Sovereign North on Barbican Road is the capital’s hot new food destination. A distinctive array of shops catering to discerning palates are now open or on the way. Thursday Life reporter Omar Tomlinson popped by last week and broke bread with the principals of two eateries up and running — Uncorked and Cannonball Café.

Fret not, lovers of Uncorked — the specialty cheese-and-wine haunt that once called Hillcrest Avenue home. The charming eatery has not shut shop, but merely relocated to its new address at Sovereign North.

“Hillcrest was a wonderful experience. That is where we learnt the business, but the problem was space” explains Anna Kay von Dueszeln, one-third of Uncorked’s business partnership. Debra Valentine and Cynthia Hanworth are the other principals.

“We wanted to expand the business and put in food service and expand our menu, so we wanted more indoor seating and outdoor seating. It really was a space issue. We loved it at Hillcrest; it was a great experience but if we were going to grow, we had to move” Dueszeln tells Thursday Life, as she walks us through the just opened 700-square-foot store. On the shelves are a wide selection of special-order wines, specialty gourmet items, Jamaican-made chutneys, preserves and sauces, and of course, their array of imported cheeses from Europe and North America.

“We have the finest selections of cheeses here on the island. All the classic cheeses that you know of, Comté cheese from France, Blue cheeses, Stilton cheese from Britain, Manchego from Spain. At this point they are all imported; we have used local cheeses but our Jamaican supplier closed down so we are going to source more local cheeses as soon as we can,” the Uncorked principal divulges.

Come next week, Dueszeln says the food service menu which is now available but still being tweaked, includes crab backs and crab cakes, marlin and beef pastrami paninis; grilled salmon salad; roast beef sandwiches; pumpkin bisque and hummus and chips.

She adds that more items will pop up on the menu, inclusive of Mediterranean eats, “but we’ll always be sticking to the core of what our product is which is phenomenal wines and cheeses.”

Uncorked is located at Sovereign North, 29 Barbican Road, Kingston 6.

Telephone: 970-3406. Email: delicious@uncorkedjamaica.com

Opening Hours: Mondays to Wednesdays — 9:00 am to 8:00 pm; Thursdays to Saturdays — 9:00 am to 10:00pm