Cooking up calypso

Place: Caribbean Connection, Grove Street, Edinburgh Telephone:

0131-228 1345 Opening hours:

Dinner orders from 6pm-9.30pm Tue-Sat Other information All major credit cards accepted. Smoking throughout. BYOB

AS I complained bitterly about the sudden plunge into dark, cold nights, my pal Ruth announced she knew just the place to banish the winter blues - Caribbean Connection in Edinburgh's Haymarket area.

A few years ago, I ended up in Jamaica and adored the place - the heat, the spices, the food, the music - so the promise of even a vague resemblance to the real thing meant I was game.

The restaurant is BYOB so, believing in authenticity, I clank in with four cans of Red Stripe. Ruth has a bottle of white, while our other dining partners, James and Anne, settle for a bottle of red and Stella respectively.

But, from the second you poke your head through the beaded curtain over the door, it's as near as damn it to the real McCoy. The interior is tiny, wooden and ramshackle. The only contact you retain with the real world is via a tiny porthole window, left from the days when the restaurant was the New York Steam Packet. Rastafarian flags fly, posters and photographs of the Caribbean adorn every available wall space, Jimmy Cliff booms out from the speakers, spicy smells and sizzling sounds emanate from the kitchen.

There are only about 20 seats so the four of us sit shoulder to shoulder in one of three booths, swigging and talking.

Cracking open our drinks, we check the menu. It tends to stay the same, which means all dishes are tried and tested and obviously well researched, as the couple who run the place work their buns off to finance their next trip back to the Caribbean. When they do go, they shut up shop till their return, so you really must book.

Knowing we're in good hands, I order salt fish and ackee, a fruit that's poisonous if prepared wrongly. It looks like scrambled egg but has a moist bready taste that goes perfectly with salted fish. Ruth, who practically lives in this restaurant, always has the ribs and, as they approach the table (supported by a strong waitress), it's easy to understand why - they're like the dino ribs that Fred and Wilma scoff in The Flintstones.

Goat's cheese was the least imaginative of the starters and, as I recall from my time in Jamaica, the locals do like goats but more for their meat than their cheese. Admittedly, in the absence of goat curry, this was the next best thing.

The main courses include the wonderfully named wet jerk rub, which is traditionally prepared by digging a hole in the earth, setting a fire in it, dropping in chicken, lamb, goat, or pork, filling it up again then digging it up a couple of days later to eat it.

Presumably, health regulations don't encourage this particular method of preparing food in Scotland but the result tastes authentic enough.

Ruth has pork and orange, great chunks of it marinated and drizzled in an orange reduction, while roti bread and curried vegetables kept our token vegetarian glowing with happiness.

There is a bread-and-butter pudding that is the talk of the town but we were stuffed.

One of our friends produced a quarter-bottle of rum and suggested a wee Calypso Coffee. Reluctantly, we eventually had to leave but the whole experience had put us in the mood to limbo dance all the way home to Kingston.

Bill total : #75 for four

Copyright 1999
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