Jamaican Restaurant Rudie’s Will Move Into Boxpark Shoreditch in January

Rudie’s will bring its diverse approach to Jamaican cooking to Boxpark Shoreditch in January 2018, following on from its successful Dalston site that opened in September 2015.

While the 80-cover Dalston restaurant places an emphasis on “real jerk” spicing and shareable expressions of Jamaican dishes, the new, 30-cover Boxpark location will take the limitations of its location as guiding principles for the cooking. The result is a combination of tapas-style dishes and “Boxfood” — clearly aimed at the area’s thriving takeaway market — which indicates savvy operational strategy as well as promising cuisine.

The lunchtime offer includes the Jerk-It-Up (signature real jerk chicken with sweet potato, rice’n’peas or chow chow slaw), Hellshire Beach (king prawns sautéed in pepper sauce, served with avocado salsa and fried bammy) and Ital Vital a vegan box (plantain with Appleton rum sauce, sweet potatoes and chow chow slaw). Small plates will include some of the Dalston favourites: peppered prawns, ackee and saltfish, and jerk padron peppers. The idea behind the evolving menu is to diversify their own offering, and in so doing introduce customers both familiar and new to Jamaican food to dishes they might not find elsewhere.

Drinks are similarly geared towards quick, efficient service, following in the footsteps of many progressive restaurants and bars by offering batched cocktails. Here, it’s various riffs on punch, including Rum Punch, Guinness Punch, Peanut Punch and Tropical Fruit Punch. With both food and drink on offer over lunch and dinner, as well as on various delivery platforms, this new Boxpark venture is clearly geared for volume, while maintaining the atmosphere that makes its original location such a neighbourhood favourite.