Ocho Rios Grill

If you can’t find a cuisine in Orange County, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find it somewhere in Southern California by searching upwards (near Los Angeles) or downwards (towards San Diego) – in our experience, far more often the former than the latter. We discovered Ocho Rios Grill close to LAX airport in Lawndale when hunting for authentic Jamaican food, and we’re glad we did.

Although we ate at the restaurant, Ocho Rios serves all of its food in styrofoam containers, which is convenient for handling leftovers from the large portions. We sampled and enjoyed the Jamaican oxtail – heavily (and wonderfully) spiced meat that’s tender and fatty enough to fall off the tail’s very large bone – and bright yellow, mildly curried shrimp with decent stewed yams on the side. While the presentation and fine points of spicing could have been more polished, we generally enjoyed all of these items, which were clearly made in-house to order. By comparison, an appetizer Jamaican beef patty was hard to distinguish from store bought, but was pretty large, and still tasted good.