The shop on Hector Street
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 23/Mar/2011 23:43, 34 days ago
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Hi everyone, here's a short note on the store that I usually buy my lunch across the street where I work. Real Jamaican patties. It's usually quite busy, but this photo was taken in mid-afternoon.Madge (Maarj) is the owner.It's a great place and has beef, chicken or cheese patties provided nobody else has got there first, or how hungry everyone else is. If there aren't any beef patties it's my own workaholic fault because I did not speed over there reasonably close to noon.On Fridays only there are huge soup pots out the back of the store that contain either black pea, chicken or fish soup. They are all hearty stick-to-the ribs meals and better for your teeth than drinking soft drinks. However, you can buy $5 JA (about a Canadian nickel) candies too if you think your teeth are in too good shape and like to live dangerously.You know the food is genuine because you occasionally get actual chicken feet (not legs, feet) in your soup and the occasional fish scale, but never fish bones. I don't think I've ever seen mannish soup there and you don't want to know its ingredients. Chicken feet are a delicacy so you have to ask for them just in case your soup doesn't have a foot or two. I hate to think what will happen when Jamaica goes metric and eliminates inches and feet. We would then be stuck with centimeters and meters. It would not be the same.Things you can buy at the store.You know, I'm starting to get the hang of this blog thing, I think, but there are no guarantees of daily blogging.The beauty of this store is that it's so typically Jamaican and you may even have seen one much like it in the James Bond movie "Dr. No". That movie included much footage of The Palisadoes on the way to and from the Norman Manley International airport, and also of Kingston downtown. My memory is not the greatest so I don't recall if 007 had a beef pattie with martini, shaken not stirred, or if instead he had a chicken pattie with martini stirred but not shaken. I guess I'll never know.
