Blue Mountain Café brings an authentic Jamaican taste to downtown
By: Dominic Gavan
LEESBURG, VA- Blue Mountain Café sits close to the courthouse in the heart of downtown and presents a different taste than most ‘Burg restaurants. Some of the owners of the restaurant even hail straight from Jamaica. The name Blue Mountain just suggests an interesting visual for this diamond. This diamond of the Jamaican cuisine will also reveal a whole new definition to bananas.
From plantains to jerked goat, if you enjoy Jamaican cuisine you will enjoy Blue Mountain Café. Plantains are essentially bananas. Some versions of cooking have you baking or frying them, thus making them a perfect side dish to any meal. Jerked chicken is usually a good sign that a restaurant may have some good island cuisine; however, jerked goat is an almost definite sign.
Jerking something is an island tradition most commonly applied as a spicy dry rub with Jamaican jerk spice in it. All of Blue Mountain’s dishes also come with a side of rice which is nice carb to absorb some of the spiciness.
Behind every diamond there is usually a good story, and this one is no different. Some of the restaurant owners’ didn’t exactly have restaurant owner as the main sight of their career goals. “We worked in an office building, in cubicles, dull enough to be out of a scene from Office Space minus the printer smashing,” explained one of the owners.
Once they decided that the cubicle wasn’t really their scene, they turned to a passion of two of the Jamaican native owners: cooking. Growing up helping on farms makes someone take to food in a way that can’t really be faked. This being the case for both of them, there was great potential for a delicious career ahead of them.
Once they decided that they were going to open a restaurant, they eventually settled on Leesburg to be their location. They took over a former art gallery and quickly learned how expensive being an entrepreneur can truly be. With bills being a constant threat, owners have to work their schedule directly around when the most people are coming through the door. It’s not so easy to learn in a town with foot traffic as unpredictable as Leesburg’s.
The Blue Mountain Café, however, has found its schedule and already had its official grand opening. With tables and a full bar, it’s not only a chill place to eat but also a great place for your whole family. With an extremely friendly and open staff (they were already telling me about how they got started before I gave them my high school reporter spiel) it’s bound to be a good meal from the second you walk on in.
For the icing on top of the cake, they plan to have as many Jamaican-produced ingredients shipped over as possible, including Jamaican coffee beans. They also plan on serving a soda company based in Jamaica. During the summer they also have plans to bring live bands to their patio. Why not break from a vanilla type of restaurant and try Blue Mountain Café?
