Queens Tribune

ADDRESS: 108-04 Hillside Ave., Jamaica
TELEPHONE: (718) 291-6194/5
CUISINE: Jamaican
HOURS: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily

Many new restaurants have been opened on busy Hillside Avenue in the last few months. One of them is the Jamaican eatery Island Cuisine Restaurant that opened its doors in February.

The tiny restaurant is bustling with the working crowd trying to get their orders during the lunch hours.

“It’s like a whole cultural mix here,” said the shy owner who didn’t want to give her name. “On weekdays I get orders for mostly oxtail and jerked chicken but come weekend everybody wants something curried. It’s just a different kind of crowd on the weekend.”

Island Cuisine serves the best roti! You can order roti with any filling your taste buds desire. Whatever is on the menu can be used for your roti filling.

The standard roti comes with curried goat, curried chicken or vegetables filling but you can create your own. Just add $2 to the cost of what the meal would be for your roti order.

Breakfast is served daily and the typical Jamaican dishes like okra and codfish, callaloo with codfish or ackee and codfish is cooked and hot and ready for only $5.50 or $6.50 depending on the size you desire.

Fried fish ($7) is also prepared daily and is served with bread or festival, a sweet dough made from sugar and cornmeal.

Try one of the breakfast porridges, banana, wheat, oatmeal, peanut or and cornmeal, for just $3.50, $5 if you’re really hungry.

A lunch special is served between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., costs $5, comes with a free can of soda and is served with vegetable and your choice of white rice or rice and peas.

Island Cuisine’s customers’ favorite oxtail sells for $8.50 or $9.50, while curried goat, curried chicken, stewed chicken, jerk chicken all sell for $6.50 or $7.50 per plate. Fish is prepared escoveitched, brown stew style or steamed.

Soup comes in a variety of chicken, pigeon peas and red pea, and can be bought daily for $3 a cup or $5 per bowl.

Beef or chicken patties sell for $1.35. Add hot coco bread and pay only $1.85. Vegetarians can order veggie patties for $1.50 or $2 with hot coco bread.

It’s best to call in your order if you plan to stop by Island Cuisine during lunch hours, but if you don’t it’s worth the wait.