Still jerky after all these years

Aeons ago I blogged affectionately about Jamerica, the Jamaican restaurant around the corner.

I just wanted to report that after a long absence I stopped in recently for some takeout jerk pork, and my affection for the place endures. The reggae still churns there, and the food is still tasty. And owner Martin Deacon remains a Willy Street stalwart. Literally: pleasant days find him enthroned on a lawn chair in front of the restaurant, and cronies often join him there. I'm not sure if he remembers, but we were introduced ages ago, and I always greet him by name when I pass. He generally nods and smiles and says something like, "OK mon OK." Which is charming.

However, I did learn from my recent visit that Martin has drastically scaled back his grocery operation. It's no great loss, I suppose--I never did buy any Carribbean canned goods there. But I took comfort in knowing I could. Most disappointingly, Martin no longer carries soup mix that is, as I reported two years ago, Cock Flavoured.

The grocery shelves have become a kind of storage area for papers and cardboard boxes and the like. These lend a drabness to the restaurant's otherwise colorful clutter. I take it as a bad omen when eateries start using the public areas for storage. In its latter days the Badger Candy Kitchen, the splendid, now-shuttered downtown diner, began using several of its formica booths as filing cabinets. Not a good look.