Review: Caribbean Kitchen

At the Caribbean Kitchen, the jerk chicken is smoked for several hours in pimento wood, harvested from the allspice tree.

Owner and chef Patrick Rashed wants his food to be as authentically Jamaican as possible, so for him, importing wood all the way from Jamaica is worth it.

'It took me like 10 years to figure out the chicken recipe,' he says. 'If you don't use pimento wood, it's not real jerk chicken.'

Rashed and his wife, Danielle, opened their first Caribbean Kitchen at NewBo City Market when the market opened its doors in 2012. The Rasheds opened a second location in late November 2014 at 529 Fifth Ave. SE, down the street from Kathy's Pies.

They gutted the inside of the building — most recently a coin shop — painted bright colors and hung island-inspired art on the walls. The goal, with both the decor, which Rashed describes as 'rustic,' and the food, is to evoke a taste of Jamaican home cooking.

'We're not fancy, but we're fantastic,' he says. 'We wanted people to feel comfortable, like they're in somebody's living room. If you go to Jamaica, you'll see a room like this.'

Rashed, who grew up in Jamaica and Chicago, has been cooking and working in the food industry since he was 12, when he started helping out at a vegetarian Rasta eatery. After moving to Iowa to finish his master's degree in therapy, he wasn't ready to give up cooking just yet.

'I fell in love with it, with the cooking and the smells, and it never left me,' he says. 'It's always something I wanted to do.'

The NewBo City Market location still is open, but business at the new restaurant has been spotty, Rashed says.

Caribbean Kitchen serves both the unfamiliar — curried goat — and more familiar dishes such as pulled pork, for both lunch and breakfast. Customers also will find some American soul food alongside the Jamaica options.

Choose the level of heat you can handle including 'Iowa heat' — which isn't spicy at all — plus a medium and a very spicy option.

If the food at Caribbean Kitchen inspires you to try the flavors at home, the downtown location also has a shelf of Jamaican spices and other food for sale, which Rashed picks up periodically in Chicago.

'I want to invest in the space and in the community,' he says. 'We're trying to do something unique.'