I had always been very adventerous in exploring new foods – and growing up in KL with its plethora of foreign cuisines definately helped. It is very rare to find a type of cuisine unrepresented in KL, I daresay most cuisines are represented in some shape or form in twin tower land. There is, however, a missing piece in the great KL food puzzle – West Indies food.

No, not Western India. More like Jamaican, Bahamian and the likes. The soul food of Bob Marley. I had tentatively heard of the existence of such food, but had not come across it before. So I was pleasantly suprised when I discovered it nearly two years ago at the V Festival, then again at the Notting Hill Carnival and then Glastonbury

Today, we both woke up in the morning and suddenly decided that we were craving for Carribean cuisine. Yes, we read minds and we are extremely greedy. We have no idea of any Carribean restaurants in Leeds, but a rough idea of the ghetto where there might be West Indian restaurants. So we went a-searching.

We drove around for about 15 minutes in Roundhay/Chapeltown ghetto where alot of immigrants had made their home; Indian, Polish, West Indians, Jewish ect. After nearly giving up, we spotted Maureen’s

A sight for sore eyes.

A small checklist on carribean cuisine:

Ackee & Saltfish: Salt cod is sautéed with ackee (Ackee is a fruit from a tree that bears bright orange/red fruit), onions, peppers, tomatoes, herbs, and may be garnished with crisp bacon and fresh tomatoes
Curried Goat : Curry made with goat, carrots, potatoes. Slightly like the mamak kurma
Rice & Peas: A misnomer, this means rice cooked with red kidney beans – a staple like white rice is to chinese food. Coconut milk is used as well, making it slightly like nasi lemak without the pandan smell.
Jerk meat : Chicken, pork or beef rubbed with a spicy spice mix made of peppers and allspice and grilled.
Plantins : Huge mostly tasteless bananas, grilled, deepfried or stewed
Festival: a slightly sweet, deep fried dumpling stick, eaten with jerk.
Patty: Made from a slightly crusty, pastry dough formed into a semi-circle envelope/turnover and filled with hot and spicy ground meat filling. Like curry puff and eaten everywhere
Cow Foot: Erm…soup made out of cow’s feet. Recipie here
Blue Drawers/ Tie Leaf: Boiled green banana pudding
Gumbo: Like the Creoles make it, but not as spicy and thicker.

It’s all seriously weird and wonderful isn’t it?? Even the guy inside Maureen’s looked like he was stoned out of his head …and of course I had the pleasure of being the only yellow person there and bacon the only white one. How exciting. However, as we had not have Carribean cuisine since Glastonbury in June, so instead of picking some adventerous unknown item, we went with what we love and missed –

Bacon had Jerk chicken with rice and peas. Comes with macaroni and cheese as well which is slightly weirdly American. And a side salad. £5.50 for a large

My curried goat with rice and peas as well. Can you believe this is the small version at £4.50. Large version comes with boiled cabbage

erm….fried chicken. Heheh. I really wanted some fried chicken, and this was 1/4 of a huge chicken. So much nicer than KFC.£1.80

When we went to pay, bacon calculated that the total came up to £12.45. The stoned looking cashier said, “Around £12 man”. So we paid £12. Hilarious. And not to stick to the stereotype, but all they listened to inside the small cafe was reggae and more reggae. Not many pictures due to me forgetting cameras of any kind, so this was taken with bacon’s phone. Being the only yellow and white in the scene did not help as the endless trail of customers stared at us whilst waiting for their food.

Well, we definately don’t belong there. But love it we did, and return we shall. The next time we return we will go for all the weird and wonderful sounding food – no more jerk chicken or curried goat even though it was so beautiful….symphony…sighh…And next time, when I am off my antibiotics, we shall have lashings of carribean rum punch as well.

Maureens West Indian Restaurant
105 Roundhay Rd ,
Leeds, LS8 5AJ

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