So many readers have asked us: Hey, where can we get good curried goat in St. Peters?
Of course, all kinds of places across St. Petes feature merely adequate versions. If you want good curried goat, Jamaican-style, then you’ll want to go the Main Street Diner (315 Main) in St. Peters, just off I-70.
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Visit the place any other day of the week, and you won’t find anything on the menu that would make you think this is a Montego Bay–worthy outpost for Jamaican fare. From 6 a.m.–noon six days a week, the diner’s serving, well, diner fare: eggs, pancakes, bacon, country fried steak…
Show up on Friday night, though, at 5:30 p.m., and the regular menu disappears, replaced by a laminated single page. Suddenly, the Main Street Diner becomes Little Kingston for a few hours. Local expatriate Jamaicans and other connoisseurs of the country’s fare start showing up, along with a lot of people who appear to have never been much closer to Jamaica than listening to a Bob Marley song.
When we ask about the most popular dish on Jamaica Night, owner Bernice Robinson replies, “Oxtail soup.” Robinson and her daughter, who also ran The Palm Tree Jamaican restaurant that was swallowed up by the new Costco on Olive and who plans to reopen a similar place soon on Delmar, bought the diner recently. We admitted that we thought it was a weird place for a Jamaican restaurant, even for a single night a week, and she agreed, though she noted the number of Jamaicans in St. Charles and nearby was bigger than one might think.
But back to that oxtail soup. With butter beans, Scotch bonnet peppers, and allspice, it’s a meaty, gelatinous glory. Yet the call of the goat is a strong one. Not that goat itself is strong, we hasten to add. If you’ve never tried it, think of pot roast. The taste, the texture, is very similar. Nothing “goaty” about it. It’s just tender, luscious, and redolent with that spectacular curry that’s not quite a sauce, just a little less thick than a gravy.
You can make an educated analysis of a Jamaican curry just by looking at it. In distinction to Indian curries, Jamaican versions have more turmeric and allspice. That gives them their deep, mustardy-yellow color, along with a more viscous luster. What came to our table was like an oil painting on the plate, almost glowing.
Alongside the curried goat is a haystack of steamed cabbage and a mound of rice and “peas” (red kidney beans), two Jamaican standards. The cabbage has just a slight vinegar spark; the rice and beans have a vague woody flavor that’s addictive.
Shrimp and chicken curry (pictured at right) are also on the menu. If you stray from the goat, though, wander in the direction of the jerked chicken. It’s tough to find a dish more closely associated with a region than this: Grilled over an open fire, the poultry marinated in a kaleidoscope of the flavors of allspice, nutmeg, thyme, and garlic, all blended, all permeating the meat.
There is “grilling,” and there is jerked chicken grilling. The Cajun “blackened” recipes for fish are perhaps the closest in terms of the intensity and symphony of tastes; the diner’s take on it is exquisite. You’ll be served a small ramekin of Scotch bonnet sauce, the carmine hue of a Caribbean sunset. While it does add even more fun to the soirée on your plate, try at least a bite of the jerked chicken. With its skin a crackly, salty, stunningly marinated shell, its smoky essence is in every bite.
A platter with long slices of fried gold plantains appears. Half are dessert sweet; the others are made from less ripe plantains. It’s like eating a particularly salty, big, starchy French fry.
If you want an actual dessert, then there’s cheesecake, rum cake, and mango mousse.
We asked about the possibility of other Jamaican dishes that we didn’t see on the menu. Could we get the Jamaican classic ackee and saltfish, pepper pot soup, brown stew chicken?
“You give me a call a few days ahead of time, and tell me what you want,” Robinson says. “It’ll be here waiting for you.”
