A Food Delite cook holds in hand hot cornbeef and grits, and tuna and grits.

Published On:Wednesday, January 20, 2010

By REUBEN SHEARER

Tribune Features Reporter

rshearer@tribunemedia.net

BEFORE leaving Food Delite Cafe yesterday after breakfast, the owner invites me to come visit again and have lunch. And I may take him up that offer after experiencing his airy restaurant where you can have some delicious, freshly cooked Bahamian and Jamaican cuisine.

Horris Miller, owner of Food Delite says he flirted with the idea of selling dinner, but it's really a ghost town after 5 o'clock in the Collins Avenue area, which is when the restaurant closes. In an area clustered with businesses, the after 5 crew is trying to get out of the busy Collins Avenue area.

The restaurant is a very clean environment inside and out. It's airy and spotlessly clean inside out.

Horris Miller and his staff pulled out all the stops for Tribune Taste yesterday, during their breakfast hours.

"We're really not big on our morning menus but we do carry the basic Bahamian breakfast," says Mr Miller. His cooks brought out a variety of choices of tuna and hot grits, corn beef and grits, and even boiled fish.

They also have the Jamaican staples of ackee and cod fish, which some people eat for both breakfast and lunch. Ackee and codfish is a big time breakfast seller at Food Delite, but you have to acquire a taste for the Jamaican national dish.

The codfish is very salty, soaked overnight and minced, then seasoned with herbs and salts. The Ackee is peeled, and diced, then finally added to the cooking pot, and the dough is fried to eat along with it. The meal is completed with decent size slices of bright red tomatoes.

"Nothing here is fried, everything is baked," says Mr Miller.

They also provide boiled foods like cassava, dumpling, sweet potato, cabbage, and carrots.

The lunch menu has a pretty solid variety of choices. But Food Delite boast of selling the best split peas soup you've ever had, among a variety of Bahamian dishes.

Continuing in the soup thread, the restaurant carries typical Bahamian favorites like chicken souse, pig feet souse, and sheep tongue souse, all served with Johnny cake.

Fresh and all natural fruit juices are blended each morning straight from the raw fruit to serve throughout the day. Carrot, Irish moss, mango, watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumber juice are made. Even hog plum, pomegranate, noni, and beet juice have been big sellers.

There's not too much sugar in them, the juices have no additives. His wife who is part owner in the restaurant blends them herself.

Although I didn't try their homemade pastries, we hear they give local pastry companies competition. They have chicken and beef patties, cornbread, banana bread, potato bread, Jamaican bun and cheese, and pound cake.