With every seat in Irie Zulu full, owner Yollande Deacon makes her way around the cozy restaurant from table to table, chatting with friends, greeting newcomers, occasionally darting off to the kitchen to lend a hand and giving the excellent African and Jamaican dining spot the vibe of a casual dinner in her living room.
Deacon—whom farmer’s market regulars may recognize from her Afro Fusion Cuisine brand—aims to bring the joy and beauty of African and Jamaican cuisine to Wauwatosa, emphasizing locally sourced meat and produce. So far, she’s nailed it.
The menu, which rotates almost daily to feature items from across Africa and Jamaica, often provides a nice mix of dishes that a diner unfamiliar with African and Jamaican foods would still recognize—such as Johnny Cakes and various curries—alongside less-well-known dishes like gnama choma and sukuma wiki.
I attended a Friday dinner service, and Jamaican food was featured that evening. We started our meal with Johnny Cakes ($5) as an appetizer; although the tasty biscuits are a relatively simple combination of basic ingredients (cornmeal, baking powder, flour and salt), they have a wonderful sweet flavor and are not too dry.
For an entrée, it’s hard to top the curry goat ($21), featuring local farm-raised goat seasoned with Afro Fusion Cuisine seasoning in a Jamaican curry sauce and served with either a yellow coconut rice or rice and peas. The goat itself was wonderful—perfectly seasoned with just a hint of a spice bite, but not so strongly seasoned that the natural gaminess of the animal was covered up. The goat came in chunks that were somewhat uneven, showing that it had been cut by hand, and with some still on the bone, making it a touch messy at times (not first-date material, probably). I preferred the earthiness of the rice and peas to the brighter (in color and flavor) yellow coconut rice, but both were excellent additions to the dish.
Irie Zulu also features a vegan dish every day of the week, and Friday’s was the beautifully titled Irie Vegan Heaven ($18), which features rotating organic seasonal vegetables in a jerk seasoning. I loved the one bite I had, and while I wanted more, my vegan wife declared it too good to share. It’s still rare to find a restaurant that caters so successfully to both meat-eaters and vegans, and Irie Zulu manages to excel with both styles.
They also feature a formidable, excellent cocktail list—I was partial to the Shaka Zulu Roar ($9), which mixes their house-made hibiscus juice with ginger juice and a dry gin to create a beautiful pink cocktail. Their house sangria ($7) mixes that hibiscus juice with organic South African cabernet sauvignon to create an easy-drinking but unique take on the old standby. Their wine list tends to skew South African and French.
When Deacon came by our table, I asked her about her mission for the restaurant. “When I first started,” she told me, “I didn’t want Irie Zulu to feel overly manufactured. It needs personality. I wake up and say, ‘What do I want to cook?’” This fun and freewheeling nature permeates the ambiance and menu of Irie Zulu, making it a one-of-a-kind dining experience.
Irie Zulu
7237 W. North Ave.
414-509-6014
$$-$$$
Handicapped access: Yes
