I have been looking at this place for years, and at last our more adventurous friends wanted to try it: most of our friends are a bit on the cautious side when it comes to food.
The restaurant is tucked off the main road in North Finchley, opposite the Arts Depot and bus station, so you have to know about it as you won't spot it from the street. It has rather strange opening hours, closing at 9pm on Sunday to Wednesday, but later for the rest of the week. It is also open for lunch and particularly, as they say, takeaway. They have a pretty comprehensive web presence on http://pandaberryjerk.co.uk/index.html which suggests they have a cheap lunch trade and a big restaurant menu.
The restaurant is attractive and looks as if it has been renovated recently. The counter with food is just by the entrance, and I suppose I should have paid more attention to that. Our friends had been to Jamaica, and said the menu was pretty authentic, and made some suggestions. The menu is visible on the web site.
For starter, my wife and I ordered Jerk Chicken wings and fish cakes. By 7.30 on Monday, a number of items on the menu were no long available and the nearest substitutes were suggested. So no chicken wings, but we could have jerk chicken, and there was no prawn curry
The food was all hot in temperature, scoring about an 8.9 on the CHOF scale, but contrary to other reviews, the quality left something to be desired. The fishcakes seemed to have just come out of microwave and were a bit heavy. The jerk chicken was very hot in spices and dry. One serving to our friend was reported as being pink in the middle, but mine was the opposite seemingly overcooked by any standards, possibly as the consequence of microwaves. I had my back to the cooking counter, so I might just be mistaken here, but the speed of serving suggests I was right.
For main, I ordered the ox tail with butter beans with a side of dumpling and we shared some plantain
The reason you cannot see the plantain is that it was served up well before the main course, and of course I would not let it get cold. I have to admit that my experience of Caribbean food is minimal and I have to accept the comments of other reviewers on TripAdviser that this is the genuine McCoy. To me, who has eaten plenty of Ox tail in the past in the days before BSE, this seemed to be far too fatty, and you can see that it is swimming in oil. This might be what it is supposed to be. The dumplings were a bit heavy and dry and I used them to mop up the gravy/fat. I should have accepted the offer of rice, which was said to come with every meal. Again the temperature was not an issue but it was very spicy. I had a bit of a cold on the day we went, and the spices really cleared out my tubes (but might possibly have affected the taste), but my wife reported that her goat curry was spice and not taste.
There is no wine list and you can bring your own at £2 corkage, which was a very good thing.
By the time our meal was served, which was about 7.50, the staff made it clear by actions that we were their only customers and they wanted us to go. Service was a bit haphazard with items being brought together and out of sequence. We were not offered a desert, and by 8.45, we were shown the door. I have to give them the benefit of the doubt that this might have been a Monday night effect, because there were never more than three tables occupied. I would need to come back and see what it is like at weekends when they have longer opening hours and lunchtime, where I suspect they do a takeaway trade with the ex-pats and school kids.
The reviews on other web sites do not match our experience and I am prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt that Monday night was the worst time to go. But a customer is a customer and is entitled to a consistent level of service and eating options even on a slack day, but maybe we simply do not understand how Caribbean restaurants work and maybe our expectations were too European.
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