The food
Jerk chicken with the char it’s supposed to have. Coconut curried shrimp. Escovitch snapper under pickled onion and pepper. Crispy plantain cakes. Stir-fried vegetables. Roasted breadfruit and yam. Coconut cream pumpkin soup. Conch and Florida lobster when the season allows.
And juice — soursop, June plum, sorrel, tamarind, cucumber and ginger — pressed that afternoon, not poured from a bottle.
Vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, and allergy guests are welcome and well taken care of. Five courses of their own, cooked with the same care as everyone else’s. She did this for two decades for tables of thirty, and it is not an afterthought.
* Curried goat by request, at additional cost. It takes four hours and it’s worth it.
Three menus
Vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free guests are not on a side track. They get the same number of courses, plated as carefully, with no note on the menu apologizing for it. That has been the standard at Zimbali for twenty years.
Dietary needs
Tell us on the inquiry and the menu comes back adjusted. Gluten-free swaps are straightforward — most Jamaican cooking is naturally gluten-free once you take out the festival and the dumplings, and we can offer alternatives that fit the rest of the meal.
Nut allergies, seafood allergies, and kosher-adjacent needs: name them clearly on the inquiry. Alecia has cooked around all of it for twenty years without a separate plate.
The juices
Creamy, cold, floral. Nobody has this in a bottle. Everyone asks for a second glass.
Tart, tropical, cuts the richness of the mains.
Hibiscus flowers steeped with ginger and clove. Served cold. It is the color of a good garnet.
Puckery, deep. Alecia sweetens it with brown sugar and lime.
Green, sharp, refreshing. The one non-drinkers finish first.
Straight from the coconut when we can source them locally.
Pricing summary
Per guest, food and juice included. $1,200 minimum booking — two guests or thirty, the same either way. Kitchen assistant included over twelve. Free travel inside 25 miles of Sarasota — and free anywhere in Florida for parties of ten or more.
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