JAMAICA JAMAICA CONJURES UP A CULINARY MIX

Memory, for some, is triggered by madeleines dipped into lime-blossom tea. For others, rice and peas and jerk chicken will do. Several recent visits to Jamaica Jamaica hurtled me right back to the Caribbean neighborhood I lived in in New York. Once a year, on Labor Day, the streets exploded into full-scale carnival with steel bands, floats from all the islands and vendors hawking salt fish fritters, fresh fruit elixirs and curried goat.

Like several other cuisines of the Americas that have come to prominence in the last few years, Caribbean cooking is the result of cultural collision on a grand scale. Africa, India and Europe meet the raw materials of the New World and voila, what a melting pot! Jamaican food bears traces of life under both English and Spanish rule redefined through spices from the East.

My friend, a critical cook up on his Cornish pasties, took one bite of a beef patty the other night and declared it the best he’d had in the U.S.A. They were like my street-vendor food, only clarified, still deep-fried but crisp and light. The patties--chicken, fish or beef--are flaky, spicy renditions of savory turnovers. The crab balls are crunchy, well-groomed. Wonderful salt fish fritters contain a smooth cod mousseline. The conch variety, on the other hand, tastes like Howard Johnson’s fried clams.

Settling back with our fruit drinks, dumb white rolls and Jamaican beer, we looked around. “It looks like a bordello,” I said. No one at the table had actually been to a bordello but they disagreed. Sarah said, “Well, maybe the lamps could have qualified around 1900 in New Orleans. But what about that big banana and that disco ball?” OK. The decor is a definite mix. But there’s a certain comfortable quality--those siren-red fringed lamps, those wine-velvet banquettes, those beautifully low lights, those pink linens and that ceiling filled with stars.

But who needs to conjure anything at all when a first-rate goat and jerk chicken is placed right before you? The flavors dance in polyrhythms off the tongue. The dark bass notes of the jerk chicken play after the first sweet barbecue sensations are gone, the heat riding in as a second melody. Never dared to taste curry goat? Try it here. With the spices suffusing the meat, the taste is distinct and clean. Not gamey at all, it is closest perhaps to a lean and well-marinated lamb.

We ordered the beet root salad thinking it would be an exotic dish. It turned out to be sliced canned beets in a fruity marinade. Better was the rich homemade chicken soup served with the entrees. Spanish roots assert themselves in what Jamaicans call the “escovitched” yellowtail. As with European and Latin American dishes made en escabeche , oil and vinegar, red and green peppers are tossed over a baked or fried fish and then briefly sauteed. The fish here was tender inside its gleaming crust.

All of the dishes come with carefully prepared fresh vegetables; some are also served with the traditional smokey rice and peas (this translates as browned rice with tiny red beans.) Brown stew chicken is another dark and lusciously marinated affair. Only the fruity, light crab curry put back into the shell is sweeter than I’d like it to be.

Desserts are less interesting. Bread pudding is gelatinous and served with aerosol whipped cream. The “bun and cheese,” a rich nutbread, is better, but comes with a maraschino cherry and small triangles of what seems like plain old American cheese. Stick with the Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee or have one of those rum drinks topped with a paper parasol. Or if you’re there on a dance night, simply push back your chair and get down to the reggae beat.

Jamaica Jamaica, 2205 Lincoln Blvd., Venice. (213) 301-6006. Open Tuesday s -Sunda ys for lunch (11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.) , dinner (5-10 p.m.). Dancing, Thursdays-Sundays 10 p.m.-2 a.m. Parking in lot. Full bar. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two (food only): $20-$45. Thursday, Rum Punch Reggae Party Buffet, 5-9:30p.m., $10.95.