The Reef

Posted by beipas
July 25, 2010

I don’t think I’ve ever had real Caribbean food, I think the closest I had anything Caribbean was Jamaican jerk chicken wings at regular pubs. So, when I finally got to visit The Reef, I was pretty excited.

Dining at The Reef was super causal. Because I wasn’t familiar with Caribbean food, it took me a while to decided what I wanted. In the end, my friend and I decided to share Plantain Chips ($6), The Jamaican Jerk ($14), and The Big Ting ($20) of July’s featured dishes.

The Plantain Chips were really yummy. They were my favorite of the meal. The chips weren’t greasy, and they were crispy. I really liked the jerk mayo it came with, it was a perfect dipping sauce for the chips. I did find the seasoning of the chips were uneven. Some of the chips I got were really salty, because they had a ton of seasoning on them, and some of them didn’t get much seasoning at all.

For The Jamaican Jerk, you have the choice of chicken, pork, salmon or tofu. We picked chicken and it came with rice, coleslaw and vegetables. This dish was only OK. The chicken was overcooked, and it was pretty dry since most of it was chicken breast. The sauce was great, but really, I just couldn’t get over the overcooked chicken.

The Big Ting of July’s feature was marlin with rice and vegetables. The marlin was topped with this vinegary and spicy sauce with onions. It was a really nice sauce, and it was spicy. The fish itself was again, overcooked. It was pretty dry, and it has lost of bit of its taste, maybe it was over powered by the sauce. I was pretty disappointed with this dish, and it was definitely not worth $20 dollars.

The ambiance was really laid back, but they were having a bit of volume control on their music that night. It’d get really loud from time to time. I’m not sure if it was authentic Caribbean food, but I’m pretty sure it’ll take me a while before I return again.

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