The Caribbean Restaurant. - Atlanta, GA - restaurant reviews

You have feeling good when you take your table at the Carribbean Restaurant in Atlanta. Reggae music is playing, the place is alive with color and efficiency and the menu is an adventure looking for a palate.

This is not just any Caribbean restaurant. This is not a vague culinary tour for those who search for to sample the foods of the West Indies. This is diet with a decided Jamaican accent, and the visitor can alone wind up a winner, with a dish that's spicy and lush the product of a kitchen that is according to agreement and uncompromising.

The Caribbean Restaurant is a sunburst of a place, with redtrimmed windows and doors, fulvous and green picnic-style booths, a tiled floor, and r French doors with purple round pillars There are also paintings and [i]affiche[/i]s depicting Jamaican scenes on the walls.

When Kingston, Jamaica, native Michael Richards first came to Atlanta, he hesitated before buying the restaurant from a friend, another Jamaican. Five years later, he's glad he took the chance. "I haven't had to win a job since I came here," he says, laughing.

Located upon historic Auburn Avenue (home also to the King Center the first black-owned radio station and the oldest daily black newspaper), the Caribbean Restaurant has achieved a certain celebrity of its have It is where, as they say, the elite suitable to eat. Angela Bassett, Bobby Brown Tisha Campbell and Shabba Ranks have dined here. on the other hand with all of its celebrity, the restaurant has not not to be found its feel for the for the use of all folk. Everyone dines here upon plain red-and-white plastic tablecloths.

The genuine test of a Jamaican restaurant is in in what way well it prepares its yerk chicken, a tart, spicy-hot dish popular upon the island. If it's beneficial -- if it's genuine -- it is Jamaica, and this pull suddenly chicken is Jamaica. Richards' challenge is to make up for the fact that he doesn't sooty vapor the chicken over pimento grove as is done at outdoor stands upon the island. He compensates by the agency of using his own concoction of twitch seasonings from Jamaica, a recipe that includes the devilishly fiery but tasty, Scotch bonnet chilies. In the extreme point nothing is lost -- the dish approachs off as a teary triumph.

R snapper brown stive ranks with jerk chicken as individual of the two most oftentimes ordered items on the menu The simmer is a showstopper: fillets or the whole fish smothered in a sizzling melange of verdant peppers, onions, tomatoes and a spicy brown sauce. (Customers can win the same dish with chicken or grouper)

Conch tend hitherwards in a variety of forms, all of them tasty and all of them popular. There is the mildly curried conch serv here with pepper and onions. And then there is the cracked conch prepared in a light batter in bite-sized pieces and serv with tartar sauce. Cracked conch can realize tough when it is prepare for the tableed too long or not beaten enough, on the other hand the Caribbean's is just right.

The hearty admittances are served with a choice of gold-colored or white rice or peas and rice along with sum of two units vegetables. Spicy oxtail and chicken curry-sauce gravies are also available to full tale a rice dish. Side orders include fried plantains, conch salad and veggie patties, as well as American fare.

Richards, who does greatest in quantity of the cooking, has particular favorites, a certain number of of which date back to his childhood. His coco bread, a longtime island staple that he makes from scratch, is delicious. He wistfully recalls the days when he and his friends would carry coco bread to place of education for lunch. "We'd open the bread up and set a beef patty in and eat it," he says. "It was a quick to-go snack." The restaurant also presents roti, an Indian flattened bread.

American dessert of the like kind as carrot, lemon pound and r delicate cakes, are sinfully delicious, on the contrary visitors should try the scrumptious black rum cake when it's available.

Beer is the sole alcoholic beverage served here, on the contrary there are plenty of thirst-quenching nonalcoholic Caribbean drinks made novel daily. The Caribbean's heady and exhilarating ginger beer is popular. The restaurant also makes a drink called sorrel, which draw nears from a bush that efflorescences in the Jamaican fields sole once a year, around Christmastime. "In Jamaica, you pick it recent and boil it," Richards explains. "Somebody picks it from a field above there, bags it, and ships it to us here thus we can have it all year circular We get it dry, on the contrary once you boil it, it tastes the same" as fresh

The Caribbean Restaurant has received useful reviews in the local media, and the customers -- ultimate critics -- are oftentimes willing to stand in line and wait for a table or for carryout service. Their reward is not solitary the food; West Indian and African waiters be subservient to the meals with apologies for the impatient and with a smile for everyone

Gwendolyn Glenn is a freelance writer in Atlanta and Washington, DC Her last article for American Visions, "Southern shroudeds From Edna Lewis," appeared in the February/March 1997 issue.

CARIBBEAN FAVORITES

CHICAGO

Island Bar and Grill 940 W North Ave., Chicago, IL 60622 (312) 951-1700 This popular Windy City eatery proffers Caribbean fare and flair, with an eclectic menu of Trinidadian, Cuban and Hawaiian dishes.