Shirley’s Jamaican Food Cart

A while back, I was Googling something, looking for interesting, good carts in the Financial District.  I stumbled upon something that hinted at a Jamaican food cart nearby, but wound up reading about Veronica’s Kitchen on Midtown Lunch’s Downtown Lunch the next day and went there instead.  Twice. 

Well, after that, I realized I quite like Jamaican food… and when I was buying Golden Rainier cherries recently, I noticed the cart that I’d read about (which wasn’t Veronica’s Kitchen) was right next to the fruit cart.  I believe it’s called Shirley’s or something, and it’s quite a lot bigger than Veronica’s.

Or at least I thought it was, though now looking at the photos, they appear to be similar in size.  Regardless, there was a huge line… (see first pic) but I figured the line at Veronica’s moves quickly, maybe this one will, too. 

Nope.  It took me 15 minutes of waiting to even approach the window.  Despite the cart’s large size, there’s only one person (I presume Shirley?) working inside, filling orders, taking money, which makes everything take twice as long.  (Maybe it’s unfair to compare to Veronica’s… but this is inefficient.  Veronica’s has at least 3 people working whenever I’ve been – the first woman, who takes your order, tells you what they still have, and I believe she fills your order partway before handing it off to someone else to finish, then a third guy, outside the cart, taking the money.  The people handling the food never come in contact with the money.  I like this.  Oh, and their sauces – dressings, hot sauce, etc. are on the ledge outside the cart, so after you pay, you can jazz it up anyway you like yourself, and the two people in the cart are free to keep people moving along.) 

The menus are similar, though Shirley’s has more specials, including cow foot soup.  I went on a Tuesday, and really wanted to try the stew beef (which I’ve attempted to get at Veronica’s but have been unsuccessful at doing), but once again was denied as they’d run out by the time I got to the window at 1:20.  (Actually, they only had curry chicken and stew chicken left at that point; the guy in front of me was about to order the ‘last order’ of stew chicken when he changed his mind and decided to get the curry chicken because he hadn’t tried it yet.  I really wanted to ask him about the food since it seemed like he’d been here many times – he was actually asking her also about her recipe for hot sauce and how often she makes it, if she would sell him bottles of it (she said she used to sell it but that got too troublesome?), and just seemed like he was very familiar with the menu, but he was with a friend and I didn’t want to look like I was hitting on him.  I’ve gotten strange looks before for asking people what they’re eating, sigh.)  So I lucked out and decided it was fate to get the stew chicken.

If my complaint about curry chicken was that it was too bland at Veronica’s, the same would go for this.  Actually, it was very mild, while the chicken was falling-apart-tender.  I preferred the larger portion of veggies from Veronica’s, but the food seems about comparable in terms of both price… and I can’t say for taste, I will need to go back to Shirley’s and try out more dishes.  At $5, though, this was a real bargain, I couldn’t even finish the entire thing without feeling like I was going to explode.  This also had a lot more tiny bones in it than I expected from chicken, but whatever.  Maybe I’ll (wo)man up and get a little hot sauce next time to kick it up a bit.

Yvo says: I’d definitely like to go back and try more stuff; this stew chicken is a bit too bland so maybe that guy knew what he was doing when he asked for hot sauce.  Great value and the curry chicken looked thick and delicious …. I must go back.  Soon.  The line wouldn’t be that long with so many people willing to wait if they didn’t know for sure the food was good.
recommended

Shirley’s
Whitehall Street, between Bridge & Pearl Streets.
(646) 436-9974
(call ahead for pick up)