JAMAICA 🇯🇲 Eat the World NYC review: Not much can go wrong at Goody's, around since 1989 in Arverne. You can certainly find its fair share of one star reviews posted by disgruntled customers, but it is more than likely no one ever read those and even less likely anything changed. Because why would it need to? The line is out the door but there is a smile on each and every face, even the children in strollers are not fussing. Everyone knows that something delicious is coming their way.

The exhaust here works just fine, but the air is still under the spell of everything on the grill. Seemingly dozens of chickens are back there being prepared for jerk and barbecue orders. Fat hamburger patties line one side. The grill master constantly squirts a plastic bottle of oil into the coals and makes the flame jump up over a foot past the meat. Just watching all this is enough to whet the appetite but the smells were already hitting you from the sidewalk.

Get straight to the Jamaican roots of the joint. The small jerk chicken dinner ($7.50) was unavoidable after seeing the birds on the grill. The "small" is of course never small in New York City's Caribbean restaurants, a healthy portion of rice and peas is laid down before five or six pieces of chicken. Oxtail gravy seems to be made in big batches here, as not one customer declines it atop their rice. Follow suit, and do not turn down their fried sweet plantains either.