Agnes — Restaurant in Dayton

Visited for the first time today after passing by this business for months. I'm highly disappointed. Walked in and the cashier just stood there emotionless..lifeless...said absolutely nothing to me until I greeted her. I took a second to look over the menu as I've never been in there before.. high prices but no biggy I understand it's a small business and it's not like you have much to choose from if you desire this kind of food unless you want to drive to Columbus. I ordered a curry chicken bowl and a brown sugar lemonade smoothie. The bowl was mediocore at best. There were potatoes in the stew which I normally like but they were rock hard and crunchy almost like they cut them up and added them to the stew when I ordered it. The curry chicken came as wings not as typical drumsticks thighs or breast... Again no big deal I can deal with that..overall just not what I was expecting. When I ordered my smoothie she just handed me an empty cup with a lid and said nothing... After I stood there clueless and after our staring contest was over because we both looked at each other with a blank stare only difference was I had an empty cup in my hand that she gave me after I ordered my smoothie, it finally dawned on her maybe I hadn't been there before and she motioned / pointed to the corner of the restaurant and unenthusiastically said "mango..grape ...something or another over there in the corner".. I was thrown off for a sec as I was expecting it to be prepared fresh and to order as they advertised it as "natural brown sugar..." Which is nothing more than a marketing gimmick because I ended up throwing it away there was a strong artificial chemical taste like they used 20 Kool aid packs to create it. To their defense it did taste like they used brown sugar to sweeten it but the actual flavor of the drink was super artificial.. I was really hoping to be happy with this experience because my family and I crave Jamaican food on an almost weekly basis but I definitely will not be back and I'm glad I tried it alone on my lunch hour because my wife would definitely not be pleased with this. It's one thing for the food to be lacking but if you have poor customer service and can't even greet your customers I can find other places to spend my hard earned money..positives ( food came fast, place was nearly empty so no wait to order, she did request paper towels for the bathroom immediately after I notified her...

Yesterday was my first time trying the food with my family. We are transplant NY’ers and Jamaican. I googled and saw that there was Caribbean food near to where we had to take care of some stuff. Upon entering we got a pretty dry greeting. Whatever. They just moved locations and understandably it was a nice color and stuff inside. There seemed to be a tour being given to either family or so. Coming from a culinary background that shouldn’t be done during operating hours due to food safety. Were they around the kitchen area with the proper precautions and so forth? So that was a bit uncomfortable but the risk you take eating out right? Now we ordered the Oxtail bowl, jerk chicken bowl and teriyaki jerk wings. Seems like the food was finish to order which was fine. Now I didn’t get a chance to take pictures but what I spent $22 on for oxtail and what came in the plate didn’t add up. The big piece of oxtail was super fatty. The flavor was not authentic Caribbean oxtail. It left a bitter after taste in my mouth. They were very tender though so I give it to them. The review of oxtail posted 2 years ago looked more authentic than what I received yesterday. Moving on to the rice and peas, it wasn’t rice and peas. Like not 1 bit and I’m not sure the grain of rice used but it was unpleasant. The jerk chicken was okay and the wings were just smothered in sauce and okay at best. I learned that they were from NY, Brooklyn to be exact so I was a bit disappointed as we know what the Caribbean food scene is like in NY and the standard. I can say business was consistent, maybe the customers really do love it or there is no competition/comparison. Needless to say I wish them continuous success and hopefully all feedback will be taken...

Now, if I take the time to leave a review.. i either absolutely love it or extremely disappointed. In this case- extremely disappointed. The first time we stopped to order food, we were told that there wasn’t any food left. This was an hour and a half before closing. We didn’t mind because HEY fresh food! So we left with the plan to come back. Well we came back on a Monday around 12:30 pm. We were told there was no jerk or jerk chicken. ALRIGHTY. Ordered the curry chicken bowl (2 of them), brown sugar lemonade, and a beef patty. The curry bowl and Rasta pasta lacked the seasoning we were expecting. I mean we were expecting jerk chicken to begin with but we went along with the flow. The Rasta pasta was lack luster. Bland. Highly disappointed as this was our SECOND visit to come try some food. THEN we sat down with every intention to eat in the intimate dining area. They told us they did not have eating utensils! If y’all don’t want customers to eat there- just say everything is to go. We had small children. We were all hungry. The brown sugar lemonade was good. Sweet but not overly sweet. I enjoyed the beef patty but I believe it was fried. The beef patty was the best thing we ordered. After $40+ dollars and we were not satisfied….if you’re looking for an authentic Jamaican taste… this MAY not be the...