Saturday, September 17, 2011






Detroit, MI - Jamaica Jamaica Restaurant and Bakery; This is the diamond in the rough. Jamaica Jamaica is truly the real deal between the man behind the counter or the food you can experiment with. Other reviewers have mentioned the bulletproof glass and not a great neighborhood. Get past all that and go. If you're a real foodie, you'll know why once you start eating.

We walked in and started chatting with the fellow about different dishes. He gave us some fried dumplings while we were looking at the menu and said to enjoy while you decide. Seriously, I love fried food, but this little fried dough ball, it makes you weak in the knees. He was a good marketer because while eating that, I could have said, give me everything on the menu if it's as good as this.

So we started with the dumplings, which are flour, butter, and honey rolled and deep fried. At first the honey doesn't come through, but then you get this wave of sweetness that really makes it a spectacular little dumpling.

On to some main courses, we started with the curry goat. I think it may be my first time having goat and it was just like eating beef. It was extremely tender and fell apart when you were eating it. The curry sauce was also wonderfully thick and extremely aromatic and flavorful. Each entree comes with a fried dumpling, plantains, rice and beans. Of course the fried plantains were so perfectly oily and sweet, just fantastic.

Course two, oxtail. This is my first as well and as I can't say there is a ton of meat on it, you get the meat on the bone, and it just doesn't fall off the bone being so tender, it almost melts in your mouth. It does have a slightly meatier taste than the goat, but still very very good.

Last entree, the jerk chicken. Now we're really talking. Pow, the smell hits you and you dive in. This is the dish right here that I've been waiting for. It's also extremely tender and the flavor just isn't on the skin where the spices are, it's through the meat so you know it's been marinated in it for some time. It will leave this wonderful flavor that really makes you say that it was the best dish.

With all these dishes, we also had the traditional bread, roti, with it. Use the roti with your hands to scoop up any rice and beans, curry sauce, anything. The roti by itself really doesn't have a whole lot of flavor, but it is two small layers of a corn-like tortilla with spices in the middle of it. You can almost separate it to see it if you want.

Lastly, do not leave this place with out trying some of their juices. They are hand made in the morning and we started with the mango, then onto ginger beer, and lastly punch back. The mango was out of this world. The perfect mango flavor with still small bits of mangos in it. Definitely not from any kind of concentrate. If you don't like ginger ale, stay away from the ginger beer. It's really strong in ginger flavor, not alcoholic. Actually, it doesn't have any alcohol in it. It does almost have some kind of carbonation, I felt the tingle, but not exactly sure. None of us liked that one very much. For the last drink, we tried the punch back which is peanuts, raisins, and other things he didn't tell us. It was like an eggnog consistency, but not much of the same flavor. It was very good though and I recommend trying that one too.

Enjoy!

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