The waiter informed me that my order of tikin xic grouper, the house specialty, would take 40 minutes to prepare. I looked over at Carrie for some guidance. It was, after all, our penultimate day of vacation, and I wasn’t sure we wanted to spend 40 minutes of it waiting for grilled fish at this beach-side lunch spot on Isla Mujeres.

Then we came to our senses. I mean, what more did we need than Caribbean waters at our feet, cold drinks under a palapa, and the smell of grilled fish in the distance? I waded into the Bahia de Mujeres, beer in hand, to pass the time. I tried to ignore all the goddamn seaweed that threatened to dispell my island fantasy.

When I got bored of that, I popped my head into the kitchen to get a first-hand look at how the cooks prepare this Mayan fish speciality. The kitchen is located under a giant palapa and totally inaccessible to tourists and nosy food writers. The only way for me to sneak a peek at the stoves was to stick my head through a small window, which I did. I couldn’t see much other than fish frying in a cast-iron skillet, which is not the way tikin xic is supposed to be prepared. I was bracing for disappointment.

Read More “What I Ate on My Summer Vacation: Tikin Xic Grouper” »

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

When the discussion turns to ethnic eats in the D.C. area, Caribbean and/or Jamaican cuisine often gets the shaft. It’s always Ethiopian this, Vietnamese that. The fact is, the District and surrounding areas are crawling with quality Caribbean joints, whether Caribbean Palace, the outstanding Trinidadian takeout in Takoma Park, or the Junction International Market and Jerk Center in Chillum. The sole reason to step foot into Junction is for its jerk chicken; your Styrofoam clamshell comes stuffed with grilled, gorgeously charred bird parts drizzled with the darkest, pepper-flecked sauce you’ll ever lay eyes on. The sauce’s sweetness is, in part, derived from caramel, which helps defuse the fowl’s search-and-destroy level of heat. This is jerk chicken for those who want more than a cosmic burn.

 Junction International Market and Jerk Center. 900 Chillum Road, Chillum, (301) 853-0193

Commercial mauby, with carbonation

Until I stepped foot into Taste of Caribbean 2 yesterday, I had only known the place as the unfortunate player in the tug of war over the former Teddy’s Roti Shop space on Georgia Avenue NW. ToC2 has managed to survive, if not thrive, in the year or so since it opened a second store in that contested space, which, ironically, is now just up the avenue from the relocated Teddy’s.

Personally, after tasting ToC2’s dense and chewy “boneless” chicken curry roti (complete with bones), I’d choose Teddy’s version any day of the week. But I did spot something in the cooler that captured my attention. It was a housemade drink in a cylindrical plastic container. A single word was handwritten on a piece of tape affixed to the container: “mauby.” I asked the lone employee at Taste of Caribbean 2 what “mauby” was.

Read More “Mauby: A (Bitter) Taste of the Caribbean” »

It’s been a rough year or so for David Nagar, co-owner of Teddy’s Roti Shop. The tiny Trinidadian take out, which serves a killer roti and buss-up-shut, had been searching for a permanent home ever since his landlord refused to renew his lease back in the fall of 2007. Nagar first tried to relocate to Silver Spring, across from the Metro station, but that place was a bust. Now he’s found a home at 7304 Georgia Ave NW—not far, in fact, from the spot where Teddy’s spent the first 14 years of its life.

I stopped by his new place on Inauguration Day for a quiet lunch, but once Nagar recognized me from our previous conversations, that was out of the question. He was still angry about the things that I let other people say about him. He was angry that I didn’t return his three phone calls. (I told him I never got his three calls.) He was lobbying me to come back the next day, when he wasn’t as busy, so he could presumably take me to task for other matters. I stood there and mostly listened. Arguing with Nagar would only delay my lunch.

Read More “Teddy’s Roti Shop: As Good As Ever Despite Tough Times” »