Review of new roti shop: Hurry Kurry

The ubiquitous roti is something I’ve steered clear of writing about since I started this blog. Like shark-and-bake or doubles, it’s something every self-respecting Trinidadian has an opinion on – who sells the best version of the said delicacies. But, given that the opening of a new roti shop in Port of Spain is such a rare thing, I decided to delve into the partisan world of our country’s favourite portable, eat-on-the-go, lip-licking curry wrap.

For every roti shop there is in Trinidad, there’s a gaggle of people that rambunctiously and defiantly swears it’s the best! People who love Shiann’s, for example, will almost never go anywhere else, they doh care if they have to stand doggedly in line for 45 minutes while ten people in front of them whip out their lists and recite 15 different combinations of ingredients that their entire office has ordered to the weary girls behind the counter. Other long-time favourites are: Don’s roti in Diego Martin (which, by the way, I didn’t get at all), a place in Boissiere village my friend Chris took me to (again, another huge disappointment, perhaps Chris has a nostalgic connection to the place he’s been going to all his life, so he can’t taste, in the now, how non-descript the roti is), Patraj or Hosein’s, Wings in Tunapuna, the little hole-in-the-wall shop on Belmont Circular Road that I go to for the cheapest goat roti with bhaggi, curry potato, baigan and slight pepper (no channa, mind-you, but the best $18 you’ll spend that day!), and the perennially popular and packed – though I still don’t understand why – Hotte Shoppe. (It was one of those coming-of-age experiences for me – the discovery of Dopson’s on Marli Street made me feel like I was more than just a middle class convent girl who’d gone to Bishops and thought the definition of roti was Hotte Shoppe. Once I tasted a real roti, ergo a Dopson’s roti, I understood how awful Hotte Shoppe’s version was with their insipid yellow and watery curry and perfectly white dhalpuri – not a brown spot to be found anywhere – which invariably bursts when you eat it, squirting the same watery curry all over your clean clothes, and I knew that I was one step closer to being a ‘real’ Trinidadian.) Even today, I maintain that the best paratha you can buy comes from Dopson’s (long-since relocated to the bottom of Maraval Road). It’s buttery, soft here and slightly crispy there, with lots of brown/ toasted patches. Yum!! And the best curry bodi comes from Shiann’s on Cipriani Boulevard: it’s never soggy or overcooked, and always treated like a vegetable that should require teeth and crunching to eat! As to curried meats, I’m not so polarised on the matter. I really like Wings by the highway side of Tunapuna for the fact that you can get huge portions of geera pork and paratha with a little curry pumpkin.

Anyway! I seem to have gone off on a tangent here. Back to the original subject of this post – the new roti shop, Hurry Kurry, in Royal Palm Plaza, Maraval. Firstly, it’s in a brilliant place. Considering that you can get seemingly every kind of fast food on the Saddle Road in Maraval, it took a LONG time for someone to figure out that a bright, clean and well-signed roti shop would be a good idea. So congratulations to the owners on that epiphany. (Hang-on, I’m having a vague memory that before there was Ellerslie Plaza or Mr Burger on the left, there was a roti shop. It’s way too fuzzy in my mind though!) Next, the staff are actually friendly – a kind of freakish thing when you think of the generally sullen, sour, and scowling people you normally find serving you at a roti shop. My third point is the reason I’ll go back to Hurry Kurry: it has the best relishes, pepper sauces and chutnies of any roti shop I’ve been to, AND slices of fresh cucumber with a little garlic to-boot! There’s regular pepper sauce, fresh kuchela, mother-in-law, and (the piece de resistence!) a scotch bonnet choka that is gorgeous! It’s smoky and mild when it first hits your palette, and has a wicked sting on the back end. Although neither the curry nor the dhalpuri was particularly noteworthy (still, in my mind, both were better than Hotte Shoppe) the complete package, along with cucumber slices, pepper choka and kuchela, was very satisfying. I happily recommend it.

Pollo Tropical - Yuk!

It's not a great feeling this. Knowing that the food was complete rubbish, it's hard to come up with a good thing to say about the new restaurant and drive through, Pollo Tropical, and that's hard for me. Let me think on it....

Oh yes, from the car the interior design of the new building on the south western side of the Savannah looked nice. Oh, and the food was reasonably priced. But the price doesn't really matter, nor the interiors, when you just wouldn't want to eat the food. Talk about bland, tasteless, non-descript!

Richard and I went to the drive-through to pick up food for us and his family. I wanted a combination of different sandwiches on the menu, they didn't have any sandwiches. So I ordered variations on their roasted chicken: with cassava in garlic; rice and beans; yellow rice with veggies; caesar salad; black beans.

It ALL tasted yuk! Bland chicken; soggy and wilted caesar salad (at least the croutons were crispy!); bland yellow rice; mushy boiled cassava with no butter, no garlic, no salt, no flavour! What a disappointment! I can't imagine that I'll be going there anytime soon. Nor would I recommend it to anyone.

Pelican Bar, Treasure Beach, Jamaica

Earlier this year, I was in Jamaica for a protracted period of time. I had been working hard and was tired and quite worn down. My sister, who lives in Jamaica and is a lover of all things from the land of wood and water (Usain Bolt especially) invited me to spend a weekend in Treasure Beach with her with a couple of her friends. Saffrey had been doing a job in Treasure Beach and had come to know it quite well. So I borrowed my Dad's car, and set off from Kingston through the shockigly unsigned wilds of Clarendon and Mandeville.

Saffrey was staying in a cottage on the beach, and after some hesitation on my part, she managed to convince me to take a pirogue out to Pelican Bar with her and her friends. We were to have lunch there, and really, I just HAD to see it.

Treasure Beach is a strange sort of place. There's the gorgeous hotel, Jake's, run by the Henzell Family, and from what I could tell, not a whole lot more. It's at the bottom of a very steep and precipitous hill. In places it drops sharply into the sea over craggy rocks, and in other spots there's sandy beaches that slope gently into that archetypal blue Caribbean Sea.

It was a gorgeous day - the sea so blue, the sky so blue. Saffrey in a good mood, me - kind of waiting to be impressed; Kimmy and her boys in a state of excitement. And soon I understood why. It seemed that it was impossible to go to Pelican Bar without coming upon a school of dolphins. Now, to me, dolphins are like fireworks and steelpan - I never tire of experiencing that giggly grinning and skinning thrill of being in the midst of squeaking, speeding school of dolphins! They stayed with us for several miles, I think. And then there, off in the distance, in the middle of the sea (as far as I could tell) appeared some sort of shack - the kind of thing you would have seen on "The Blue Lagoon", or some Hollywood movie about castaways or shipwrecked sailors.

As we got closer, I realised the structure wasn't quite in the middle of the sea - it was in a sort of shallow area that extended like a sea peninsula out from the mainland behind a reef. But that notwithstanding, it was still magical. Very Robinson Crusoe.

Truth be told, though, the food was kind of junky. Regular Jamaican by-the-sea fare. Brown stews, steamed or eshoveitched fish and lobster with rice. Red stripes and tings and pepsis. I wouldn't bother to go there for the food. It was more expensive than I would want if you factor in the cost of the boat ride (nearly an hour each way). But you know, you just can't beat the novelty of the whole experience - the blue sea, the sky, the dolphins, the Robinson Crusoe shack in the middle of the sea. Make a day of it and pretend you're a castaway living in a rickety driftwood shack lapped by the waters of the Caribbean Sea!