The Box - Caribbean Cuisine — Restaurant in London

So where do I start.... I don't live locally but was visiting a local park, we got hungry so decided to try this place as I had heard about it a few months ago. I ordered by telephone (the phone number listed on Google is incorrect, its a mobile number that has been disconnected) but I managed to find a number on Instagram.

I ordered a medium jerk chicken with white rice, no pasta and a brown stewed chicken with rice and peas plus the pasta and fried plaintain.

I was told 10-15 mins for the order.

When we arrived at the restaurant I had to check to see if we were in the right place, there seemed to be a private children's birthday party taking place at the back of the restaurant. There wasn't the usual smell of Caribbean cooking you are greeted with when you enter a Caribbean restaurant but We were greeted by a friendly young who took payment and said the food would be out in a few minutes.

Whilst waiting at the front of the restaurant we noticed that there were quite a number of people hanging around the kitchen area and some of the children even started helping themselves to slushies. Completely unhygienic so I was already having second thoughts about the food at that stage.

Anyway, the food finally arrived, I was disgusted when I opened the first box of brown stewed chicken. The meat looked hard and days old, and I struggled to figure out if it was infact chicken. (I didn't have the courage to taste eat and even the dog turned her nose up when I offered it to her). The plantain was soft and soggy..the jerk chicken box looked abit better but it definitely was not jerk!! The sauce was sweet with no spice, At best it's oven Roasted chicken with bbq sauce.

This was by far one of the worst 'caribbean' food experiences I've ever had. Staff are friendly enough but please stop selling this as Caribbean food!! Avoid if you are looking for authentic...

I've come here twice now. First time, they sat my friends and i on a table. When it came to ordering, they had NONE of the meals we wanted. So we ended up leaving, disappointed, also annoyed we werent notified of this BEFORE we sat down.

Second time, my boyfriend told me to check if they have any food before he wasted time looking for a parking spot. I went in, asked the person on the till "what do you NOT have today?" The guy said pepper steak and some sweet chilli bites or something. So i told my boyfriend to park and come in. We sit down and a girl comes out and says we cant sit in, it's takeaway only (again...why is there no sign or why was i not told this before?)

She said it was due to some construction happening on the far end of the room. Fine, we resumed to order to takeaway, i asked for a dish, the same guy from before says "sorry we dont have that"... We tried another dish they said "we dont have that either, the fishmongers didnt deliver today" so we asked for a vegetarian dish, they said they didnt have that either! So....... Once again regardless of me taking the initiative to ask in advance (even though its their job and basic customer service to let me know in advance what they are capable of offering). They managed to waste our time, and we left again with nothing. Why is this place even open? Do they ever...

(Home Delivery via Uber Eats) Despite being advertised as Sticky-Grilled Jerk Chicken, the sauce itself has all the spice heat of your average plain bbq sauce (aka none). The sweetness in the flavour would have made a great BBQ flavour but this lacked the trademark lip-numbing peppery heat I know and love from jerk.

Portion-wise, we ordered both a small and large portion of jerk chicken with rice n peas, however both boxes when they arrived were indistinguishable in size, and had equal amounts of meat in both portions (~3 thighs), the only discernable difference being an additional slice of plantain in one box. For an additional cost of £2 this felt ridiculous.

The Mac and Cheese has a very basic sauce within the pasta itself, and is barely just a plain portion of pasta with cheese on top

The plantain was ok, but it's hard to go wrong there. Portion-wise it was hardly worth the £2.6 pricetag for 5 slices.

Overall, whilst a tolerable meal in itself, its certainly not what we wanted nor expected when...