Irie Rhythms

Best oxtail this side of St Marteen, the jerk chicken alone is worth the drive.
Super friendly staff

Great Caribbean food! Friendly staff and clean environment. I got the oxtail and a beef patty with cocoa bread which were both amazing. The oxtail portion was huge. This is definitely my go to Caribbean food joint in NC.

I love this place! The jerk chicken is my favorite, and I get frequent cravings for the rice and peas and plantains. I’ve never eaten in the restaurant; only gotten take-​out. I eat here almost every time I’m in Winston, which is a few times a month.

The curry chicken is delicious! Full of flavor. It’s my husbands first time as well and he got jerk chicken. He seems to be enjoying it! He hasn’t stopped eating since he received his plate :)

This place rocks! Staff is super friendly everytime I’ve been here & very accommodating my first visit. Highly recommend the jerk chicken with cabbage and black beans. The dish is very flavorful and it has just the right amount of spice/​kick to it.

Delicious food! Our family of four each ordered a different dish: Jerk Chicken, Oxtail, Brown Stew Chicken and Jerk Chicken Salad Sandwich. Every dish (and my side of collards) was exceptionally good. PLUS we were thrilled to find the entire menu dairy-​free with plenty of enticing gluten free options. Customer service good. We’ll be back!

Food is always delicious! Staff is friendly! I’ve been here many times and have enjoyed my food and experience every time!

The best food ever! Always fresh and flavorful. Love it!
I had the Saturday Special– Brown Stew Chicken with rice & peas and Callalou. It was delicious! They always give generous portions so it’s a great value.

Oxtail is the bomb.
Jerk chicken is the staple.
Always am impressed with the food and customer service. Don’t come here enough

I just came down to Winston Salem North Carolina from New York and I’m always looking for a good Caribbean food spot because I love me some oxtail So I came across this restaurant I order my oxtail with rice and beans, beef Patty and coco bread, now while I was waiting for my order I was talking to one of the employees and he told me that they get must of there ingredients from my favorite New York restaurant so that a good thing for me, just to know that I can get a little bit of New York it’s will make my transition a little bit easier I will be back soon

I walked in to get a smoothie, but almost walked out because they weren’t on the menu. The guy stopped me to ask what I was looking for and said he did have them, they just weren’t on the menu, and he’d make one for me. Very nice guys.
I used to work at tropical smoothie café, let’s just say these blew us out of the water. Best smoothie I’ve EVER had. I can tell it was made with real fruit and had a lot of fruit in it. It wasn’t overloaded with sugar like tropical smoothie’s are.
Delicious! I can’t wait to go back and try their food, which looked and smelled delicious.
While I was there I could tell the guys were hard workers. They value their customers and made sure everything was the way they wanted it.

How have I not come here sooner?! I finally tried them out for lunch this week and was not disappointed. I took my food to go and when I dug into it at home it was hot. They must have taken the feedback from other reviews and upped the temperature a bit. I went with the lunch special chicken curry (Tuesdays). The curry was really good, had a lot of great flavor to it. If you like your curry spicy this may not be the dish for you, it was flavorful but didn’t pack heat (which was fine by me). The curry was super oily, quite the pool formed at the bottom of my container. After reading Brittany L’s review I went with the mac and cheese side. I normally wouldn’t have went with that, but that ish was goooood. I recommend adding that on to your dish for sure. Next time I will try the Jamaican spinach which also sounds much healthier. The rice and peas were also quite tasty with the curry sauce. I will be back for sure, the lunch specials are a great deal so be sure to plan around that. The jerk chicken soup was also calling my name for the next visit.

Was feeling super HANGRY and accidentally discovered this place… So happy I did! Really love the oxtail dish. I usually have it with the rice and beans, and added a side of plantains. Hubby tried their chicken curry and loved it too.
Generous portion. Awesome service. Place is low key but this place basically made me fall in love with Caribbean food! Such a gem in Winston Salem!

Lots of pros for our first visit so we’ll be back and we’ll tell our friends. I think that says a lot. The con (but they’re working on it), no beer or wine.
I orders the curried goat and my gal ordered the Jerk Chicken. Both of us ordered the rice and peas (really beans) and shared collard greens and fried plantains. The spices and flavors were amazing. Order and pay at the counter and they bring your food to you. A little rough around the edges but the food and service won us over.
Enjoy!

Really good food, very reasonable prices.
But don’t go in looking for ambiance, or fast service, or Red Stripe. This converted Subway restaurant has none of that.
But it does have really good food at reasonable prices. Well worth the trip.

My first time at a Jamaican restaurant and I went all the way: Oxtails, rice and peas, and some coco bread. When I got home I literally devoured the whole thing. Simple menu, fresh ingredients, great portions and even better prices. The parking lot can get crowded on the weekends, because it is in a strip mall but you won’t regret checking this place out. It’s even great for vegetarians!

This is a great addition to Winston-​Salem and by far the best food in and around Hanes Mall. The ingredients are fresh, the staff is friendly, and the food is absolutely delicious. I get the Veggie Rundown and it never disappoints.

