Elaine’s Kitchen: It Puts Happy in Your Body, and It Even Asks First

Other people in line in front of me count: 8
Days I’ve been thinking about this chicken since I ate it: 3 (whole)

As I yelled, “Elaine just popped my jerk-chicken cherry and my goat-curry cherry and I really liked it!” in the parking lot of Elaine’s Kitchen, I realized how awesome that would be on a T-shirt. I didn’t just yell it out of nowhere — that would’ve been weird. I yelled because a lady in the parking lot asked me how my meal had been and I couldn’t not smile-yell in her face about how much happy was in my body.

She said, “Oh, I’ve only ever tried the shrimp.”

I said, “GET THE CHICKEN AHMAHGAWD.”

Until this point in my life, I’ve never been super excited about unfried chicken. Fried chicken = excitement. Roasted chicken = much like. Chicken as Indian food flavor vehicle = yes, please. But I don’t see chicken on a menu in a fancy restaurant and go, “Oooooooh. They have chicken here?!?”

So I was skeptical when everyone in the world all my life told me, “Jerk chicken is the best chicken ever!”

Enter: (stage left, my life) Jerk Chicken, bein’ all juicy and delicious and spicy but not too spicy. Meanwhile, in a poster on a nearby wall, Bob Marley and a lion agree that eating at Elaine’s Kitchen is “unusual but awesome, like a Spanx pee hole.”

One bite of jerk chicken and I want to make sweet, sweet jerk-chicken love to Elaine. If you’re not sitting in Elaine’s Kitchen right now, waiting on your combo plate of jerk chicken and goat curry with rice and slaw, I’m not sure why you’re alive.

I really enjoyed Elaine’s, from city-trashcan-in-the-parking-lot-by-the-front-door to the little baby who yelled, “EATEATEAT!” at me the whole time I was eating. Tell me this isn’t the best jerk chicken available. Please tell me that, because if this deliciousness is the worst version of jerk chicken, then jerk chicken is fucking amazedongs.

A medium combo plate at Elaine’s would cost you $11.50, but instead, you should take your friend with you, order the medium portion of the jerk chicken ($9.50) and the goat curry ($9.50 and also totally worth the eat) and share. Lunch: pwned.