RASTA PASTA 61 Kensington, at St. Andrew, 647-501-4505, @rastapastaTO Rating: NNN
There’s often a queue outside Kensington’s Rasta Pasta (61 Kensington, at St. Andrew, 647-501-4505, @rastapastaTO rating: NNN), the home of what owner/chefs Magnus Patterson and Mary Neglia say is the best jerk chicken in the Market. Given that there are only two others in the nabe who serve it, that’s likely a good bet.
They’ve graduated from the same nearby food court that gave birth to Agave y Aguacate and Seven Lives, the former about to re-launch in Baldwin Village any day, the latter now in digs just up the street. The couple have also brought along the unique Jamaican-Italian – Ital-Ital? – fusion carte that sets them apart from most other jerk joints, though some items, like the old-school three-for-five-dollar meatballs, are no longer available.
“You’re only the third person to order them since we opened last September,” explains Neglia.
Instead, the focus is the jerk. Made with grain-fed birds sourced from St. Andrew’s Poultry round the corner, their Jamaica Mi Crazy chicken ($7 small/$9 large, both with rice ‘n’ peas, steamed veggies and an optional ladle of gravy) gets marinated overnight before it’s first roasted in an oven, and then finished on the sidewalk grill out front. We ask Patterson why.
“It cooks the chicken faster. If we didn’t, there’d be a lineup all the way back to Augusta!”