So yummy! My friends and I had tried to come here on a Sunday, but they were closed so we finally made it last night for dinner. Service was really quick and the interior décor is very casual but clean. The food came out piping out and service was pretty quick. I got the brown stewed chicken with rice and peas and a side of plantains, which was so delicious.
The chicken was tender and moist, and I loved the sauce that came with it: sweet, savory, hints of tomato, yum! The plantains were also super tasty, although you don’t get very much (maybe 5 or 6 small pieces for $ 3?) so I’m not sure that I’d get it again. All the entrees also come with a slaw which was great when mixed with my chicken and rice.
My other friends got the brown stewed chicken and jerk chicken and were super happy with it as well. All in all, delicious and can’t wait to come back!

The food deserves 5 stars, that’s for sure! I loved everything that I ordered! That being said, they need to work out the kinks in their service a bit. The inside of the place is nothing in comparison to their food. It’s fairly small with a few booths and tables. You order like you would at a cafeteria. I placed my order for the Jerk Chicken special, with a side of Callaloo, which is a Jamaican spinach dish. I also ordered a side of Fried Plantains for my sister and I to split. The place was really busy, with a lot of people placing to go orders.
My sister and I sat at a booth and waited, for a while. They had one gentleman ringing people up and then two other employees that were either in the back cooking or serving up plates at the front (by the registers). The other two people disappeared after a while and left the one guy, by himself, to take orders, fix the plates, run the plates to the tables, and continue to do it all over again.
He was very kind when we received our food. He gave us a few extra plantains with our order. They need someone to help expedite, as well as run the food. One man can’t do it all, even though he did a great job trying. You get a ton of food! With the quarter of the jerk chicken, you get red beans and rice, cabbage, and another side (I chose callaloo). Everything was flavorful and paired well together.
I will definitely be back. The service is sub-​par, but the price is great, and the food is perfect.

This little place is an exceptional and very much welcomed addition to the growing diversity, and excellence, of the Winston Salem dining scene. And the reason it is exceptional, imo, is that it’s that rare combination of fresh ingredients, very well prepared, and true to the cuisine’s authenticity — AND real, refreshing «glad to have you in our restaurant» service.
As with any ethnic cuisine, there are going to be some diners who simply don’t care for certain dishes, some of the individual ingredients, the spice levels, and/​or the manner in which the dish is cooked, and even plated. This may be particularly true of a number of the Jamaican dishes on the menu here.
A fair amount of the meat is cooked on the bone (Curry Goat and Oxtails), making caution in eating, and the use of plenty of napkins, a necessity. Another concern for some will indeed be the spice level of some of the dishes (the Curried Goat again, for example). And for others, the unpretentious, functional décor and the strip shopping center location will rule out dining here. But anyone not taking the chance on trying the food and service here is missing a culinary adventure, and for the wrong reasons, I think.
We tried the Oxtails ($ 11 with a rice dish), the Curry Goat ($ 13 with a rice dish), and the Curry Shrimp Sauté Friday lunch special ($ 10 with an extra side and a drink). The Oxtails were loaded with flavor, and with Rice and large Butter Beans. This is a dish that requires hands on attention — there simply is no effective or delicate way to get at the meat except to pickup the oxtail & chew away. This is not a particularly «wet» dish, so it is not all that messy. There were very few Butter Beans that accompanied this dish, which was a small disappointment.
The Curry Goat was simply superb — one of the very best goat dishes I’ve tried. I’m a fan of properly cooked goat, especially goat cooked on the bone. I often cook with goat myself (Indian style Goat Curry & Mexican style Goat Carnitas) so this dish was a very pleasant find. The meat is very tender, and with a nice buildup of residual heat as the dish is eaten. Be aware, the meat is on the bone, and cut in such a way that there are quite a few small, sharp bones to work around, so chew very carefully. This dish is well worth the effort and the caution.
The Curry Shrimp was a very nice dish — sauteed with curry spices, onions, and sweet peppers, so this is much more of a «dry» curry compared with the goat, for instance. The shrimp were well seasoned, well cooked, and fresh tasting, but frankly there were too few of them to support the cost of this dish.
The Cabbage side dish is also very, very nice, but the Rice & Peas, while flavorful, were a bit of a disappointment — Red Kidney were used rather than the more traditional Pigeon Peas, which I much enjoy. The Collards were awesome, as good as any you’ll come across.
As I said, the service was extremely friendly, efficient, and well informed about the menu items. It was as good as any restaurant service experience we’ve had in a long time. I walked out and left my «to-​go» drink on the counter, and the very nice lady followed me to the car to hand it to me. So cool!
This is not the cheapest place to eat lunch (though for most dishes the portions are very well sized), nor does it abound with ambiance, but this is excellent food served in the most pleasant of manners. We’ll be back, and often — we love a food adventure.
Irie is the word in Jamaican Patois which means «alright» — and this little place certainly is that.