Grade: A
We live in a world where artificial flavors and chemically enhanced foods dominate menus and fill up our cabinets, but every now and then you come across a restaurant that serves honest food.
The unfortunate truth of the matter is that most restaurants focus on flavors that are characterized by instant gratification. Heavy use of MSG in Chinese food is perhaps the most well known example, but the strong use of butter, salt and sugar are more broadly applied techniques that serve the same purpose. They may make dishes seem more flavorful, but they make sacrifices in terms of both the integrity of the dish as well as your health.
The Breadfruit doesn’t make that type of sacrifice. The food is, perhaps, what one might expect from a Jamaican restaurant: straightforward, laid back and as honest as it gets.
For each item on the menu, they stop just short of listing every ingredient used to make it. Their ingredients are high quality and their dishes are, for the most part, simple. Oven-roasted plantains. Jerk chicken. Rice and peas.
If you’re feeling adventurous, grab a glass of spiced carrot juice — if not, Pink Ting, a carbonated grapefruit drink, is a refreshing alternative to your everyday soft drinks.
It is a rare treat to find this type of restaurant in an urban center and The Breadfruit should not be undervalued. And its location, less than a five-minute walk away from the Downtown campus, doesn’t hurt either.
Contact the reporter at dneligh@gmail.com
