Donna Block Lifestyle
It was Sunday night and like most parents who don’t want to cook, I was keen to take myself and the kids somewhere, anywhere but my kitchen.
So when my daughter suggested we try a new “cool” place in Melville I was only too delighted to grant her request. We rocked up to Cool Runnings, the new Jamaican hot spot on Melville’s 4th Avenue, off Main Road, to lots of Jamaican music and Rasta types floating in and out of the bar-cum-restaurant.
Upon entering I was duly impressed by the lovely murals and the decor inside and out was undoubtedly tropical. Because there was a chill in the air we decided to forgo the outside terrace area, which had very Jamaican “chicki” huts around the bar, for the warmth inside.
Unfortunately, the jivey atmosphere and pleasant decor didn’t make up for the dismal service and the equally dismal food.
The menu is fairly extensive and offers Jamaican fare – a variety of snack baskets, curries and meat “jerk” dishes, salads, stir fries and sandwiches. We decided to sample a few different things and settled on the Moorish Munchie Basket (R28) to start. It contained two drumsticks, two fishcakes, two meatballs, two samoosas, two beef satays, two veg balls, chips and a choice of creole or jerk sauce.
The drumsticks were dripping with grease, the fishcakes were hard as rocks, the meatballs burned, the samoosas were drowning in oil and the beef satay, well, I wasn’t quite sure if it was really beef at all.
By the time we had knocked off the starter a main course was not on the cards. The kids had the Calamari Snack Attack (R26) and Da Chicken That Strips (R18,50), which they complained were too greasy and “way too salty”.
Cool Runnings has a great party atmosphere and will be a great place to hang out, have a few drinks and a jol, especially in summer.
But the the food – the menu boasts “Jamaican style cuisine (when da chef can be found)” and “da server with da smile will be your host, mon. Da bossman will be around later to check if da chef did his job ok.”
I guess da chef could not be found, and da server with the smilemust have taken the day off because our server didn’t know we existed and certainly had no clue to the meaning of hospitality.
And da bossman, we never saw him, mon.