While Memphis Black Restaurant Week organizers are encouraging diners to order takeout, it was clear on Tuesday night that folks want the dine-in experience at Curry N Jerk.

Cynthia Daniels talks Memphis Black Restaurant Week

We want our rum punch with our jerk chicken, and why not? Just remember you can get it to go, too, if takeout is what you want.

The Caribbean restaurant opened in summer 2018 and was closed by an electrical fire that October, as was next-door neighbor McEwen’s. The fire was in the alley, but both restaurants sustained some damage. While McEwen’s was able to reopen within two weeks, it took the more heavily-damaged Curry N Jerk nine months to get ready to go.

And six months after that, the first pandemic in 100 years comes along. This restaurant has shown pluck, as it’s still standing and is even thriving.

“We shut down for a while,” owner Arturo Azcarate said. “I had to figure out what to do, how to go forward. I stopped serving lunch, I limited my menu and we started doing takeout.”

In years past, participating restaurants in Memphis Black Restaurant Week have offered a special menu, but this year folks are kind of doing their own thing. Curry N Jerk is sticking with the program and has an abbreviated menu of about half a dozen entrees, with a choice of an appetizer and dessert included.

We selected oxtails ($30) and the curry and jerk combo ($25), though the latter changes on Wednesday and Thursday to cooked down chicken, also called brown stew chicken. (And don’t worry, Azcarate said: If you really want the curry and jerk combo, he’ll make it for you.)

What you really want is the oxtails, though I’m a little hesitant to recommend them since I found out he’s selling so many that he’s not sure he’s even making money on them. First, the price has soared to almost $9 per pound. Second, he has to drive all over town to get enough, and third, it’s possible he might have to drive to Little Rock tonight to get enough to make it through the week.

I’m just letting you know that he’s gone through considerable trouble to get the oxtails to your table; appreciate them. This would be where, years ago, I’d briefly mention the lesser cuts of meat often being the tastiest, but can we really say that about oxtails now? At $8.75 per pound, they’re a little lofty for that kind of talk.

Oxtails are the cross-cut tail of cattle — cows, bulls or veal —and while they’re not very meaty, the meat is collagen-rich and it cooks down deep, rich and beefy, with a luxurious, silky texture.

Azcarate seasons his with a house-made browning sauce for additional richness and color, and they’re spicy with a bit of jerk flavor, though much softer and milder than, say, jerk chicken. 

They’re served generously, with carrots and potatoes in a casserole dish and sides of cooked cabbage and rice and peas (which are really red beans).

I can’t tell you anything about the cooked-down chicken (as it’s called in Panama; brown stew chicken is the Jamaican name), as it wasn’t on the menu when we ate there Tuesday. But Azcarate said the sauce is like the oxtails, only made with chicken. It’s thick and rich and starts with his browning sauce, but obviously tastes like chicken instead of beef. Expect it to be rich, spicy and thick.

For appetizers, you can have plantains, but we went with a salad and Jamaican coco bread, which is great for sopping up the oxtail sauce. Dessert was rum cake or bread pudding; both were warm, spicy and sweet.

The rum punch was a fun little drink — pineapple, orange juice, light rum, dark rum and grenadine — but be sure you like ’em sweet. I asked about a Bob Marley and was told that the place was too busy to make frozen drinks, and that made sense to me. I only expect a frozen drink about 50% of the time anyway, because machines are always down. It happens all summer long.

Yet they make them in a blender at Curry N Jerk and I heard the distinctive whiz not once, not twice, but three times over dinner. “Maybe it’s a power drill,” my dinner date suggested, but of course we both knew what it was.

I didn’t want another drink so I let it go, but later asked Azcarate about it. Here’s the deal: If you want your Bob Marley, you can probably have it as long as you promise to be patient. It’s three layers, so the drink takes a while to make.

“I’ll make it, unless I’m in the kitchen, if someone really, really wants it,” he said.

Think about how much trouble he’s already gone through for the oxtails when you’re deciding just how bad you need the Bob Marley.

Curry N Jerk, 126 Monroe; 901-480-8380. Hours are Monday through Thursday 5-9:30 p.m. and 5-11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Memphis Black Restaurant Week runs through March 13.