is important to many of the other mom-and-pop shops at The Night Market.

“When you think barbecue, you think family, and one of [our truck’s] goals was to bring us closer together. There’s something about barbecue. You got all your sides, all your fixings, and most importantly, you got family. Everyone’s together,” Mike Merrit, who co-owns Indulge in BBQ with his son, Chris, said.

While the Merrits show their love by keeping family close, the folks at Lo’s Doughs are spreading the love and expanding the family through the fans of their doughnuts.

“We’ve coined our loyal followers our dough-lovers, and [they] are our family; we treat them as such. We’ve seen our dough-lovers go from having baby showers [to] now having first, second, and third birthdays. We’ve matriculated with them through life experiences,” Kiah Jones, co-owner of Lo’s Doughs, said.

Jones’ parents also operate the mobile doughnut company with the help of friends and other family members. Cooking is an expression of love for Jones, and being able to work with The Night Market is another means of showing that love to her community.

“We’ve always loved and enjoyed food in our community, [and] in the Black community — that’s how we show love,” Jones said. “We hope that when people come, they feel love and take that with them.”

For more information:
Address: 11401 Pines Blvd, Pembroke Pines, FL 33026
Visit: @floridafreshmarkets on Instagram
Hours: Thursday 4 – 9 p.m.