Hakim Lee ’07 and his brother run Doctor Bird’s Jamaican Patty Shack, an homage to their heritage.
When Hakim Lee ’07 moved to Chicago for a job in finance, he was stunned to discover that he could not find a restaurant with Jamaican patties.
“I told my brother, who was in New York, and he didn’t believe me,” says Lee. “How could such a large city not sell Jamaican patties?”
Lee’s quest for the popular West Indian meat-filled pastry makes a lot more sense with some insight into his upbringing.
“I grew up in the kitchen at my dad’s Jamaican restaurant,” Lee says of Doctor Bird’s in Buffalo, N.Y., now in its 43rd year of business. His parents opened the popular spot in 1981 — four years before Lee was born. “I’ve been around food my entire life.”
Lee’s parents are Jamaican immigrants, and to gain traction in Buffalo — which, like Chicago, doesn’t have a prominent Jamaican population — Lee’s father turned his one- time Caribbean grocery into the go-to for patties, sealing its success. Upon realizing the gap in Chicago’s otherwise celebrated and diverse food scene, Lee and his brother, Changa, decided to give the Jamaican patty a new home. “No risk, no fun,” says Lee.
Doctor Bird’s Jamaican Patty Shack — an homage to their father’s establishment — welcomed its first customers in fall 2021, setting up shop in the popular Wicker Park neighborhood on North Milwaukee Avenue. The eatery has since won praise as the No. 3 best restaurant by The Infatuation online dining guide; as a hottest new restaurant by Chicago Magazine; and Eater.com ranked it No. 7 among the best in Chicago.
“We wanted to create a place that was reminiscent of the business we grew up in. So I put together a plan, and we opened it,” says Lee. His brother runs the operation full time, and Lee is, by day, a director of commercial finance with Compass Group, a global food-service company. He earned a bachelor’s in sociology and anthropology in 2007 at Colgate (where he cooked in his apartment for his Jamaican friends) and an MBA at the University of Rochester.
Through the front doors of Doctor Bird’s (the name of a Jamaican hummingbird), there’s a cool blast of reggae and a Jamaican- style, laid-back ambiance with a decidedly hip twist in both feeling and food.
“It’s a chill, rustic place,” says Lee, who creates the recipes himself, drawing on both tradition and his own ideas. “Jamaican food is an amalgamation from across the world. Patties are originally British, roti and curry come from India, rice and peas are from Spain, and Rasta Pasta is from New York City.”
Lee tweaks his dishes both for diners — “We have a really diverse customer base” — and to introduce a new “spin,” as he calls it. Doctor Bird’s serves Coco Rice ( jasmine rice, coconut cream, and chicken stock) instead of the well-known island staple rice and peas, and the nontraditional bao and tacos alongside the old-school roti (flatbread) are stuffed with a variety of jerk proteins from steak and shrimp to jackfruit and salmon.
The menu is packed with entrees infused with the time-honored jerk spices: wood-smoked jerk Cornish hen, jerk skirt steak, jerk fried chicken and waffles — and the most-requested dish: jerk wings.
“It’s to the point now that if I’m walking on the street, people say, ‘Oh, I like your spot,’” says Lee. He’s not shy about admitting the long hours and challenges involved in running a busy restaurant, but he loves the “people component.”
“We meet a lot of people in the community whom we would not have otherwise, and we’re supporting employees,” he adds. “With people coming together and working together, good things can be created.”
In his application essay for Colgate, Lee wrote about his dad going to work every day at the family’s Buffalo restaurant. His dad keeps that essay in his dresser drawer.