So, Sunday morning we woke up starving. We went out Saturday night and we kinda drank a lot. Usually we roll up to a fast food joint after and order a mess of food - but we just walked home and went to bed instead.
Needless to say we woke up wanting breakfast. The FP's instinct was the Old Mill Cafe. If it weren't for the blog, I probably would have gone there. But there was a place lurking in my mind that I knew had breakfast...........
Island Spice. I'm not sure what is up with all this sudden renewed interest in Caribbean, not like it hasn't been there since we moved to San Diego. Well, part of it is that we are about to move to that neighborhood. But, I guess we just go in phases. Kinda like how friends can be with us - we're like oxtails and tres leches. At first we are fun to hang out with, but after a while, they need a break - it's the same rich meaty and over the top sweety combo. (Don't ask about the rhymes. I'm not sure what that's about.) You just can't eat oxtail and tres leches every single day...
Anyhoo, for a while our default restaurant seemed to be El Salvadoreno, now it's Island Spice. So I'm not even going to apologize at this point, but I don't have pictures. We were going for breakfast hungover, so my mind wasn't functioning properly.
There is this mackerel rundown dish that I was hoping to get, but they didn't have it. It was 10 am and they weren't done cooking some stuff. So the only breakfast dish they had was ackee and cod. That was fine. I had heard of ackee and seen cans of it, but I've never had it. So I ordered that. And you get your choice of rice or dumplings, so I got dumplings because I'd never had them.
The Food Pimp got.......oxtail.
And we got a beef pattie. So the pattie came first. It was also orange like the one at Caribbean Taste. But not as orange. It had a nice flavor, but the pastry wasn't quite as crispy and the meat was wetter. The beef was good, but not quite as flavorful as Caribbean Taste. Don't get me wrong, I could still make a meal of a few of these.
The oxtail. It was good, but not as ridiculously good as the last time we went to Island Spice. It was similar, just a couple notches down.
The ackee and cod. If I ever missed an opportunity for a shot of food - this was the one. I didn't even have my phone on me because it was Sunday morning. So ackee is a fruit related to lychee and longan.
When my plate came, it looked like scrambled eggs. But it was not. It was ackee and salt cod. The ackee was kind of chopped up like scrambled eggs, and it has the same color. And the texture is even kind of soft like good scrambled eggs. But the taste. I can't describe it. I know. As a food blogger, my job is to explain to you that which I have experienced so that you have an idea what it is like. I don't know. It's not tasteless. It's...ackee. It's not quite fruity in the American sense of the word. We would think of it more as a vegetable maybe. I'm stumped. But I liked it. I ate an ackee and I liked it. The taste of the salt codfish....
So yeah, ackee. The plate also came with a little veggies - not as good as last time but still good. There was also sweet fried plantains, boiled green plantains and the dumplings. The sweet plantains were good. The boiled ones were big whole boiled ones with really no flavor. They were kind of good though to mix with the ackee and salt cod. The dumplings were pretty much what I expected, but I had to try them anyway. They were just big gigantic lumps of hard steamed dough. It was hard to cut with the knife. I don't know if that's really how hard they are supposed to be. But they were instriguingly hard. I shaved off a few slices to eat with the salt cod and ackee mix, but, they just didn't do anything for me. Big hard gluten discs. Fascinating. That shit would definitely fill you up for the rest of the day if you ate it all. But then once digested...I don't know.
So that was Island breakfast. I went home and napped after that meal.
Needless to say we woke up wanting breakfast. The FP's instinct was the Old Mill Cafe. If it weren't for the blog, I probably would have gone there. But there was a place lurking in my mind that I knew had breakfast...........
Island Spice. I'm not sure what is up with all this sudden renewed interest in Caribbean, not like it hasn't been there since we moved to San Diego. Well, part of it is that we are about to move to that neighborhood. But, I guess we just go in phases. Kinda like how friends can be with us - we're like oxtails and tres leches. At first we are fun to hang out with, but after a while, they need a break - it's the same rich meaty and over the top sweety combo. (Don't ask about the rhymes. I'm not sure what that's about.) You just can't eat oxtail and tres leches every single day...
Anyhoo, for a while our default restaurant seemed to be El Salvadoreno, now it's Island Spice. So I'm not even going to apologize at this point, but I don't have pictures. We were going for breakfast hungover, so my mind wasn't functioning properly.
There is this mackerel rundown dish that I was hoping to get, but they didn't have it. It was 10 am and they weren't done cooking some stuff. So the only breakfast dish they had was ackee and cod. That was fine. I had heard of ackee and seen cans of it, but I've never had it. So I ordered that. And you get your choice of rice or dumplings, so I got dumplings because I'd never had them.
The Food Pimp got.......oxtail.
And we got a beef pattie. So the pattie came first. It was also orange like the one at Caribbean Taste. But not as orange. It had a nice flavor, but the pastry wasn't quite as crispy and the meat was wetter. The beef was good, but not quite as flavorful as Caribbean Taste. Don't get me wrong, I could still make a meal of a few of these.
The oxtail. It was good, but not as ridiculously good as the last time we went to Island Spice. It was similar, just a couple notches down.
The ackee and cod. If I ever missed an opportunity for a shot of food - this was the one. I didn't even have my phone on me because it was Sunday morning. So ackee is a fruit related to lychee and longan.
When my plate came, it looked like scrambled eggs. But it was not. It was ackee and salt cod. The ackee was kind of chopped up like scrambled eggs, and it has the same color. And the texture is even kind of soft like good scrambled eggs. But the taste. I can't describe it. I know. As a food blogger, my job is to explain to you that which I have experienced so that you have an idea what it is like. I don't know. It's not tasteless. It's...ackee. It's not quite fruity in the American sense of the word. We would think of it more as a vegetable maybe. I'm stumped. But I liked it. I ate an ackee and I liked it. The taste of the salt codfish....
So yeah, ackee. The plate also came with a little veggies - not as good as last time but still good. There was also sweet fried plantains, boiled green plantains and the dumplings. The sweet plantains were good. The boiled ones were big whole boiled ones with really no flavor. They were kind of good though to mix with the ackee and salt cod. The dumplings were pretty much what I expected, but I had to try them anyway. They were just big gigantic lumps of hard steamed dough. It was hard to cut with the knife. I don't know if that's really how hard they are supposed to be. But they were instriguingly hard. I shaved off a few slices to eat with the salt cod and ackee mix, but, they just didn't do anything for me. Big hard gluten discs. Fascinating. That shit would definitely fill you up for the rest of the day if you ate it all. But then once digested...I don't know.
So that was Island breakfast. I went home and napped after that meal.
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