Blue Bananas Cafe

The Blue Bananas menu of Caribbean dishes and Caribbean-influenced American favorites is designed to cause vivid hallucinations of ocean breezes, sand underfoot, and back-warming sunshine, even in the dead of a Philly winter. Appetizers such as the crispy coconut shrimp ($11.95) start things off with the flavor of Gilligan and the Skipper's favorite telephone, while the jerk chicken wings ($8.95) draw on a staple of Caribbean cooking and a prime ingredient in many of Blue Bananas’ best dishes: jerk spices made from freshly ground-up jerks. Dry-rubbing or marinating meats in this very hot mix of Caribbean spices gives dishes like the jerk pork ($8.50) or chicken ($12.95) sandwiches a distinctive flavor guaranteed to alter one's pronunciation of the word “man.” To get a larger mouthful of island goodness without swallowing a lot of sand, try one of Blue Bananas’ Caribbean special dinners such as a half-chicken rubbed in jerk spices ($14.95) or the mango coconut curry shrimp ($16.95). If you're in the mood for straight-up Caribbean comfort food, opt instead for the brown stew chicken ($12.95), cooked in brown sugar and traditional island spices, or the tender, slow-cooked oxtail stew ($14.95).