Island Frydays

One word: Oxtail. Give it a shot and you won’t regret it. Island Frydays is a colorful establishment located in the Clifton area. While the ambiance inside the restaurant maybe be mediocre at best, they do serve some delicious food! I love the oxtail and jerk chicken! Great, friendly, and quick service too. This gem deserve a bit more love! P. s they were featured in Diners, Drive ins, and Dives recently as a growing part of Cincinnati’s unique restaurant scene!

Considering a Jamaican chicken patty stuffed inside coco bread is one of my favorite meals I’m surprised I don’t visit here more often.
I brought my boyfriend here on a whim, trying to encourage him to eat something outside of the box. He ended up ordering Jerk chicken with french fries and I believe he also got rice. They were out of chicken patties so I opted for beef with coco bread.
The staff was very help during the ordering process although they seemed to be out of quite a lot of foods on the menu. My boyfriend’s chicken was well seasoned white-​meat and pretty tasty. The fries were excellent. Their coco bread is clearly packaged and not authentic but it still tastes pretty good.
For the only legit Caribbean food establishment in Cincy (that I’m aware of) Island Frydays gets the job done!

Jerk chicken sandwich!!! Amazing flavor! The jerk chicken sandwich combo had a lot of food and was very filling. The sandwich itself had great flavor and the sauce on top complimented it really well. The fries were great as well, they were straight fries, but has the crispy and crunchiness of curly fries.

I’m not sure if I had a bad experience or my taste for Jamaican food has been spolied by those that don’t pronounce the letter H, whatever the case my experience was horrible. They have a few tiny hot treys and the food was cold. The chicken was not juicy, the flavor was minimal because it was cold. The rice and beans were not fresh. Was super excited to find a Jamaican place near me, but I would rather drive to ATL or hop a flight to the islands if I wanted some jerk. I should actually try to give this place again.

health department need to come in this place went twice food is not all that your jerk chicken is dry your burgers look like patty grilled dog food stop serving cold food the only thing thats good in this dump is the rum cake and juice Guy they must have cooked you some fresh food I will not recommend this place to anyone

Despite it being on Dinner drive ins and dives i was not a fan of this restaurant. The chicken sandwich I ordered had cinnamon dumped on top of it. Bun was not fresh either.

I’m a big fan of jerk chicken so I was really excited to try Island Frydays. Sadly I think we went on a bad day. I had the jerk wings with rice and greens. The flavor of the jerk chicken was nothing short of amazing. It was sweet, spicy, smokey and everything you would expect from jerk chicken. The meat was very tender and fell off the bone. Only problem was that it wasn’t hot. I hate lukewarm food. Hot food needs to be served hot. Also I could tell it wasn’t fresh. I think they made it earlier in the day and keep it warm. The greens had a very unique taste. Not your traditional greens but they were very good. The rice wasn’t anything special. My wife had a fish sandwich and fries. It was good but she found some bones in her fish which had her paranoid that she was going to choke on a bone for the rest of her meal. I’m the same way. I don’t do bones and fish. The fries were really good. Crispy and spicy. If Unilocal had a decimal system I would give them 3.5 stars. I think they have 5 star potential if the food is served hot and fresh and they pay attention to the little details.

Any restaurant that’s featured on Diners, Drive-​ins & Dives is worth a visit & that’s the reason we went to Island Frydays!
The exterior is nice and stands out with the colors of the Jamaican flag. However, once you get inside that changed. Thank goodness the food tasted better than the restaurant looked!
I got jerk chicken wings, yellow rice and cabbage to go. The servings were large and with the cost. The chicken was very flavorful & came with sauce on it that had a kick to it but was good. The yellow rice was good. I was most surprised my the cabbage which was so flavorful and tasty! It’s the best cabbage I’ve ever had (please don’t tell my Granny)!
The only thing that surprised me was the majority of the food was on the counter in «hot plates» which made me wonder how long it had been sitting there. Even so it was tasty and if I’m in Clifton, I’d visit again!

Had a trip to Jamaica planned, cancelled it immediately after eating here. Place was so authentic I no longer needed to travel to get the island experience. They even had sporks which I believe were invented in Jamaica.

Leo is a master of Jamaican favors here and I’ve never been disappointed with the jerk chicken, rice, fries etc.

