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Jamaican patty-maker Lloydie’s has been in the food business for over 20 years, and as of Wednesday, the company has broken into the restaurant world, opening up on St-Viateur Street.
Many Montrealers have likely already encountered Lloydie’s products — its beef, chicken, and vegetable patties are well distributed, sold in supermarkets like IGA, Super C, and Metro (it also makes and sells broths, on a smaller scale). But the Mile End restaurant (located in a former Crudessence, a space that had been vacant for some time) expands substantially on that. Jerk pork, chicken, and oxtail are on the menu in both platter and sandwich form, along with sides such as cucumber salad, stewed peas, plantains, and macaroni pie (a sometimes-Jamaican, sometimes-Trinidadian version of mac and cheese).
Lloydie’s is also getting into the poutine game, with plantains and oxtail available as toppings. The menu is rounded out with a few cakey and coconutty desserts.
Lloydie’s is named for the father of the patty company by the same name, Lloyd Tull — he has been in the catering and food production business since around 1987, with the patty business springing up in the ‘90s, owning production facilities in Laval and now Ville-St-Laurent.
It’s nice to see a somewhat larger food producer bringing their operations down to a community level. While various restaurants in town have started at street level and later created products to be sold in stores and supermarkets (from Moishes’ pickles and coleslaw to Joe Beef’s spice mixes and sauces), Lloydie’s going from a factory-scale business to a restaurant is an unusual reversal (and this is not a complaint about it). Lloydie’s have catered events such as Nuits d’Afrique in the past, so while items like the jerk chicken aren’t a wholly new venture, this is the first time they’re doing them on a permanent basis.
STATUS — Lloydie’s is officially open at 66 St-Viateur West (between St-Urbain and Clark) from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday to Saturday (closed Sunday), with hours possibly set to expand later on.
