It doesn’t look like much from the street front, but Jamaica Mi Irie has huge personality. The restaurant is downtown on South Main Street, right beside Takosushi. The small restaurant, which opened last October, radiates a Caribbean vibe. An inside wall is lined with a palm tree mural and the décor is Rastafarian-themed. Reggae music completes the Jamaican atmosphere.
My first thought when I opened the menu was that this was not a place for vegetarians. The menu is categorized by types of meat, including chicken, beef, lamb, goat, pork, and seafood. The only vegetarian item on the menu was a plate of grilled veggies.
There are a large variety of meats, but many are prepared in similar ways. Jerk, curry, and grilled are the three options available. I ordered the chicken curry, which my waiter said was one of the most popular items on the menu.
While the restaurant has a full bar serving popular drinks like Jamaican Rum Punch, they also offer a variety of sodas unique to the Caribbean, including Ting, a grapefruit juice soda.
The server came over immediately to take our order and the food was delivered within 10 minutes. The food looked ordinary but the Caribbean jerk spices gave it a unique scent. Each dish comes with cabbage, beans, rice, and fried plantains.
While the curry was good and had the strong taste of cumin, the chicken was bland and had a lot of bones which made it difficult to eat comfortably. The sweet plantains and fresh cabbage were by far the best thing on the plate, and they made the restaurant worth returning to. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of these items, and the plate was mostly made up of rice and meat.
Everything on the menu is between $8 and $12 making it a reasonably priced place to go out with friends on the weekend. Savor the sides and try a different meat.