The Bush Doctrine

Mango Bush

by Trey Popp

WHAT IS IT about South Street and Caribbean restaurants? Walk the mile from Jamaican Jerk Hut, at 16th Street, to Reef Caribbean Lounge, at Third, and you’ll pass three other island-food outposts along the way. Does the zoning code have some kind of mandatory quota for goat curry platters? Is there a West Indies mafia I don’t know about? A Rastafarian cabal?

Patsy Rainford, who opened the latest one, Mango Bush, with her husband, Trevor, has an even more far-fetched answer: coincidence. When she signed the papers for the storefront at Fourth and South, she says, the only competitor she knew about was the Jerk Hut. "But it doesn't matter how many other places there are,” she adds. "All that matters is who has the best food."

That discounts the easygoing, contagious warmth she injects into this 22-seat eatery, but Rainford is right — if you're the fifth horse to enter a race, you need more than pretty colors to get people to place their bets on you.

Based on its menu, it looks like Mango Bush is trying to distinguish itself from the pack by offering a few of the true peasant-food classics that the others don't. Specifically, a cow foot platter and chicken foot soup. Like oxtail, which is more common, both of those are in keeping with so-called "fifth quarter" cuts — the parts rejected by plantation owners of old.

But those items grace Mango Bush’s menu the way snow symbols grace the legends of weather maps in August. Neither was available during my two visits. Ackee and saltfish, often called Jamaica's national dish, was, but has to be ordered an hour in advance, which I discovered too late.

Fortunately, Rainford's versions of the usual suspects stack up well. Her jerk chicken is aromatic with allspice, and has a heat that builds up into a haunting presence rather than smacking you into a sweat at first bite. Her goat is remarkably tender given how lean it is. Whole red snapper was buried beneath sautéed carrots, onions and bell peppers, but the fresh, moist flesh remained the proper center of attention. And I liked the way green peppers cut the sweet profile of Rainford's mango shrimp, even if the shrimps themselves were bland.

My favorite part of the fairly priced platters here was totally unexpected, though: the red beans and rice, imbued with but not dominated by a rich admixture of coconut. Rainford also scores by stocking little bottles of Rootsman — an elixir of a dozen weird extracts (blood wisp, chew stick, man back … ) that tastes surprisingly like a Belgian sour ale.

But surely Rainford doesn’t mean to take on Philadelphia’s Belgian beer halls, too. That must be just another coincidence.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)

Mango Bush | 524 S. Fourth St., 215-625-2410. Mon.-Thu., 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m.; Fri.-Sun., 11 a.m.-11:30 p.m. Appetizers, sides and soups, $1.50-$6; chicken and beef dishes, $9.50-$12.50; seafood dishes, $12-$13.50. Delivery available. Wheelchair accessible.