5.18.2007

Restaurant Review #186: Friedel Caribbean Cuisine, Studio City


Mango beef

In the mood for a lazy dinner, but something different from the usual pizza or Chinese delivery, I ordered Freidel Caribbean Cuisine through a food delivery service called LA Bite (formerly Freeway Food). Using this service, you can place your order online and get food from restaurants that otherwise wouldn't deliver to your neighborhood; however, you'll pay a steep delivery fee (call the restaurant first and ask if they'll deliver directly to you!) and encounter higher than average minimum orders (for Friedel, the minimum order is $30). The food arrived as scheduled, but the scheduled delivery time was an extraordinary hour and twenty minutes on a Sunday night at 7:00. When the delivery doesn't come straight from the restaurant, it will naturally take longer, but not fifty minutes longer.


Festival bread

Unfamiliar with Caribbean food, we ordered more food than we needed to get a better feel for the cuisine. An appetizer of deep fried festival bread had a similar sweet corn flavor to a hush puppy, but with a smooth, chewy consistency.


Jerk chicken

Authentic jerk chicken is coated in a rich spice mixture, not drowning in sweet sauce, while mango beef (lead photo) doesn't contain anything that tastes like mango, but is still a pleasantly sweet dish with flavorful meat.


Curry chicken

Curry chicken wasn't memorable for much other than having fatty chunks of meat.

Entrees are reasonably priced at $9 - $16 each for a generous, filling portion of entree plus sides of rice, plantains, and cabbage. The restaurant offers a real variety of vegan and vegetarian dishes, most of which use a soy meat substitute (a few are veg only, while only one contains tofu). If I were to eat from Freidel again, I would go to the actual restaurant instead of ordering online, and I'd probably try some new dishes, though all but the curry chicken would be worth repeating.


Freidel Caribbean Cuisine
11320 Ventura Blvd.
Studio City, CA 91602
818.763.8100


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Friedel Caribbean Cuisine on Urbanspoon

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love Friedel's and their awesome Festival bread! This place is great because along with their meat dishes I was pleasantly surprised to find they also have some vegan options as well.

Anonymous said...

Weird. I'm from the Caribbean. I've lived here all of my life...and I don't know most of the dishes that you mentioned.