I don't know enough about Jamaican food to judge authenticity, but I do know that the chicken curry at The African Cuisine, 1248 Hyde Park Ave., is addictive. It's probably a good thing I have a saner wife and kid, because otherwise, just writing this might make me rush over there now and I'd only be disappointed since it's Sunday morning and they're not open yet.
The restaurant, which used to just specialize in Nigerian and other West African dishes, recently added a bunch of Jamaican curries and some other dishes (oxtail, jerk chicken wings and meat patties) to its menu.
The other day, I finally went over and tried the chicken curry, hoping it could match the curry I used to order - a lot - at the old Ali's Roti Wrap in Roslindale. In a word: Yum. I ordered it mild, but it still had enough spices to let you know they were there. Plenty of both chicken and sauce.
Normally, the rice in curry dishes exists only as a base with which to sop up more of the sauce, but the rice and beans had a delicate, couldn't-place flavor that was good enough to take several bites all by itself without first slopping on some curry sauce. Even the steamed cabbage and carrots was edible (I admit it: Normally, I hate cabbage).
The only minor drawback was that some of the chicken pieces still had bones in. I'm not used to needing a knife to eat curry.
But I'll be back.
The African Cuisine is open noon to 10 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday, until 11 on Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday. 617-364-9999. No Web site.
