Joyce's West Indian Grocery

Joyce's, a tiny ass West Indian grocery at Bathurst and London St. (across from Bathurst subway stn.) recently underwent a reno and started serving up cooked meals.

Last week I checked out some peppersteak on rice. Nice spicy sauce and a big helping. Thought they have a big menu posted, it's more of a rotation - not everything is a go everyday. Today I picked up a goat curry on rice and peas and a "goat soup". $9 for both.



The goat soup was more like a stew, not something I'm usually big on, but this was pretty spicy and tasty, with noodles, some potato, dumplings and a decent amount of meat.



It came with a token salad and a couple pieces of plantain (bonus!).

It's nice to a have good west indian take out so close by, it's at least as good as Albert's, the servings are bigger but it's not open as late.

At the moment there is a counter but no seating inside, and the service is still in an awkward stage - typical for a new place.

New Years Dinner

I wasn't into going out for New Year's so I got patties and doubles from Albert's Real Jamaican (St. Clair & Vaughan). $6.76 incl. Ginger Beer and tax.

Albert's Real Jamaican

I've been hitting up Albert's Real Jamaican (at St.Clair and Vaughan) a lot lately. Even though it's uphill to St.Clair, it's still only 5 mins. away. Albert's is pretty small, so but it has a constant stream of take out customers and is open late.



$6.50 gets you a small goat on rice (w. peas), includes 'slaw, the ginger beer was an extra $1.25. The rotis, doubles and patties are also damn good.

Roti Shops

Check out this listing of roti shops...in case you need some goat in Calgary:
www.RotiShops.com

Ghandi Roti

Last Sunday I was strolling around Queen W before noon when I saw Ghandi, which NOW claims has the best roti in town. Unfortunately, they weren't open yet so I had to carry around a roti craving for the rest of the week. Finally, today I managed to go there again, this time during their working hours. I ordered a lamb roti (no goat), medium spicy, for $8 including tax. In addition to lamb, they also have vegetarian (potato, spinach, cauliflower, chickpeas, etc..., as well as some with paneer), shrimp, and 5 types of chicken roti: chicken, chicken jalfrizi, chicken tikka masala, butter chicken, and chicken korma. But I had to have the lamb in order to compare with the roti at Roti Palace (lamb and goat are the same word in chinese).

The roti itself was HUGE - they serve it in metallic takeout containers which are about the size that you get for takeout lasagna at pizza places, and the roti filled the container. Definitely enough for lunch, and maybe too much if you're not starving. There's clearly a difference between the Indian roti here and at Roti Palace, which is Caribbean-style. The roti bread is not like the chewy, moist bread at RP - it's more like a really thin naan in texture and taste. The lamb curry had definite Indian spice to it with cardamom and cinnamon notes, and it was kind of acidic from what tasted like some tomato (I could be completely wrong here - it's just a best guess). There were some large hunks of lamb fat along with the meat and potatoes, but no bones. The medium hot version was probably spicy enough for me. I could probably take the hot but I don't think I'd enjoy it.

So would I go again? Definitely, if I'm in the area. I'd like to try one of the vegetarian rotis, particularly one with cheese (paneer), and it's a nice, non-pretentious place on the Queen W strip. But it took something like 10 minutes for them to cook up my roti, which was made more painful than it should have been because they had a dude drilling holes into their display case the whole time. And I think I like the style of the roti at RP better, but Ghandi is pretty good for a change of pace.

Roti Palace

I've been on a west Indian/regular-Indian kick lately and we hit up roti palace at Bathurst just south of Bloor.



The goat roti is a decent size for $6 and is tasty as hell, and boneless, which is a bonus, because goat curry and goat roti usually has bones in it.