Canje — Restaurant in Austin

I was cautiously looking forward to dining at Canje. It has a lot of hype as it's a brand new restaurant in the area. It has great Google reviews and Yelp reviews. I say cautiously however, because since I never ate Guyanese food, I showed my Guyanese friend the food pictures and the menu. She told me it didn't look like anything she grew up eating. This let me know the authentic representation was removed. I went to Canje expecting good food however and a great experience.

I made reservations ahead of time. Me and my dinner guest were seated right away. We were greeted by our waiter Drake right away. He brought out water and we ordered Bacalaíto (Salt Fish and Potato Fritter, Mojo Rojo) for our appetizer. I ordered a Red Stripe beer and my guest ordered a Heat of Passion (Cimarron Blanco, Urapan Rum, Passion Fruit, Coconut Water, Lime).

The Bacalaíto came with 5 pieces and was very tasty well flavored. The sauce it came with was tomato based but paired surprisingly well with the fritters. This is different then the typical tarter sauce or remoulade that would accompany codfish aka saltfish fritters. The saltfish was delicious and fried to perfection. These are a must try when you visit Canje.

Red Stripe is a Jamaican beer it was good and well chilled. The Heat of Passion was mixed well on the stronger side, sweet but not too seeet where it over powered the Tequila. However not a lot of drink for $15. It also wasn't worth $15 flavor wise.

On to the entrees supper section of the menu. We order Jerk chicken (1/2 a chicken with a tomato sauce on the side) and Pork Lechon (Berkshire Pork Belly, Sweet Plantain, Pineapple Pique). It took about 30-40 minutes for the food to arrive. If you're very hungry please get appetizers when you done here. The Pork Lechon was very few about 5 small pieces for $26! I wasn't even more shocked when I found out sides weren't included. We order roti $5 as a side.

The Pork Lechon has great flavor and the sauce it was on added a nice kick to the flavor. However the pieces of pork belly was mad up of 40% fat. If you like to eat pork fat you would love this. I prefer more meat over the fat. This was disappointing. For this reason I can't recommend this dish. Order but know what you're getting yourself into. I included picture s as well.

The Jerk chicken wasn't impressive and I'm a Jerk chicken connoisseur of sorts. I have even been to Jamaica and ate it straight from the smoker charcoal drum. This chicken was tender but the flavor was okay, it was spicy but not overwhelming. It tasted more like the Buffalo wings type of Hot sauce at times than jerk seasoning spiciness. The chicken tasted oven baked instead of smoked of charcoal. It could have been in just saying the smoke didn't permeate into the meat just the skin. Another waiter suggested a house made hot salsa that was supposed to be really spicy it was not but far from unbearable. It doesn't go well with jerk chicken so be aware. This tasted more like a salsa you would put on breakfast tacos. The jerk chicken is hard pass for me. It was just edible nothing more. Not worth $28! I could get two large jerk chicken dinners at a great jerk chicken spot like Bikkle restaurant here in Austin with sides included!

The roti was great I can recommend that, because it had great flavor a good portion sizes for $5. I just wish for the price of the entrees that sides were included.

Service was basic but not bad. If the wait would have explained the supper entrees as far as portion size and r concept behind that error have been great. I heard another waiter do this. However I have nothing negative to say about our waiter Drake.

I won't be back, however the ambience and music (Early 90s hip hop band RnB) was nice. The value just isn't...

