I have been visiting Little India lately. So Wednesday evening, I headed in the other direction along Gerrard. At the corner of Carlaw, I stepped inside The Real Jerk. I haven't had traditional Caribbean fare in a while because it's meat-heavy (though Veggie D'Light and One Love are vegan) and Bloorcourt only had the immensely popular but bland Jerk King.
You don't often see a Caribbean restaurant with sit-down service and a bar. As such, Real Jerk reminded me of only one other such place on College. Long defunct, it became Boom Breakfast Diner for more than a decade, then a Thai take-out, and now cheap sushi. I was even more excited to see on the drinks menu that they may have that same pink fruit punch I had decades ago.
The menu did have some vegetarian and fish options but I decided that for my first meal here, I would get something more typical. I settled on the curry chicken dinner ($14.95) and a rum punch ($9.99). The drink was refreshing but wasn't quite the same. But it has been years so I can't say either way and the alcohol probably changed the taste profile. The dinner was huge and packed full of flavour. The chicken was tender and tasty and the rice mixed with the curry sauce was divine.
The Real Jerk had wonderful food and was a cheap eats, too. This dinner could become two meals with added veggies at home (it was very meat-heavy). The rotis could also be split into two portions. All in all, this restaurant was a win for the neighbourhood.
On the way there, I passed by Gerrard Square and saw a police stand-off with a man holding a knife. The crazy thing was not that a few people were still trying to enter or leave the mall, but that most of the cops standing around (only 1-2 were negotiating) didn't redirect them or do any active crowd control. After dinner, I walked through the neighbourhoods behind the Pape pedestrian bridge and met a one-eyed cat.
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