BLACK RIVER — You shouldn't take two little kids out for curry goat when they really want to have Happy Meals.

That's what happened to me when we went to Ja-Ja's Caribbean Kitchen on Route 3 in Black River. Except the "kids" I took with me were two grown men. Little did I know their appetites were less than adventurous.

Much less.

"Goat? You brought me here to eat goat?"

"Oxtail? That's not what I think it is, is it?

"Curry? What's curry? That's the spice they use in Indian restaurants that makes everything hot, right?"

"I don't like hot."

"Why are they saying this chicken is a jerk?"

"There's no way I'm eating goat."

And that's how the first five minutes of our visit to Ja-Ja's went.

The sign by the road still says Willie Mae's Soul Food. A new bright yellow and green sign over the door says Ja-Ja's Caribbean Kitchen.

Michael does the Caribbean cooking. Valerie used to make the soul food, but she's moved on and given her recipes to Michael. So you can get island food or soul food under one roof.

We started out in safe territory with a caffeine-free diet Pepsi, a Goya orange mango soda and, me being the adventurous one, a new Pepsi energy drink.

I had the feeling I was going to need extra energy to get through the next hour with these clowns.

The place wasn't very busy. Michael himself came from the kitchen to take our orders and answer our questions. Actually, I think he thought we were going to drink our sodas and bolt.

Michael told us he could make any dish mild, medium or hot. He explained jerk seasoning, a dry rub made with dried onion, thyme, allspice, salt, black pepper, cinnamon and cayenne pepper. He gets his goat from Hannaford in Watertown.

The chicken is chicken parts, mostly dark meat.

He was very helpful and very patient with us.

I started the ball rolling. Michael chuckled when I ordered curry goat. "Hardly anyone orders that here. In my country, it's the number one choice."

One of the boys ordered one of Michael's "original recipe" dishes: coconut milk shrimp with fried rice. He barely got the words out of his mouth and Michael said, "I think you'd really like the curry chicken."

"OK, I'd like the curry chicken, then."

After learning the meaning of jerk, my other buddy ordered jerk chicken with fried rice, "Medium, please." And because neither of them was going to have anything to do with oxtail, I got an order of oxtail stew to go.

Curry chicken arrived first, a pile of chicken parts in a curry gravy over a mound of red beans and rice. The meat was falling off the bones, evidence that it had been braised, or slow cooked, for hours.

We tried a soul food side, mac and cheese, which we found to be a little dry. Maybe Valerie left something out of the recipe. You know how that goes.

Curry goat came out next, chunks of boneless meat similar in texture to beef stew. The sauce was the same as the curry chicken sauce. I would have liked the meat a little more tender. Perhaps it wasn't braised quite enough.

Jerk chicken had no sauce. The dried spices were obvious on the skin. It resembled grilled chicken, served over fried rice — the same red bean and rice combo with the addition of a few pieces of colorful fresh sweet pepper.

We ordered collard greens on the side, a little lacking in flavor. They're usually cooked with ham hocks. Maybe that's what was missing.

All of our meals came with sweet, ripened golden yellow plantains, a Caribbean fruit similar to banana. These were tasty and well prepared — roasted, not fried, rendering them soft and tasting a bit squashlike.

Desserts were offered, but we declined. I was full. We all took leftovers in to-go boxes. I received all the to-go boxes in the parking lot.

A word of advice when eating Caribbean food: beware of bones. In the slow-cooking process, it's sometimes hard to tell the meat from the bones.

This was especially true of the oxtail stew that I took home. No curry in this dish — more like a dark gravy, which made it even more difficult to tell the meat and bones apart. And looking at the pile of bones I had left, I'd say there were definitely more bones than meat in my stew.

Pricing is simple at Ja-Ja's. All dishes are $10. If you're not into curry and jerk, Michael offers fried chicken, hot wings and barbecue pork or beef ribs.

His "original recipes" are also $10 — things like shrimp noodles and cabbage, spicy seafood platter, roasted peanut butter pepper chicken, and I don't know why my friends didn't jump at this one: neck bone cooked in fresh spinach and olive oil.

And here's a well-kept secret. Dine at Ja-Ja's for lunch, 11:30 to 1, and you'll get 50 percent off the menu prices. That's why our tab for four meals with some soul food sides and sodas came to $32 before tip.

Ja-Ja's Caribbean Kitchen is open from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

On the way home, my cell phone rang. It was the jokesters I took to lunch.

They were singing "You deserve a break today."

You can contact Walter E. Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.

Ja-Ja's Caribbean Kitchen

30092 Route 3 East

Black River, N.Y.

278-8051

HOURS: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Traditional Caribbean cooking — curry chicken and curry goat, jerk chicken or beef, oxtail stew. Original recipes like coconut milk shrimp and roasted peanut butter pepper chicken.

Soul food specialties too — pork or beef barbecue ribs, collard greens, mac and cheese

Rating: 3 forks