| rev:text
| - The throwdown is on! Oakwood Village (Toronto) is the home of one of the best Jamaican Beef Patties. The place is iconic and has been around for decades. The Place is Randy's Patties (I'll review that next time I visit). But also on this strip of Eglington the home of three popular Jamaican joints that serve up jerk chicken into the wee hours of the morning. In fact, they don't start serving until 18:00 (Jamaican time, so it's really anywhere between 17:30-19:30 and I recommend that you don't come until at least 18:30). Regardless of when you arrive, expect to wait, there's always a line. Always.
There is metered street parking as well as a Green P nearby; and you can probably find free street parking on the adjacent streets. The area isn't the best, and the locals can probably smell fear, so don't show any of it. Service doesn't really exist even though there are tables, the business is 99.99% take out. The three restaurants competing are less than 100' apart. They are: Hot Pot, Raps, and Spence's.
All three places serve a variety of Jamaican cuisine, saltfish (cod) and ackee, goat, ox tail, plantain, rice and peas, etc. but the focus of this throwdown is JERK CHICKEN. All three places serve it the same way. You go into the restaurant, line up to order, pay, and receive an empty take out container for your chicken order. The prices are all the same for the same size containers. Small is $5, Large is $10. Cash only. Bring exact change.
Your container is simply filled up. No measuring, no weighing, your portion is what the chef puts into your container.
There are basically two elements to Jerk Chicken; there's the flavour of the chicken itself (spices and dry rub), and the flavour of the sauce that complements it. For all three places, the chicken is cooked in the ovens inside the restaurant and finished off on the charcoal grill outside. Wood chips are added for extra smokiness. Your order is served "Street Meat" style, the chicken is removed hot off the grills, chopped up, and put directly into your container. Sauce is optional, but if you get it, they put it directly onto the chicken (no separate containers)... you can't beat street meat!
Hot Pot's jerked full chickens. You can get both white meat as well as dark. I didn't specify the type of meat I wanted and got a mixture of both. To keep this throwdown on an even playing field, I will only compare the dark meat with Raps. Once again, I asked for sauce on only half the chicken in the container.
The chicken. Cooked well and thoroughly. The skin was not as crispy and the meat was a little drier in some areas due to some of the chicken skin being mangled up (not from chopping the chicken into pieces either). The chicken skin was also a little soggier without the majority of the fat being cooked off. A little more smokiness to the meat which was nice.
The rub was not very prominent here. very light flavours of allspice, paprika, and a slight sweetness to it. Without the sauce, there was just about no heat to the meat. A bit disappointing really. 2 stars.
The sauce. There are two types, mild and spicy. I went for the spicy. The sauce had a nice dry heat to it, reminding me of a good dry wine. No signs of tabasco here, crushed seeds are visible revealing the chili peppers from which they came. The consistency was simiilar to gravy, not clumpy, but chunky in some spots. The sauce was definitely a nice add to the chicken providing some needed moisture as well as flavour. 3,5 stars.
Overall, nothing special really stood out with this chicken. The sauce was definitely the key here, and I think the main reason for all the good ratings. But for me, I use sauce for dipping rather than having a dish come smothered in it. Jerk Chicken is no different. I will have to go against the grain of other Yelpers here, 3 stars overall.
Next up: Spence's
*** Note *** Well, it looks like I forgot to check into Spence's, so I'll be posting my review the next time I visit. I will also post the winner of the Oakwood Jerk throwdown!
If you would like to experience more, come dine-with-me.yelp.com I'd love to have your company... Bon Appétit!
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)