I love goat. I know you're all very surprised that I like eating an unusual animal. That's so unlike me. It's so good. The goat curry at Jamdunn is ridiculously tender and juicy, with incredibly flavored bits of fat sticking to the chunks of goat, which have been liberally cut up into bits, including the bones, so be careful.
It's a gamey meat, and it matches very well with the brown curry sauce. The sauce itself is kind of mild - it doesn't really have a lot of spice to it - but it's got that curry flavor.
The best part of the sauce, though, is that there's a lot of gelatin going on. The connective tissue of the goat contains collagen, which turns into gelatin in the heat, and gives you an incredible mouth feel. I've only had it once and I already crave it beyond what's usually reasonable with something like that.
I love goat, really. It's my new favorite meat. I'm heading down to the halal meat market east of Homewood and seeing what I can scare up in terms of recently killed animals.
This restaurant used to be a Chinese restaurant, and will never seat you. They are a takeout only place, and it was a fluke that when I went in the inside door was open. Usually you have to pay, order, and be served through the little plastic opening.
Even though it was the middle of a hot day when I went in there, I was told to go around to the little window instead of just talking over the bar inside. It's a little weird, and the wait for the food is very long.
After that you have to find someplace to sit down and eat it. But even for all of that, it's really good. I love goat.
In the interests of journalism, I stuff myself weekly. In addition to the goat, I had three side dishes: string beans, plantains, and rice and beans. The string beans were cut in small bits and perfectly steamed. They were fresh and bright green -good stuff.
The rice and beans were good and the flavor worked well with the last bits of goat curry sauce that were left after I ate the goat and sucked the sinew from the bones.
The plantains are the most inherently Jamaican side dish of the three. At the Caribbean Kitchen on Calvert the fried plantains are hot and sweet, with just a hint of banana. At Jamdunn they're lukewarm, kind of floppy instead of tender and less flavorful.
A plantain is a big, starchy, less sugary banana. If you try to eat it raw, you'll think that the fruit you just peeled turned into a potato on its way to your mouth. I've always thought that sweet potato was a better descriptor for plantains than for actual sweet potatoes. When people ask me what a plantain is, I tell them that it's a sweetened potato that accidentally got turned into a banana.
Plantains are awesome, and Americans don't eat enough of them. Sadly, Caribbean Kitchen makes better ones than Jamdunn does.
This restaurant is very blue collar. The dessert selection consists of sweet potato pudding and bread pudding, at two dollars each. Oreos, Cheez-its, Ritz crackers, Chips Ahoy and Cheese Nips appear on the menu as snacks. There is a beer section on the menu that has three low-cost lagers on it: Hurricane, King Cobra and Bud Ice.
Don't let low class dissuade you, the curry is amazing. I'm going back for the jerk chicken (dark meat please), the brown fish stew and the curry shrimp. And the oxtail.
You can't get stuff this real anywhere else in Baltimore. When is the last time you saw oxtail on a menu? For adventurous eaters, go for the goat, stay for the cocoa bread.
Jamdunn Take Out
406 Park Avenue
Location: Mt. Vernon
Caribbean Kitchen, Inc.
353 N. Calvert Street
(410) 837-2274
Location: Mt. Vernon
