FOOD REVIEW: Island Flavors (Laurel, MD)

While I was on a research trip in Maryland/Delaware in early May I discovered the unassuming West Indian restaurant Island Flavors in a strip mall right off the Route 197 exit off the Baltimore-Washington Expressway (Maryland Route 295).

I'm always one to look out for really good West Indian food, and the best I have found so far is in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. That's a long, long ways from my home in Los Angeles, so often when I am on the East Coast I try and sample new restaurants. In Los Angeles, there is some pretty good Caribbean food (Ackee Bamboo, Caribbean Treehouse, Kassava) and some just okay (Derrick's Jamaican Cuisine, Juicy's, Wi Jammin).

Island Flavors is in a very unassuming, somewhat unprepossessing space, with cheap plastic chairs and tables and covered steam tables. You should go to Island Flavors for the food, not the atmosphere or service.

I ordered the brown stew chicken ($7.75) and homemade sorrell ($3.50). The brown stew chicken was excellent. It is very tangy and piquant but not overly spicy. It comes with steamed vegetables and fried plantains. The sorrel was also quite good, much more heavily infused with ginger than I am used to, and quite a bit more concentrated. Halfway through eating my small brown stew chicken I knew I wanted to sample their "Curry Chicken & Roti" ($8.00) and take a large brown stew chicken to-go ($9.25) on my 6-hour flight home to Los Angeles.

The curry chicken roti ended up being very unusual, with the roti skin being uncharacteristically left open, serving as a bowl for the curry chicken stew, instead of fully enclosing the thick curry chicken stew burrito-style that I am used to. The roti skin used was delicious, lighter and more flavorable than most (I suspect butter must be involved) and by not enclosing the stew, it seemed they were able to use more tender cuts of chicken with bone attached, as opposed to the sometimes dry, boneless chicken which appears in most chicken curry rotis. The brown stew chicken I brought home to Los Angeles was just as good when I ate it microwaved after being in the refrigerator as when I had eaten it inside the Island Flavors restaurant two days before. Both dishes were better than anything I have had from any West Indian restaurant on the West Coast, except perhaps for what's served at Kassava.

If you're in the Laurel, Maryland area (about 30 minutes north of Washington, D.C.) I would strongly recommend that you check out Island Flavors and order yourself a roti and a brown stew chicken to go, you will not regret it!

Name: Island Flavors.
Location: 12633 Laurel Bowie Road, Laurel, MD 20708-2603.
Contact: 301-776-7208.
Visit: May 7, 2011.

AMBIANCE: B.
SERVICE: A-.
VALUE: A+.
FOOD: A.

OVERALL: A- (3.75/4.0).