Restaurant Review: Jambo Café

Bigger love

By: Bill Kohlhaase
Published online: Friday, April 13, 2012
Appeared in: Pasateimpo

It used to be uncomfortable near the door at Jambo Café, where people stood hip to hip waiting their turn for a table, suffering cold drafts every time someone came in or went out. And once, at a table in the middle of the crowded room, the server promised to return with water and never did, his path blocked by those closer to the kitchen. But the food always made the wait and the tight confines worth enduring.

Now Jambo has made room for all of us. The café has expanded into a neighboring space (the former home of Pro Nails). The result? In subsequent visits, we’ve had the good fortune of being seated immediately, even at the busiest times. The service remains warm and attentive — the infrequent lapses seem to originate in the kitchen, where (one imagines) there’s now twice as much to do. The new space, painted in earth tones and hung with photos depicting children and wildlife, mirrors the original space. Two wide, arched openings allow for easy movement and make the place seem more like one big room than two. A new string of icicle lights drape across the ceiling (they formerly only graced the restaurant’s front window).

The menu remains the same, as does its appeal, all fragrant spice and inspired complexity. The hummus is still thick and modestly seasoned, a tiny amount of paprika-sprinkled oil pooled at its center. The fried plantains are sweet, soft, and yielding. The coconut chicken curry is dense and flavorful, likewise the island spice coconut peanut chicken stew, made even more complex when you scoop up the coconut rice that comes with it and stir it in. The Moroccan lamb stew is a marvel, the sweetness from the sweet potatoes occasionally getting an exclamation point when a raisin or two makes it into a spoonful. The Jamaican part of the menu continues to be our favorite. The jerk chicken is spicy, though we crave a little more jerk flavor to go with the heat, and the chicken is grilled just to the still-juicy point.

The goat stew is exotically rich, the meat tender. The soups are excellent. The ingredients of the 2012 Souper Bowl-winning basil-ginger-butternut-squash soup with coconut-milk base meld into a single entrancing flavor, with only the sweetness from strings of crab meat standing apart. The Jamaican hibiscus iced tea carries a pungent jolt of nutmeg.

Only during the busiest times did we notice less- than-perfect cooking. On a hectic Saturday night, the coconut shrimp came a bit too heavily fried. Overfried, too, was the curry pistachio crust encasing a patty of creamy goat cheese in a signature salad. Neither was delivered right away, and the servers, without our prompting (they seem to work tag-team style), noticed our long wait and queried the kitchen. The entrees, on the other hand, came right up, my partner’s marinated mahi mahi grilled perfectly, its sauce so heady with tamarind that we thought of Worcestershire. A large bowl of lentil stew was mildly spiced, the lentils neither undercooked nor mushy. The accompanying roti flatbread was doughy — beside the point when it was dipped into the stew. (The restaurant also offers, as a side, the traditional ugali to be rolled between your fingers and dipped, but it was too bland for me.) The mango cobbler sported big chunks of fruit under a pale crust that, even to our sweet-sensitive palate, seemed short of sugar.

The place to draw the most attention is at the back counter, facing the Jamaican flag that sports Bob Marley’s visage, right in front of the jugs of tea and juices. I sat there late one afternoon, devouring a jerk tofu sandwich with a chunky tomato sauce, taking my time with the cumin-dusted fries, and enjoying the attention of every server who passed. On our Saturday- night visit, a family with two young boys moved in on the stools and had their dinner right there. I felt a twinge of jealousy as the kids dipped into sweet-potato fries (I hadn’t ordered them) and more than one of the servers filled and refilled their glasses of mango-ginger lemonade. When the food’s this good, I’ll consider taking it from the mouths of children.