Sweet Fingers is San Leandro’s only Caribbean restaurant. Located on East 14th, near the Oakland border, it’s relatively inconspicuous. From the outside it looks like a bar, from the inside, like a third-world restaurant. The tables are cheap, the light is dim and the bar quite prominent. It’s the kind of place you go to hang out, listen to some reggae or just have some great Jamaican/Caribbean food. That’s what we did last night, when we had our monthly informal SLCAN meeting at the place.
Everything we ordered was a winner: B. loved the jerked tofu, T. became a fun of the shrimp curry and D. enjoyed his oxtail stew. R. and I had had dinner earlier and weren’t planning to eat, but we had to order the fabulous friend plantains ($4). After we enjoyed them, the waitress was nice enough to bring us a plate of jerk chicken to share. It was dark and moist and nicely spiced – I’m always afraid that jerk chicken will be too strong for my taste but that is not a worry here. In all, I regretted not having gone back to Sweet Fingers since my first review a couple of years ago. Service, as you can imagine, was really good.
The prices, however, are a little high – most entrees are in the mid-teens. However, you can usually buy a $25 gift certificate to Sweet Fingers for $10 at restaurant.com (just do a search for restaurants within a mile of 94577). There is a $35 minimum food purchase. Once in a while restaurant.com has specials which allow you to buy said gift certificate for $2 or $3 – keep an eye on dealdetectives.com.
Sweet Fingers is very friendly to vegetarians – their new menu features 11 vegetarian entrees. With over 15 meat and fish entrees, it’s also pretty friendly to carnivores.
The new menu keeps many favorites such as the jerk chicken, but adds new dishes such as brown stew goat ($16), braised blue mountain lamb ($18) and ginger orange chicken ($16). Some of the dishes are daily specials.
Sweet fingers is also increasing its musical offerings. They will have music every day but Monday from 10 PM to 2 AM. There will be live music every Sunday.
They will have a happy hour from 3-6 PM with half-price appetizers.
I’m unlikely to go for the music or the happy hour, but I’ll definitely return for the food.
Sweet Fingers
464 E. 14th St.
San Leandro ,CA
510.553.9869
http://www.sweetfingersrestaurant.com/
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