I had this once a long time ago, the «Rasta Pasta» — Jerk chicken, some veggies, mac and cheese. Very good, very basic «American» food style. The Jerk flavor wasn’t really there, but it was a simple enough dish.
So when I was in the area and starving earlier I decided to go in and try some real Jamacian food, in the time since I tried it I started to love spicy food and Jamacian Jerk is famous for hitting you hard. I arrived about 15 minutes before closing, with a single person infront of me that was ordering two combos. It took me 12 minutes to get out, even though the food was all already cooked. Now, in fairness, the ladies serving were extremely nice, gave me a sample and absolutely LOADED up my plate — to the extent that when I got home and took the styrofoam container out, it snapped in half.
Unfortunately, the quality didn’t quite match the quantity. The brown rice and beans only flavor came from the liquid from the brown stew poured over it, which was delicious (but had to be requested). The Jerk chicken, that I asked for to be very spicy and emphasized extra sauce, was way too bland. There was no heat! The smokiness, the crispy burnt edges from the hot grill, and the meat was amazingly, fall, apart, tender. It was the perfect canvas to add some real flavor to, but they tripped up hard. The small piece of brown stew chicken meat they included as a sample had significantly better taste, and I’d order that in the future.
As for sides, the fried plantains are a nice little bonus, very sweet but starchy, not anything to make or break a meal. Jamaican collard greens, on the other hand, had some good flavors — very buttery, peppery, and good mix of veggies. Could use some jerk seasoning in there to add some heat for me, but I’d take it.
All in all, I don’t know what to make of this place — the staff is awesome, the portions are huge for the price (price is a little higher than I’d like for a combo), and the food is hit or miss. Maybe trying something else, maybe telling them you want Jamacian hot, with a secret hand shake and password, I don’t know what it’d take, but there’s potential here — I’ll be back to try it again, just not in any hurry to do so.

good starter to try is Jerk chicken sandwich and Beef patty. You can really taste All spice/​clove on the chicken. The «juice» flavors are good but more are like a non carbonated soda.

This place can be a bit of a hit or a miss. But overall the food is good. Being half Jamaican I can say this isn’t the chicken my Dad use to make but I’ll do if I’m having a craving.
Most of the time the chicken is well seasoned and moist. The rice and pea are on par to what you expect from a restaurant like this. The callaloo aka Jamaican Greens is amazing, I usually get two orders. My biggest problem is the plantains which sometimes are way to starchy, more like Spanish tostados.
But I am always happy to wash it down with my childhood fav Ting.
If you hit this place earlier in the day the fresher it is, and more likely they are to still have jerk wings and jerk pasta which are ridiculously tasty!

Great food. Have tried just about everything. Even been adventurous and tried the cury goat, and oxtail. Both were awesome. Great place and GREAT food!

After hearing rave reviews of this place and seeing that it was featured on Diners Drive-​ins and Dives, I had to try some Jerk Chicken!
Maybe this restaurant had to painfully tame the spice level on their food because of the typical wimpy Cincinnati palate, but I’ve never had a more bland piece of jerk chicken in my life. Sure the smokey flavor achieved from grilling it was good, but where the heck was the spice? It’s supposed to be freaking jerk chicken!
The sides were actually worse than the chicken. The vegetables were overcooked and tasteless. The rice and peas bland too.
I want to slap Guy Fieri upside is stupid backwards sunglasses wearing head for making this place out to be amazing.

This place is pretty good. I would say it’s closer to a 3.5 star restaurant. There’s nothing that really put me off other than the wait. The food was delicious, the jerk chicken being moist and well seasoned/​marinated, the fries being just crisp enough and containing a similar seasoning to what you expect at a few not-​to-​be-​named chicken joints. I dig it.

Our cab driver highly recommended this place and we tried the Jerk chicken with rice & vegetables. This restaurant pops with bright fluorescent colors that strain your eyes and is hard to miss when you drive by. The food was kept in old vessels that didn’t look very hygienic, but we hesitantly gave it a shot and ordered to-​go. The food was cold, the vegetables tasted okay, but the chicken and rice were absolutely terrible. We chucked it into trash and shared a habanero to lose the after taste.

Overall Island Frydays is pretty good. Everything was seasoned well. I have had better at other Jamaican spots, but I won’t kick IF because they are good. My fiancé has eaten there like 5 times and says they are always consistent with the taste of their food. We both had Jerk Chicken, Rice & Peas, and Cabbage with Plantains. The Jerk sauce was full of flavor and seasoned well but it was a little thin for my liking. We both had a drink they make in house called Tropical Melody and is was the bomb. Very good and not to sweet. It’s a fruit punch with a kick of ginger. Works well together. Overall pretty good and worth a try.

Their dinner looks awesome. But I got the jerk chicken wrap for lunch and it was cold and a little disappointing. Probably try the main dishes next time.

This was my first experience there and quite disappointing. The biggest issue for me was food laying around not being kept in proper heat holds. I had the jerk chicken with rice and peas and greens. The chicken and greens were good but the rice had so much cinnamon it makes me wonder if the added anything else. I had the sweet potato pie for dessert and it was mediocre. I wanted a beef patty but they were out and offered chicken since that was the only patty available. It was tasty. They just need to learn proper food storage and employees need more food knowledge