A 'HOT' downtown restaurant

PT had lunch with friends last week at Cousin's, the Jamaican restaurant in the Park-Madison complex.

Though she got relatively busy during the lunch hour, our host, Betty Garvey, who with her husband Ray owns the restaurant, took time to answer our questions and explain items on the menu.

You can get curries (chicken, goat or shrimp), oxtail and beans, King Fish or snapper, or even a Delmonico steak.

But the house specialty is jerk cooking -- seasoning or marinating or both with sauces based on the Scotch Bonnet pepper. (Readers with an engineering inclination may want to check out the Scoville chart -- which rates peppers from zero SU's [Bell peppers] to 1M+ SU's [Naga Jolokia, an Indian pepper]; the Scotch Bonnet, cousin to the habañera, is respectably close to the top.)

After drooling over the extensive offerings, all three of us settled on the jerk shrimp, as luck would have it.

The platters came with a generous number of large, plump and juicy -- but hot! -- shrimps over a bed of white rice and peas accompanied by fried plantains. Delicious.

We were so full, the three of us didn't even think of dessert. That will have to wait for another visit, as will the oxtails, on which I had my eye.

P.S. You can tell my mother I even ate almost all of my string beans. Now that's a recommendation!

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COUSIN'S
211 West Front Street
Plainfield NJ 07060
Phone: 908.822.1212
Fax: 908.822.0020

Website: "Cousin's"

Open to 10 PM Monday through Thursday, 11 PM Friday and Saturday.
Live music Saturday evenings. Brunch on Saturday and Sunday.
Parking on the street or in the County parking lot at the rear.

-- Dan Damon

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