Last week, E’s friends came into town. Well, Kansas City, to be exact. They’ve spent the last two years teaching English in Korea, and the girl in particular has been trying to convince us to abandon the sinking ship that is the U.S. economy and join them. The couple sent out an invitation to a bunch of friends to come hang out with them at a bar in Kansas City on Thursday night. Even though it was a school (work) night, and potluck night on top of it – we decided to go, since it is rare that we see them. Since we were going to be in the area anyways, we talked about furthering our culinary exploration of the city. E knew of this little Caribbean joint that was close to that particular bar, that he’d found out about from these particular friends, and since I’ve never had proper Caribbean food, we settled on going there.
Lo and behold, the couple was there! As were some of their friends and family. They seemed pretty shocked to see us, and though living in a small town has habituated me to such coincidences, their shock rubbed off on us. “Did you know we were eating dinner here?” asked the guy’s sister. “Um, no, we really just decided to eat here on our own,” said E, and the unbelievably awkward tension in the room was compounded by the smallness of the restaurant. It’s really more of a “shack,” with only two or three tables at which customers can sit. We felt guilty and somehow stalker-ish, even though we intended no such thing! And I’m sure they don’t hate us, since they did invite us to the thing later at the bar; perhaps we weren’t invited to the dinner portion because of the limited capacity of the shack. Still, the whole thing was really odd, and I felt pressure to down my dish quickly enough so that we could get out of there, go get a cocktail elsewhere, and…meet them again? Yes, I would definitely need a pre-party cocktail.
Anyway, the food! E ordered the jerk chicken, and though I was mighty curious about the oxtail and various other offal on menu, decided that I should probably stick with less ambitious foods to avoid exacerbating my awkward feelings. E’s chicken was good, if a little wimpy on the spicing. Like I said, I’ve never had Caribbean food, but from reading this account of authentic island spicing, I figured it would be a lot more intense. I had the red snapper cooked in brown stew with a side of festivals, which were a lot like really dense hush puppies. My snapper was all right, nothing super special – the texture of the fish was kind of rubbery, like it had been frozen for awhile. The brown stew itself was pretty decent.
By far, my favorite aspect of the dish was the side of sauteed cabbage, almost thrown into the styrofoam box as an afterthought. Typically I don’t enjoy cabbage that much, but for some reason I couldn’t eat that fast enough. In fact, it was so memorably delicious, the next time I went grocery shopping I remembered that cabbage, and picked up a head to cook at home. Next time I go back, hopefully I’ll be a little more relaxed and more adventurous about the other stuff on their menu. But I’ll be sure to order an extra heaping of that cabbage!
More info about Island Spice and their menu!
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[...] social butterflies and can pull shit like that off, but I can’t and I do not want a repeat of this awkward situation. AAARRRRGH. I’m not sure if I’m right to be as upset about this as I am. Maybe [...]
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