Arrive Magazine - January/February, 2009

My father and I stood on the 1900 block of Bridgeport’s Main Street, overwhelmed. From somewhere among the low, clapboard buildings and 90-year-old brick tenements, a seductive aroma floated through the air, smoky and sweet and spicy, redolent of charring wood in an oil-drum grill. It was, unmistakably, Jamaican jerk chicken, and it put us in a bit of a bind.

For as much as we wanted to follow our noses to McGhie’s Caribbean— a foreboding, nearly windowless restaurant that was the aroma’s apparent source—we had to think strategically.

We had only just emerged from lunch at Taqueria La Michoacana, an unassuming Mexican restaurant next to a liquor store, and we were, at least in theory, stuffed and satisfied. Were we really ready to eat again, especially in McGhie’s? With its tiny, thick, opaque glass windows, it looked like the kind of bar where you could disappear for an afternoon—or a weekend.

Meanwhile, across the street was El Idolo #2, an Ecuadoran restaurant promising authentic ceviche, while up a few yards was Escamilla, a diner serving Salvadoran pupusas alongside cheeseburgers.

Around the corner was the Pombal Bakery, where we surely had to pick up some Portuguese egg tarts. And in fact, all over Bridgeport—the down-on-its-luck Park City that was once home to P. T. Barnum—were restaurants representing the best of Central America, Turkey, Brazil and beyond. Only one thing, we knew, was for sure: This might be the most exciting place to eat in Connecticut.