Jerk City

Very good service with great selection of mouth watering food from pattie’s to currie goat and rice and my favourite Guinness Punch & Carrot juice.
a must visit

I'm not Caribbean nor have I been there so I'm afraid I cannot comment on the authenticity of the food here. However I can say that it is very tasty.

I ordered the curry mutton with hard food (dumplings, banana and boiled yam) which came in a just-right spicy sauce and the dumpling was amazing. My companions were also very happy with their chicken roti and jerk chicken meals.

It's a small cafe, unlicensed. Probably best suited to lunch although we went for dinner and it served us just fine. The older chap behind the counter was nice and friendly. The waitresses are less so. Best if you care more about your food than your surroundings (which we do). It's also brilliantly cheap (much more so than Savannah Jerk next door) at about £6-7 for a meal that will fill you up.

Authentic or not, the sauce on the Jerk chicken, combined with a fried dumpling, remains my absolute favourite fast food experience in London. Nowhere have I been able to find a sauce like it, and have been disappointed (I don't mean to offend the people who prefer the authentic style) to have a dry Jerk joint placed infront of me at lesser establishments.

Jerk city is located at wardour street off oxford street. Its a quick and convenient carribean fast food take out. The food is reasonably good but not 100 percent carribean authentic(i speak in reference of their jerk chicken) The fried dumplings, rice and peas,plantains and patties are quite tasty and very well made. if you have got a student id card, you could get upto 10% discount off your meal. The place gets quite busy at around lunchtime on most days as its ever so popular so its best to either call and place your order at least half an hour before you go and pick it up or show up before 1pm.

I’ll admit I know very little about Carribean cuisine, with my only exposure being food that I’d eaten at the Notting Hill Carnival from the little stands they set up all around the area. Given all the rain lately and my craving for some really spicy food, I headed down Oxford Street towards the two places that I know will be open, Jerk City and Mr Jerk.

I took a moment to decide which one to eat at, and in the end I chose Jerk City over Mr Jerk. Perhaps it was because of the more homely feel of the store opening, rather than the dark purple, somewhat modernised dining room of Mr Jerk that seemed somehow out of place when eating jerk chicken.

Upon stepping inside of Jerk City, you order at the counter, with two menus taped down and a warming oven on display showing you some of the side dishes you could order. Most of the dishes were well below £10, with the large jerk chicken serve at £7.50 (with 10% extra for eating in). I had no idea how big the portions were and I’m glad that I didn’t order any sides in the end since their portion was huge, almost spilling over the plate edge! Tempted by a different drink, I also tried their pineapple soda drink - a perfectly sweet and summery drink that went well with the dish.

Their tables are small wooden, outfitted with salt, pepper and two types of chilli sauce (both using lots of scotch bonnet peppers). I tried both of them (one of them quite liberally) and I found myself reaching for the refreshing pineapple drink a few times during the meal to help cool down my mouth.

When the jerk chicken arrived, the serving size was immediately noticeable and I didn’t think that I’d be able to finish the entire serve. Alongside the jerk chicken, drenched in some sweet, BBQ-like sauce was a huge serve of a traditional rice and peas (rice and beans), as well as a side salad.

The jerk chicken puzzled me a little because I thought the beauty of the chicken was supposed to be the blackened, salty, spicy crust on the chicken at which you could choose to add jerk sauce at a later stage. It also surprised me that the sauce was sweeter than expected, and much less spicy (hence the liberal use of the hot sauces). Overall it was still a great dish though I have no idea about how authentic it really is. Tasty nevertheless.

My expectations weren’t met on my first visit to Jerk City recently. Before I get started, I should say I know my jerk pretty well being that I’m from the Caribbean, have eaten lots of it, and make it myself quite often at home when the mood strikes me. Given the name of this place, and its competitor next door of similar name, you’d rightly expect their jerk offerings to be first rate. Everyone at my table ordered jerk chicken and hungrily waited for it to be brought out, only to sport quizzical looks when we laid eyes on what looked and smelled like the chicken had be doused with what I still believe was not jerk sauce…. no matter what the waitress would have me believe…

Depending on who you ask, you may hear that jerk chicken shouldn’t come drowned in any kind of sauce as it’s true magnificence lies in the ‘jerking’ or seasoning of one’s meat of choice properly before grilling to arrive at that smoky, blackened tasty goodness that stands alone and needs no extra flavoring. Others (myself included) like sauce, want sauce, and do not shy away from requesting more sauce when necessary. So normally I’d be delighted to see my jerk chicken arrive with a hearty helping of jerk sauce already sitting pretty on my plate. However. The red sauce atop the jerk chicken we ordered looked, smelled and tasted like a spicy barbecue-type concoction that the waitress swore to me was their jerk sauce. Now don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t un-tasty, and I certainly ate all my “jerk” chicken because it was still about 3-star quality and their peas and rice was certainly good. BUT!! I’d recommend that jerk lovers go elsewhere for their fix, and if you decide to visit here after all it may be wise to try one of their other dishes instead. Mind that if you go later than like 8pm though, you run a definite risk that they would have already run out of a number of other things like curry chicken, and ‘hard food’ (yams etc).

Make sure you wear comfortable trousers (with an elasticated waist line) when you visit Jerk City. Serving a blend of Carribean food, beverages and dessers, this cafe which is tucked away in the middle of Soho is one of my favourites. The portions are giant sized so be careful what you order, a mutton and pea soup will be sufficient to fill you up! My regular dish is the jerk chicken, rice and peas, with plantain and coleslaw. The rotis and pineapple punches are delicious aswell.