All Entries in the "jamaican" Category
Restaurant Review: Little Ochi Island Grille
Further down 7th avenue than I usually travel, I found Little Ochi Island Grille (2302 East 7th Avenue Tampa, FL 33605, 813-248-6244), a little Jamaican diner tucked away by 23rd avenue off the main drag in Ybor City. Painted bright yellow and green with paper covered tables, flowers in vases, little hot sauce bottles and chrome deck chairs, this Caribbean cafeteria boasts atmosphere and ambiance and makes some of the better island food that I’ve eaten since moving to Tampa.
The environment is cozy and casual, but lacking a lot of refinement. Since they serve just as many takeout customers as they do sitting customers, this makes sense and works for this place. It’s all very informal, with little hints of niceties such as the vase of flowers on every table. A single TV plays CNN in the background. It’s a little warm in there, the fans all turned off. I guess it only ads to the general feel of being in the islands.
Since I had a Restaurant.com Coupon ($10 off, minimum $20), I decided to go all out and try all of their specials. At the suggestion of a lovely server, I ordered the oxtails, wings, jerk chicken and beef patty. I knew I’d have plenty to take home, because with $20 worth of food there’s always something extra. I ordered from the counter and then sat down.
One thing I noticed when I sat down is that they have one of my favorite hot sauces, Pickapeppa Co Pepper Sauce. It’s a decidedly sweet and pungent hot sauce, like Tobasco Original with a little something extra.
It wasn’t much of a wait before I was served. She came out first with the salad, your standard fair of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and olives served with ranch. The ranch was odd, as it was actually more thick and dipping sauce like than salad dressing. Everything about the salad was right, and was a good distraction while waiting for the rest of my meal.
The whole meal was out within 15 minutes and came out in waves about 5 minutes apart. First, the main course, a mix of oxtails, jerk chicken, red beans and rice.
To start, the oxtails were way better than expected. I’ve never really been a fan of oxtails because they usually taste and feel exactly as you’d expect them to be.. tough, greasy, unappealing. Ochi gets it right, either stewing or brazing them to the point that they are incredibly tender and juicy. While they were a little fatty in some sections, these were the best oxtails that I’ve had to date.
The jerk chicken was much closer to what I expect in a jerk recipe than I’ve had in other local Tampa Jamaican establishments. The sweet was there, the hot was there but none of it overpowered the chicken. The chicken itself was good all around, though the center of the breast was a little dry. Forking it into the oxtail sauce fixed the issue. The red beans and rice were also quite good also.
The next wave was chicken wings. These were “whole wings”, which is something I almost never see and a welcome change. For those who aren’t wingnuts like I am, you may not know that a chicken wing has three main components, the wingette (the two bone part with the meat all around it), the drummette (the drumstick part, a shaft with a head covered in meat) and the tip (the flavorless, neat meatless part of the wing). Ochi serves the wings whole, all three pieces intact. This makes for a wing that is crunchy on the outside, hot and moist inside and more complete, even if you discard the tip (as I do). I’ve found that most places who section their wings before cooking give the juices an easy way out and thus you will have a less flavorful and dry wing. Once again, Little Ochi gets it right.
My final wave was the beef patty. I always make a point of eating these when I go into Jamaican places, and so many places get them wrong. Ochi scores another win with a meaty center than was moist and almost gravy-like in a hot dough pocket, perfectly crispy and light without being overdone.
All of this came to just over $20 and I ended up taking more than half of it home for breakfast tomorrow.
Restaurant Review: The Jerk Hut
I ended up at the Jerk Hut (2101 E. Fowler Ave, Tampa, FL 33612, 813-977-5777) on Friday night, both because I was really in the mood for good island food and because a number of bands were going to be playing throughout the night.
The atmosphere here was very relaxed, though the place was packed. Everyone was swaying back and forth between bites to the music. It was quite surreal, as if the whole thing was staged. All of the bright colors and flowing booze added to the ambiance, no doubt.
At the suggestion of the bartender, I started out with a mojito. I’m generally not a fan of fruity drinks, but mojitos tend to be pretty good if they are made right. This was a good specimen, specifically because the mint leaves were plentiful and fresh, it was just the right level of sweet and the pungent alcohol taste was present and accounted for. It was a “stiff drink” by all accounts, especially for a fruity island beverage.
Also at the suggestion of the bartender, I tried the jerk chicken and pork plate and a beef filled patty. The patty and salad came out first, and were both satisfactory. One thing of note is how quickly they came out. From the time I placed my order to the time I had it was under 3 minutes. This is exceptional, especially considering that the restaurant was at near capacity and there was food constantly moving from the kitchen.
The beef patty, something I’ve seen done wrong so many times, was actually quite good. It had less meat in it than I was expecting, but the shell was soft and complimented what meat was stuffed inside. The sauce it’s served with is really the star of this dish. It’s a sweet emulsion with the consistency of duck sauce, overtones of barbecue and a sweetness that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Salad was standard fair, and prepared me for the main course.
When the main course came only 3 minutes after the first, I was pleasantly surprised. Good presentation, quick delivery and plenty of food filled the platter. The pork was cubed, not shredded, which is something I haven’t seen often simply because pork tends to either shred when cooked low and slow of cube when cooked fast, and often the fast cooking cubes are tough or chewy. The chicken was a half bird, cut in four sections for easy consumption. The rest of the plate was overrun with brown rice and red beans and another serving of the sweet sauce from earlier.
I opted for the pork first, which was surprisingly tender. It was a juicy and smokey flavor that worked well on it’s own but better when dipped into the sweet sauce. I’d say this is some of the better cubed pork I’ve ever had. The chicken was also juicy and tender.
The one thing that threw me about both dishes is that it’s not what I’ve always eaten as “jerk”. Typically, jerk is made with a combination of seasonings that make it both sweet and hot. The hot, precipitated by a Habanero pepper ground into the spices, is a slow burn that is masked easily by the sweet at first and then cames through as you continue in the dish. This was missing that component all together. No heat, no burn, nothing that would make this “jerk” in the sense I’ve always known it. The sweet component, typically produced by nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice was almost missing from the dish. There were small tones of sweet, but not the overwhelming sensation I’ve been used to in the past. This didn’t’ stop the dish from being delicious. It simply stopped it from lining up with the idea of what jerk cuisine is.
The brown rice was a little dry, and the beans were a bit flavorless, but dumping the sweet sauce onto the pile fixed both issues. I finished most of it and found myself stuffed, so I bowed out with a few scraps of rice left on my plate.
As I continued to eat, the music continued to take me mentally to that island environment that the Jerk Hut hopes to replicate. The band was good, I was mellow and the food was filling. It’s easy to see how, even with the tastes not being what I expected, the Jerk Hut does satisfy. Two barrel smokers sit in the back of the building, reminding me that this places does have some of the island traditions in mind.
Dinner was priced right at about $20 with the mojito. Service was excellent. I’ll definitely have to check out the Jerk Hunt down town (207 E. Twiggs St,Tampa, FL 33602,813-223-4473) to see if their jerk seasoning is closer to the hot and sweet powerhouse that I know and love.