Beni Tonka, a man wearing a red bucket hat with white patterns, a pink T-shirt, and a colorful strap over his shoulder, sitting at a table with bottles, in front of a fabric backdrop that says 'Soaked in Soca'.

Our Story

A ten liter bottle of hot pepper sauce, three coffee jars filled with tamarind sauce wrapped in towels in one suitcase, and a carry-on packed with dried West Indian bay leaves. How was he going to explain this to airport security?

It was the same story every time. Whenever Beni had to head back to Germany after spending a month or two in Trinidad and Tobago, his family would load him up with homemade condiments and ingredients. So much so, that sometimes he had to leave clothes behind. Aunt Cynthia didn’t mind keeping his rainboots though!

A person is adding a topping or ingredient onto a large dish of dark-colored food, possibly a dessert or a stew, with another child's hand reaching towards it. The dish is on a table with a floral tablecloth.
A young girl is laughing and touching her face while looking at a bowl of cooked food on a table, with a man serving more food from the bowl.

Exhausted from having to lug all that niceness from the Caribbean to Europe, Beni began studying his Aunt Cynthia whenever she made her legendary tamarind sauce. “I just average.” She’d say, because she never measured.

In 2013, already in his mid-twenties, Beni landed in Trinidad and Tobago for the first time. Waiting for him at the airport was his father, Kirk–Pop–who he’d meet too, not having known about him or his Trini heritage before then. Beni wrote a book, Good Lime, about his experiences with his Trini family and the food they offered him. He collected many impressions over the years in the form of photos, stories and recipes. Recipes from his elders, his cousins, friends and roadside vendors. Cooking up for lost time and archiving ancestral memory for future generations.

A book titled 'Good Lime' by Beni Tonka displayed on a small wooden stand on a metal countertop.
A woman dressed in a colorful costume with large red and blue feathered wings, participating in Trinidad's Carnival parade.
A Doubles, a fried, fluffy flat bread filled with channa, curried chickpeas, tamarind sauce, shado beni sauce and scotch bonnet hot pepper sauce, topped with shredded cucumber.
A man wearing a red patterned headscarf and white shirt is securing a large orange umbrella outside a building during sunset. In the background, a woman in a purple dress walks past, with other pedestrians and city buildings visible.

Every trip to Trinidad begins and ends with Doubles. Piarco airport doubles. Beni doesn’t remember where he was when he ate his first doubles. He only remembers that he was in a daze and that he actually had a triples because he made a mess. But he was hooked.

A Trini Doubles wrapped in paper placed on a dark surface, next to a striped a backpack with African wax print.

So when his friends back in Germany asked him about life in Trinidad and Tobago, he made them doubles. They wanted more. And Beni wanted a piece of home that would draw Trini’s and other people together. So like Pop, who ran his own fried fish shack in Trinidad back in the day, Beni opened Beni Doubles in Cologne 10 years after getting his first taste of Caribbean life.

An elderly woman sitting on a chair on a porch, wearing a blue patterned dress. There are potted plants and a small table with a plant on it in the background.
Grandma Shirley with short hair, wearing a white top and black-and-white striped pants, sitting in front of a New York City backdrop, giving a thumbs-up.
A man and woman taking a close-up photo together, smiling, with the man's arm around the woman's shoulder.
Three men outdoors near a utility pole, with lush green vegetation in the background, two men are sitting and one is standing.