Tamarind Heads

11/10/2026

POV: it’s 9:30 on a Tuesday and you’re eating coconut shrimp and tamarind-glazed short rib at Tiki Chick on the Upper West Side 🥥

Chef Jim and Chef Pavlos are cooking 6 courses from Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Hawaii. 7 island cocktails paired with each course, included. A DJ. Goody bags better than what the kids got on Halloween.

Nov 17. $75. 20 seats. Link in bio.

Send this to whoever owes you dinner.

10/31/2026

BREAKING: Area BBQ Sauces Confirm They Are Not Wearing Costumes, Decline Further Comment.

Witnesses report the three were “just like that” when they arrived. Ketchup, reached for comment, went as ketchup again for the 147th consecutive year.

Happy Halloween from Tamarind Heads. Lock up the raisins. 🎃

10/29/2026

We’ve lived across the street from Tiki Chick for years. On November 17, our tamarind BBQ sauce is in every course.

This was trial day. The chefs cook the whole menu once, start to finish, so we can taste every dish and fix anything before a single guest sits down. Chef Jim and the Tiki Chick kitchen plated all six courses, and Gigi built a cocktail for each one with SPIRIBAM USA.

Paradise After Dark. 50 seats. Early access open now through the link in our bio.

10/15/2026

Hey NYC mischief-makers, rum-lovers, tamarind belt fam: Paradise After Dark is coming…🌴✨🌙

Get ready for one incredible night with Tiki Chick and Tamarind Heads

November 17th. 📅 Stay tuned for details… 👀 👀 👀

nycevents

10/05/2026

09/09/2026

How do you sell your craft BBQ up against the corn syrup corporates with millions in marketing? 💵💵💵

…and with a toddler by your side threatening to lick all the berries in the next aisle over?

Our sauce started as a family recipe, a complex, spiced bbq made from tamarind instead of tomatoes. We won awards, ended up in magazines and morning shows…

But the shelf is where it matters.

So this is what we do. This is our weekend, meeting customers, selling bottles, and this time, selling out in under 1 hour! 🥳

We’ll be back soon. Come say hi. We’re real people. Our sauce uses real ingredients and has out of this world flavor 🌎 🫶🏽

When was the last time you took a lil sample at the grocery store? You never know, you might be meeting the founder of that brand…and their whole family.

08/14/2026

One bottle does seven different summer jobs. Not seven recipes — seven functions: grill brush, cold drizzle, saute splash, instant dip, last-minute glaze, overnight marinade, and the drink you didn’t see coming.

Tamarind is what makes the range possible. Sweet, sour, and deep enough to hold its own anywhere from a rack of ribs to a glass of soda and lime — the same spoonful working a different angle each time.

That’s the case for keeping it on the counter: one bottle, the whole season.

08/06/2026

The people we were waiting for had never met each other. Some of them had never even heard of us.

Around noon, we looked at each other and wondered if inviting a bunch of strangers to an eclectic lunch at an art studio in Brooklyn had been an incredibly optimistic (read: dumb) idea.

Then people started walking in, and they kept coming. We filled the table with bánh mì. Trinidadian doubles. Empanadas. Samosas.

At first, it just looked like a wild spread, every dish from a different country (and different mom-and-pop shop in BK).

But they all had one ingredient in common. Every dish on that table came from a place where tamarind has been part of the local cuisine for generations.

Jordan grew up with her mom’s candied tamarind from St. Lucia.
Carolina talked about falling in love with tamarindo in Mexico.
Brandon said food connects people when words can’t.
Shubh, who had just moved to New York, looked around the room and said, “This feels like community.”

Almost everyone already knew tamarind, just by a different name. Or from a different memory. And those that didn’t learned (and tasted!) something deliciously new.

How easy it is to believe our food and our stories exist in separate worlds. But, put everyone around one table, and the distance doesn’t feel quite so far.

We might start out strangers, but we’re more alike than we think.

Anyway, we didn’t grow up with much, but we were taught there’s always room to pull up another chair.

So, if you’re in New York, we’d love to save you a seat at the next one.

07/21/2026

Over 100 people showed up, and half of them tasted childhood…in a dish from a country they’d never been to. 🌍

Tamarind grows all around the world — West Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia — and everyone claims it as their own. So we threw a pop-up in Brooklyn and put it all on one table. Banh mi, fonio fritters, samosas, food from across the tamarind belt.

People came in solo and left trading recipes and favorite Brooklyn bars. Somebody dipped our sauce and said “if I was at home I’d just drink it.” (Same.)

We’re Tamarind Heads , a family-run tamarind BBQ company, and we’re popping up all around New York. Follow us so you can come hang at the next one!

07/15/2026

Dear algorithm, the heat has melted our brains. 🧠 Here’s a tour of yellow things in our NYC neighborhood + our latest Spiced Honey Tamarind BBQ, set to Coldplay bc we could all use a cool down. Thx! 🥵