Stir It Up, on Atlantic Avenue just west of 3rd Avenue, holds the title for “closest restaurant to my apartment,” just narrowly beating the diner on the corner, the new-ish pan-Asian “Mai,” and the perennial favorite Bedouin Tent (which my roommate insists on calling “Pita Pit”). It even got some press recently – a generous write-up in the NYT – which strikes me as totally unusual for a restaurant that’s nearly in a no-mans land. However, I had never visited Stir It Up, for no particular reason other than (mostly) forgetting it was there.
I was craving roti after a run last night, and given that I was in a rush to get to a friend’s place, I decided to stop by Stir It Up and grab one. Good idea, in retrospect – the bread and potato combo was excellent, and the curry chicken ladled on top was well-flavored, though you couldn’t eat it without staining your hands (it was bone-in).
The mac and cheese, something I rarely have a complaint about in a Caribbean restaurant, I was less wild about. Soul Spot’s is better, and none of these places really measure up to the places that nuke the pasta with some kind of pepper or hot sauce (scotch bonnet, usually). Still, it might be the only palatable vegetarian option. All of the other non-meat dishes on the menu featured the soybean-based fake meat of my nightmares (interesting for a restaurant bearing that name, as most Rastafarians are vegetarian).
I’m going to head back to Stir It Up very soon and try more stuff, and I’ll report back if I run into anything interesting. Right now, I’m just happy I might be able to convince my roommate to stop ordering “Pita Pit” three times a week.
Twenty Bucks A Day 