A really clever thing about the Rum Kitchen is how they’ve made it all feel so sunny. It’s a long, narrow dining room and bar, open to the street at one of the narrow ends. No other windows. Yet somehow it is full of summer and light, and seems to get brighter, in every sense, as you move deeper inside.
It might be the superb murals of Caribbean party scenes on the walls, whose vibrant colours transport you across the Atlantic.
The furniture, too, is roughly painted in deep reds and ochres and left deliberately unfinished, as though it had been carried directly from a beach bar somewhere beneath palm trees.
There’s modern soul on a decent sound system and playbills for reggae gigs on the walls, alongside plenty of pictures of Bob. It works. And doesn’t feel at all constructed. The combined result transports you to a beach bar at sunset on any one of the more than 7,000 islands that make up that grand archipelago between North and South America.
Sunset, the beach – I can almost feel the sand in my sliders. It would be weird not to have a cocktail. We ordered one Rude Boy – overproof aged rum, passion fruit, spices. And one Jamrock Punch – sweet rum, guava and pineapple. Four glasses turned up. Happy hour runs from four till seven, when they offer two cocktails for the price of one. Quite the kick-starter for an evening out. The cocktails were everything you’d hope for from those ingredients in a Caribbean beach bar. Sweet and citrusy with very generous measures. The Rum Kitchen takes every available opportunity to make you feel warm and sunny. Boy.
We washed down our cocktails with a plate of barbecue spare ribs and some chipotle salt cod fritters. The ribs are sticky and unctuous with that deep, smoky barbecue sauce slathered over soft meat that falls away from the bone. The fritters are decent. Salt cod is one of those ingredients that turns up all over the Caribbean, a legacy of centuries of Atlantic trade. On its own it’s never going to shout, and here it’s really just the excuse for a glorious lime pickle and mango chutney. Crispy, deep-fried fish patties dunked in addictive sweet’n’sharp mango chutney are just the right kind of finger-eatin’ dish to go with a couple of lively cocktails.
To be honest, if you’re grabbing some drinks after work or shopping, and aren’t hungry enough for a full dinner, a visit to Rum Kitchen at happy hour to have exactly what we just had will keep you smiling for the rest of the night. But the cocktails were kicking in, the appetisers were tasty and we were enjoying ourselves. So we pushed our other plans aside and stayed for dinner. I guess that’s the best compliment to the food and vibes. We had a bowl of coconut prawns and jerk chicken. They both came with a crunchy pickled purple cabbage slaw. It was simple, fresh and worked perfectly without trying to reinvent itself.
The prawns look like British scampi – breaded prawn tails – but that’s where the coconut is hiding. They’re “breaded” in coconut shavings. It’s a nice technique I can’t remember having before (confession – I was expecting them to come in a coconut sauce, perhaps because they are advertised as coming in a bowl?). It works really well – the sweetness of the coconut doesn’t overwhelm the prawns, it simply softens the crunch and gives each mouthful a gentle tropical note. It’s subtle, but surprisingly effective.
They come with lashings of spicy mayo and deep-fried plantains. Plantain is one of those ingredients that appears on almost every Caribbean table in one form or another. Here they wisely don’t overthink it – just fried until the edges caramelise and dusted with spice. Simple, and great the way they are.
The jerk chicken is crisp and sweet and smoky. Good jerk isn’t just about chilli. It’s that unmistakable perfume of allspice and thyme sitting underneath the smoke that makes it taste like the Caribbean rather than simply spicy barbecue, especially when chased by a mouthful of the pickled slaw.
But the rice – how often do you read about the rice in a restaurant review?! – the rice is excellent. It’s cooked in stock (we’ve all done that) and allspice. That changes everything. Allspice is one of the defining flavours of Caribbean cooking – warm rather than hot, somewhere between cinnamon, clove and nutmeg. Suddenly what could have been perfectly good rice is waving a giant green, yellow and black flag. Super.
I’m starting to really get this place – it isn’t trying to be anything other than what you see: a little haven of sunny Caribbean beach vibe in Camden – and it brings that home. Fresh, strong cocktails, cold beer, tasty salty finger food made from simple, fresh ingredients, plenty of smoke, citrus and warming spice. Caribbean cooking is often mistaken for being all about chilli, but the best dishes are really about balance, with sweetness, sharpness and aromatic spice all pulling together.
It’s not elevated, clever-clever or metro-anything. It’s unpretentious, comforting, filling and transporting, and I’m extremely grateful for that this evening. I suspect if I lived or worked round the corner I’d be in here far more often than is good for me.
Check it out.
Rum Kitchen Camden, 6 Inverness Street, NW1 7HJ
Tuesday – Thursday 4pm – 11pm, Friday & Saturday 12pm – 2am, Sunday 12pm – 10pm
