New restaurant Caribana brings island-soul fusion to Skokie

Bret Paul has always been an entrepreneur. 

It’s something he was born to be, he said. He got started by distributing Amway catalogues to family members when he was 19. After getting a business degree, he worked in corporate America but left to start a variety of ventures, including a cellphone store and a senior-care company. 

“It’s innate. You don’t really go to school to be an entrepreneur,” Paul said. “It’s like you realize and you start selling stuff and, next thing you know, you’re doing business.”

Now, Paul has launched what he believes will be his final enterprise: a brand new restaurant in Skokie, the town in which he grew up. 

Caribana Island Grill, located on the ground floor of the Hampton Inn & Suites at 5203 Old Orchard Road, is a 170-seat fast-casual eatery and bar offering “island-soul fusion” cuisine.

After first opening in February, it’s welcoming customers every day of the week — from 4-9 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays, and 11 a.m. to as late as 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Popular menu items include its oxtail, jerk chicken, seafood tacos, and Rasta Pasta, Paul said. 

Paul was born in Haiti but moved to Skokie when he was young.

After graduating from Niles West High School and getting a taste for business, in part by mailing friends and family members money orders to Amway, he obtained a marketing degree from Northern Illinois University and went on to work for AT&T, he said. 

But the 2008 financial crisis sent him off on his own and it was challenging to find another full-time job during that time, Paul said, so he decided to try creating businesses. Among other ventures, he eventually found his way to the food industry.

The first restaurant he owned was a small breakfast eatery in Round Lake, he said. He made some changes, such as delivery services and new pricing, after buying the diner as it had already been operating with a customer base, Paul said. 

He then opened a different, initial version of Caribana with a partner in Gurnee in 2019, but he said the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led them to close in 2020. 

Now, instead of juggling many different enterprises, Paul said he wants to put all his attention into Caribana in Skokie, a location he picked because of its proximity to the expressway and the mall, and diverse populations in the village and surrounding cities like Evanston and Chicago. 

Inside, wallpaper showing tropical plants line the walls near the bar as multi-colored lamps hang down over booths. The restaurant offers a banquet space for private events, specialty cocktails, karaoke every Friday, a brunch menu every Sunday and daily happy hour specials, Paul said. 

He’d like to soon offer membership deals for appetizers and bottles of wine from his private label.

While some restauranteurs are motivated most by what comes out of the kitchen, Paul said he’s more passionate about talking and connecting with customers. That may be because he believes “good service” and the “experience” of going out to eat is what customers value most.

In that vein, Paul said he wants to share the culture and food of the restaurant’s island-soul fusion focus with America, but some of the “cultural food” he grew up eating isn’t on the menu because “it’s too cultural.”

“It’s not because I love food I got into this business at all, it’s business,” Paul said. 

“Obviously, I love interacting with people, with my customers when they come in, especially when they’re sitting at the bar. A lot of good conversations happen,” Paul said. “So I’m very customer centric, customer-service focused. I want people to have a good experience.”

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