THERE’S something impossible not to like about the hard working Hudson family, with their big smiles and friendly, bustling place in St Mary’s.
I was rooting for them from the first minute I met them.
In the teeth of a savage recession, with big restaurant chains dishing out 2-4-1 vouchers like cut-price confetti, this tiny little local operation of just a handful of tables has its work cut out even to survive let alone thrive. But it more than deserves to.
Such initial goodwill only blossomed, like the fat smile across my face, as I savoured their bitterly spicy, smokily addictive jerk chicken for the first time.
Ok, so it’s somewhat of a starter for ten in the world of Caribbean cuisine, but we had it as a starter for four and there were no complaints of culinary cliche as a pile of chicken wings was demolished to bone and sweet memories of habanero and allspice.
The secret jerk sauce – pride of the house, works even better on an indulgent slab of belly pork, which made up for not being especially crispy by oozing tasty pork fat tinged with tangy sauce. It’s no friend to the dieter but….
Chef-patron Paul Hudson is pained at suggestions he is Southampton’s answer to Levi Roots, the Reggae Reggae sauce inventor propelled to fame and smash-hit supermarket success by TV’s Dragon’s Den.
No, Paul trained professionally at Southampton City College but, with due deference to their catering tutors, what he serves up just across the road today owes a whole world more to a childhood spent learning at the bubbling stove belonging his Caribbean mum.
You can almost taste the sunshine on the plate.
Nowhere more so than in the saltfish, Jamaica’s national dish and a total revelation here. Maybe it’s something of an acquired taste but once the salty shock is out of the way (the clue is in the title), the underlying flavour of the fish really wriggles out, beautifully balanced by a rich avocado salad on the side. It’s bettered only by the saltfish fritters, which wrap the fish in batter seasoned with thyme and chilli and pair it with a punchy pineapple salsa.
Alas, there was no curry goat to try. They’d run out. I’m assured it’s excellent, so that’s probably why. Instead there was curry mutton.
It arrived with the slow cooked meat readily flaking into a dark brown sauce that was hot and flavourful, spikily aromatic and very different from anything you’ll find in a curry house.
Hudson’s is far from being perfect. The café is unprepossessing and somewhat basic. If for you a restaurant is all about a bow tied and bowing maître’d and marble bathrooms, then maybe best not come here.
But if you want a food experience: A real sensory hit of someplace else, somewhere glorious, sun drenched and deeply different then Hudson’s is a must.
GARETH LEWIS.
