Mark W.
Yelp
Tonight is my first Yelp review of 2025, believe it or not! Holidays were expensive, and the New Year's holiday in particular tends to bombard me with bills, so money's been real tight. Anywho, this is a place I have been meaning to go to after I had seen this on my Activity Feed, thinking I had recognized where this was. It turned out not to be, but it was on the cusp of a route I used to walk whenever I would wait for my train back to Waterbury. For the exact place I had recognized from my walks, that was actually the El Coquito restaurant down the street at 510.
So back to this place, and yeah, I did NOT have high hopes for this takeout joint! I will say that this is a cheap place to get food as my bill came out to $14.84 for a decent amount of food. This harkens back to the Jamaican food joint over in Norwalk I had reviewed a few months back. Employee was fine too, nothing to complain about. I mostly needed her to explain what everything was before I could order.
Now the ambiance of the place and how it looks going inside leaves a lot to be desired. From the outside, it looks a bit run-down and one could easily write this off as a closed establishment. I actually had to peep into another window they had to confirm whether or not it was actually open. Also, you don't really see a menu for what this has, so you do need to communicate with the employees to make sure you know what you're ordering before you get it. This made ordering my food a challenge. I ended up getting the pork and chicken kebab things and then these beef and cheese hot dogs wrapped around in a pastry. I also got some white rice to go along with it because I needed to know if maybe their rice was better than what I had over at that aforementioned Norwalk joint.
The hot dogs were actually decent. The snap could have been better, but you can definitely taste that you are eating a hot dog with cheese, albeit the cheese might be a bit harder to detect. As for the kebabs, I had seen mine get reheated in a microwave, so if that's not your thing, this place ain't for you. Then again, it was quite cold outside, so maybe that evens it out? I don't know, but what I DO know is that neither one was really that good. The pork one was better, but that didn't say much. The barbecue sauce on the pork did have a bit of a kick to it, but other than that it was a slight bit bland. As for the chicken, it was dry, and the sauce managed to be even more tasteless! Didn't even have the slight kick of the pork ones.
I would probably rate this a 2.5, but unless the white rice is good I can't see myself giving this a 3.
Two Hours Later...
Now that I have gotten my taste of the white rice, it is time to finish the review! So this time around, I have found the rice to actually be edible here! There is a bit of a salty finish to it, but I can live with that. I tend to find that white rice plays just fine in its barest form. It's what can be added on it that can ruin the rice, so it was nice to have it separate from everything else.
A 2.5 is really what this should get, and that's what I would give it if half-stars were a thing. As it stands, I would agree with your rating if you were to give it a 2 or a 3 because it really can go either way from there.
EDIT: Upon further review of the white rice, I've been thinking about my rating here. Maybe keeping this at 2 stars was a bit harsh on my end. It's definitely still more of a 2 and a half, but I do feel like everything considered it was good enough to skate by with a 3, so I am updating my rating as such. It's still kind old a war between the two ratings though, so maybe I need to try some different things from here before a winner emerges.