I honestly wanted to LOVE it. I do not like leaving less than great reviews, so unless I'm blown away or very disappointed, I leave just a star rating. That said, with all of the amazing reviews Canje has garnered, I felt compelled to share a different experience. My heritage is Puerto Rican, and there is a seriously limited list of places serving Puerto Rican & Caribbean food in Austin and surrounding areas. I'm also a native NYer, and the NYT review cinched our making a reservation for our 23rd anniversary dinner. We were very excited! NYT reviews, which has never failed me before, seriously missed the mark on this one. It's taken me a month to write this review bc I remain perplexed by SO many rave reviews. Could we be the only exception? So the good: Decor and atmosphere were great. Really good job on design of interiors. The service was friendly and good. They "recommend" 6-8 menu items for 2 ppl. It adds up quickly, which if we left happy and full, would be completely acceptable for a special occasion dinner. All portions are on the small side. The Wah Gwaan (appetizers) we tried, Plantain chips & Smoked Avocado Escabeche were good, however, the portions are quite small for $10 & $13 respectively. Our "Tryating" selection was bread, a Guyanese Style Roti (1pc $5) was also good. Our Suppa, or main entrées, did not have any side dishes. The Tile Fish ($28) was the star here, hands down. Wish we had ordered 2. Now for the mostly not so good and the "meh". We ordered 2 Piña Coladas ($18/$28) bc, we were in a Caribbean restaurant, so why not?! Our huge mistake was assuming that frozen Piña Coladas were a safe, easy, and almost always rewarding experience. For the life of me, I can not explain or express the very unpleasant and unwelcome surprise of terribly bitter cold brew, yes coffee, in a Piña Colada. Worse still, was that they were premixed, so no opting out of it. They were left almost completely untouched even after the server had some extra pinapple juice added to mine to try and disguise or dilute that flavor. It did not work for me. My husband had 3 sips of my diluted one, leaving his $28 drink full. We also selected two more Suppa items. The Curry Wagu Beef ($26) and Grilled Pork Guisado($29). The porkchop was tender, but it was overall just ok in the flavor profile. Green olives and sofrito heavy, which left me feeling like something was missing. The Curry was the biggest disappointment, just not memorable. Both Porkchop and Curry would have benefitted from some rice, maybe? We had a few bites of each and wrapped it in hopes that our teenaged kids would eat the leftovers. $250 spent, and we wished we'd gone somewhere else for that money. What a shame. And my kids, who usually fight for leftovers, didn't eat any of them after...

When Good Eats Austin asks its readers to suggest one place to take visitors to eat who are in from out-of-town, Canje consistently makes the short list of "go-to" spots.

The restaurant is the brainchild of Chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph who took traditional dishes from his country of Guyana (just to the east of Venezuela), along with flavors from other countries in the region, and added a modern flair in what he calls new age Caribbean.

The menu itself is very approachable, with a total of 23 dishes. It includes a Wah Gwaan (appetizers), Suppa (entrées), Tryating (sides) and Likkle Muore (desserts).

We tried the Ceviché ($18) and the Wagyu Beef Suya ($16) as our Wah Gwaan. The ceviché featured Amberjack fish "cooked" in a sour orange sauce, with tri-colored peppers and peanuts. The nuts provided a nice crunch to the dish, not normally found in most cevichés. The suyas were small, but melted in your mouth and were perfectly cooked with a sprinkling of blend of hot African spices.

For Suppa we tried the Jerk Chicken ($34) and Pepper Fish ($28). We had the Roti ($6) and the Grilled Cabbage ($9) as sides.

The jerk chicken is marinated for 48-hours prior to cooking and is served with a Jamaican Pickapepper sauce. The sauce is a blend of sweet and spicy. Canje's jerk chicken is one of their biggest sellers. Their jerk rub has the heat level to smoke many not familiar with it, but still satisfy those of us who like like it hotter.

For the fish dish, the chef mixes two distinctive favors including ata dindin, a Nigerian pepper sauce on top, and roh, a Senegalese parsley underneath to season the fish along with fennel and onion. It's a beautiful presentation, as are all the plates at Canje.

Roti is a cousin of Naan bread. Both come from Asia, but Roti has become a staple in the Caribbean as well. Canje uses a Gyanese version of roti which tends to be softer and flakier, which it was.

Rounding out our dinner was the cabbage, which was grilled with raisins and cashews. We really loved the restaurant's use of nuts in our choices, providing another layer of flavor and texture.

Our server Alex was great all evening, even when the restaurant filled and she was running hard. The bar was on point too. Check out their First Dance and Frozen Guava Colada drinks, or one of a hundred other choices. You can't go wrong.

The noise level in the restaurant is loud. Music was booming even when it was not full at the start of our meal. Add in a cacophony of regular restaurant sounds and it was a bit hard to talk at times. The space is beautifully decorated in theme matching the delectable new age Caribbean fare....