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Growing up in south London, I was never too far from a Jamaican patty. From corner shops to shabby jerk shacks, there was no shortage of places to pick up a filled parcel of dayglo yellow pastry. Even the local fish and chip shops sold them. Sadly, a lot of the pasties round my way were not up to proper Caribbean standards – often limp, sweaty and mass-produced.
You won’t find a south London letdown at Covent Garden’s new patty stop. Instead, these patties are golden-hued, fresh from the oven and filled with anything from jerk chicken to prawns or curried goat.
Our finely ground minced beef version was rich with warming spices, while the curried goat was flecked with a decent dose of fiery scotch bonnet pepper. Each was encased in a suet-rich pastry, all flaky and crisp around the edges. These patties will put meat on your bones.
Less successful was the ackee and saltfish patty with a filling too delicate to stand up to the taste or texture of its rich pastry wrapper. And a special of oxtail soup was cloying, with too much sweet coconut.
Jamaica Patty is not the place to come for a leisurely lunch – the lighting is brash, the tables few and everything’s served in disposable packaging. But if your lunch hour feels like it’s passing as quickly as a Usain Bolt time trial, then JPC makes a good refuelling spot.