Mexico meets West Indies cuisine (with vegetarian options) at Melendez – Imports International Restaurant in Berrien Springs, Michigan.
So a Jamaican chef walks into a Mexican restaurant — no joke — and whips up food of the West Indies, from jerk chicken to curry goat to oxtail stew, plus a vegetarian option. This two-culture menu greets diners each Thursday and Friday at Melendez – Imports International Restaurant in Berrien Springs, a modest spot with a small grocery on the side that carries imports from Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean.
Why? Look directly across Old U.S. 31 to the main gate of Andrews University, where a 3,000-plus student body hails from more than 90 countries.
“There was a need for it,” owner Joe Melendez says about augmenting the Mexican menu. “I saw a big West Indies population here.”
“Everything we have comes in the vegetarian form and vegan,” Melendez says — flautas, empanadas, tamales, and others filled with vegetables.
And it’s closed on Saturdays, the Sabbath.
It’s a worthy stop for harvest-time road trips through the area’s fragrant vineyards, the hike/bike/ski options at Love Creek County Park, or even a salt-cave experience at The Salt Haven in downtown Berrien Springs.
“Everything is made from scratch,” Melendez says, standing near a box of tomatoes that local farmers came and sold to him. “We don’t even have a can opener.”
One exception is the Jamaican patty, a meat pie that comes frozen and is baked here.
Mexican chef Emilio Enriquez describes five kinds of salsa that he makes. There’s the fresh salsa with homemade chips — salsa made with tomatillos, onions, cilantro, and spices that kick but that he’s toned down. There’s a special salsa for the wet burrito, then red, green, and fire-throwing habanero salsas for other dishes.
Jamaican chef Paul, who’s shy about giving his last name, comes early to cook his native specialties on Thursdays and Fridays, then heads to his full-time job as a vegetarian chef for students at Andrews.
The flavors of the West Indies span such island countries as Haiti, Cuba, Trinidad, Tobago, the Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas.
Paul, who trained as a chef in New York City after immigrating 35 years ago, notes how jerk chicken was initially concocted by former African slaves who’d taken refuge in Jamaica, called Maroons. Two spices that drive its unique taste are pimento, which is sweet, and Scotch bonnet pepper, which is fiery like the habanero and a native of the West Indies.
The oxtail stew has soft meat on the bone in a savory sauce of lima beans, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, and other flavors. If customers try it, Paul rightly says, “They will start (regularly) eating it.”
The vegetarian option is essentially the same stew but uses a soy-based meat substitute instead of ox.
It’s best eaten over the coconut rice and beans that come with the West Indies dinners.
Think this place is small? You should have seen the tiny South of the Border storefront on downtown Ferry Street that the Melendez family had run — a fixture there for 34 years and the tip of a cultural iceberg. The Melendezes also delivered Mexican imports to dozens of small and major grocery stores within 100 miles, at a time before many local Mexican mom and pops began to appear.
Melendez and his nine siblings pitched in on a business that their father, the late Domingo Melendez, started in the 1970s by loading up a step-van with Mexican staple foods, driving it into the migrant worker camps around Milford, Ind., and selling out.
“He knew the Mexican people,” Melendez says. “He’d sit outside of their temporary homes.”
By 1980, the family moved to Berrien Springs, smack in the middle of Berrien County’s rich agriculture and hungry migrant workers, but also close to the university.
The family eventually grew tired of the road and quit the import deliveries.
Melendez, who’d earned a business degree and spent several years in retail management, returned home from a job in Illinois when his ailing father called for help with the business. His father died ten years ago.
As owner, Joe Melendez moved to the current spot on U.S. 31 five years ago, keeping up with recipes that his now 90-year-old mother had influenced. You find wet tamales and wet burritos, both smothered with melted cheese. Now, there are fried plantains every day, too. Melendez prides himself on using flank steak, known for its flavor.
