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| - Belizean tamales.... yum! I grew up eating these in Belize... they are unlike Mexican tamales, and this is the only restaurant in Phoenix that offers them! They've been open 2 years, but I only found out about them yesterday - here on Yelp.
We stopped in for a lunch take-out (there are a couple of tables in the place if you want to eat-in, but it's a pretty small place) and had the curried chicken, oxtail, and Belizean tamales (the beef patties were missing from my order). Ester and her son are very friendly, and she spent a good 1/2 hr in the back preparing our food - which is a good sign (unlike another caribbean restaurant I reviewed which simply reheated old food in 5 minutes).
The tamales took me back to Belize... wish she had left the banana leaves on them for take-out so it wouldn't dry out as much during the trip home, but I could taste the flavor it imparted on the tamale despite the absence. You get only the tamale alone (no sides or fixings), but one tamale is a meal in itself.
The meals are substantial.... you get rice and beans, plantains, your protein of choice, and a salad (either potato or cabbage). In our case, the curried chicken was great... moist, flavorful, and a reasonable amount for the price. The oxtail was well cooked - it melted in your mouth - but the flavors were a bit mild - it could use a stronger flavor profile. The rice-and-beans were Jamaican Style (which is a bit different from Belizean rice-and-beans), and well prepared. Slightly dry, the rice absorbs the meat gravy quite well... yum! The plantains were done well - it's hard to screw up plantains (although I've seen some places that managed to do just that - just not this place).
The potato salad was packed with flavor; I preferred it over the cabbage salad.
For take-out, they would be better served to not put the cold salad in the same take-out container as the hot meal; by the time we got home, the potato salad was a bit warm. Packing it separately would help - will need to ask them to do that next trip (yes, there will be more trips there!).
They have a little section where you can buy caribbean ingredients, and a fridge of drinks that include ginger beer (just what you need for this meal!).
Their hours are funky; they close at 6p, which is awfully early for dinner service (even take-out!), and are closed on Sundays (misses the after-church crowd!)
I'd really like to give this place a 3.5 star rating, but alas, Yelp doesn't do 1/2 stars. It's better than all the other Jamaican restaurants in Phoenix that we've tried to date and the Belizean tamales tip it towards the 4 rating instead of falling back to the 3 rating. There are a few minor things they can improve (mentioned in this review) that could bump them to a higher rating, but the main key to success - good food and good value - are in place. Next trip.... curried goat, cowfoot soup, and of course, more tamales....! Yum!
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