Shelly’s Blue Mountain Cuisine
NW corner of 228 Street &
Linden Blvd.,
Cambria Heights
712-3448

Hours: 8 a.m. - 12 midnight, seven days a week  

The Caribbean islands have always been well known for their exotic dishes with a penchant for spice not suited for the faint of heart. 

The Jamaican-American cuisine at Shelly’s Blue Mountain is no exception. 

Open early every day, the Cambria Heights corner eatery serves traditional Jamaican breakfasts such as cornmeal and hominy porridge, ackee and saltfish and mackerel with your choice of sweet plantain or “food,” the colloquial group of roughage which translates to boiled green bananas, fried or boiled dumplings and boiled yam. 

The lunch menu includes chicken and beef patties as well as smaller portions of dinner foods— brown stew chicken, curry goat, curry shrimp, escoveitch (fricassee-style) fish and then some.  Lunch and dinner come with your choice of rice and peas or white rice. 

Beverage choices include popular soft drinks, Squeez’r fruit juices, imported Jamaican sodas and all-natural vegetable juices and “roots” tonics. 

The small space allows for limited eat-in capabilities, but the reggae music and the song in the accents of its primarily Jamaican patrons are most welcoming all the same.

— Tara Thomas