Kalulu Caraibes

Kalulu is a restaurant I've had my eye on for some time. It is one of the restaurants featured in our "Plateau Restaurant Guide" and it has a nice selection of Caribbean dishes that look really spicy, which is right up my alley. We were actually planning on going to this Brazilian restaurant I thought I knew the location of, but ended up going on a 45 minute walk through the city (this is now what I refer to as an "appetizer" since I hardly ever know exactly where I'm going) and ended up going here instead.

The stairs were incredibly icy and I was worried about the descent after dinner. Thankfully, they had salted them while we were dining. I liked the atmosphere of the place, it was quite cozy and had a nice, Caribbean sort of charm to it. I ordered the tasso, which is fried goat, and Shannon ordered the calypso, which is a mango and papaya glazed chicken breast. We also ordered some sweet potato fries.

I was really disappointed by the fries because they were soggy and greasy. They came with a really nice cayenne mayonnaise though. My fried goat was somewhat of a similar experience. Of course, it wasn't soggy, but it was greasy and I had expected a lot more flavor to be infused into the meat. Instead, it was more like a deep-fried lamb shank. The plantain chips were okay, but the rice and beans were extremely bland and there was really nothing to flavor them with. They came on a nice banana leaf, so at least they looked nice. The condiments that accompanied it came with a warning from our waitress, but I hardly found them spicy at all. The chipotle mashed potatoes that came with Shannon's chicken were far spicier.

The cumulative effect of all that spice eventually got to me though, as well as all the fried food. After dinner I had quite the stomach ache. I'm sure it wouldn't have helped, but it would have been nice if it were summer so I could have got some yummy gelato to cool off my palette.