Kaieteur Restaurant
“My Go to dishes are the Chicken Fried Rice, Pepper Shrimp Fried Rice, Chicken Lo Mein and the Fried Shark.”
“As a guyanese girl living in Philadelphia, good west indian food is hard to find.”
“The whole meal was enough to feed 2 people (maybe 3, but this was too heartwarming of a meal ;0) Fried Rice was delicate, not overly salty.”
Kaieteur Restaurant
Takes Reservations: Yes
Delivery: Yes
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Has TV: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Caters: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
8 reviews
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Kaieteur is an excellent Guyanese restaurant located on the border of Kew Gardens and Richmond Hill. The curry goat is extremely flavorful. They also make a chicken fried rice or shrimp fried rice that is such a huge portion of goodness. When you walk in you see a cool colorful mural , then when you walk in the restaurant, it looks like a catering hall, but it's a restaurant. The waitresses are pretty mean, but the food is so good, you deal with it.
While the Q10 bus does not travel to the Caribbean, its Lefferts Boulevard route curves through Richmond Hill where one can find the Kaieteur Restaurant.
The exterior and immediate surroundings aren't exactly palm trees and white sandy beach. Across the street is a Key Food, the elevated subway tracks are nearby and a small astroturf-coated bridge must be crossed to enter the restaurant.
Once inside there's a takeout area and sports bar, along with the spacious dining room. It's the kind of setting where formal family functions could be held along with casual diners in t-shirts and shorts. We were promptly seated and presented with a vast menu of Guyanese West Indian delights.
I ordered the chicken curry with dhal puri roti. (roti filled with lentils)
For $8.95 I received a large portion of chicken pieces along with potatoes. The curry was perfect for dipping roti in– not too mild where I may as well be eating tomato sauce but not too spicy where I'm uncomfortable. The Guyanese curry usually lacks a tomato base and this one was no surprise: yellowish brown in color, my mouth was alive with the spicy goodness.
The chunks of chicken included the bone, with marrow ready for sucking. If you haven't tried bone marrow that's been stewing in curry, you're missing out on an underrated culinary delight.
Other items on the menu include assorted curries (chicken/fish/veg), lo and chow meins, fried fish and seafood and more. No single item was overly expensive, with entrees in the 7.95-19.95 range and appetizers below 6.
Some disappointment was experienced when inquiring about a menu item of 'fried shark'. It did not come with bake nor was bake available. (Trinidad's bake and shark, anyone?)
A wide variety of rums and Caribbean beers are also available for imbibing.
Having curry while listening to the restaurant's musical selection of soca classics had me convinced I was no longer in Queens but abroad in the West Indies. Paintings of various scenes from Guyana were on the walls, adding to the pleasant environment.
For much less than the cost of a ticket to Guyana or Trinidad, board the Q10 bus at Union Turnpike and head to Lefferts for authentic West Indian cuisine.
If you're looking to expand inches toward your waistline with cheap "buffet style" a la carte dishes then this restaurant is definitely for you!!!
I came here on a Saturday night and it was like walking into a very cheesy and cheaply 80's flashback designed restaurant that was in desperate need of a Gordan Ramsey intervention.
Surprisingly this restaurant was down right packed but then again I came here the night before Mother's Day so I guess that must be the reason why. The crowd in this restaurant was pretty rowdy, which made me feel like I was crashing someone's house party instead of being in a restaurant.
Their drinks where lousy and overpriced. Worst off, they were served with those retarded looking tiki cups and dressed with fancy straws and miniature umbrellas from the 99 cents store. Their food was an added mess, as it was absolutely horrific and just tasted starchy and fattening! Everything and I mean everything was poorly made and overloaded with salt. After a while, all their dishes started tasting the same. I couldn't tell which protein I was eating from the next and it was so preserved that it almost tasted jerky-like.
To be fair, I can honestly say that I never had this kind of food before, but if this is what they call authentic West Indian then I guess I'm not a fan!!!
I've always had a good time here. Plus the food is very good. Usually end up sticking to my staple West Indian faves like curry chicken, curry goat, dhal puri, roti, mixed meat chow mein, pepper shrimp fried rice. All really flavorful and the portions are very generous. I try to avoid this place on weekends because they get such large groups that a table of 2-4 people can get forgotten and ignored. But once you do get the wait staff's attention they are totally attentive and friendly. The decor is a bit dated but still the food is good enough to overlook stuff like ambiance here.
I used to come here often with my friends for a very late night snack (or should I say meal..). I now just pick up food for work or whenever I'm in the area. Be careful where you park though.
My usually order:
– Jerk chicken lo mein (a must!)
– Fried chicken (I recommend asking them to make it extra crispy and chop it up)
– Roast duck fried rice
– Curry beef with of course roti!
Kaieteur can get pretty crowded and very loud, which I don't mind at all. The food can be amazing but sometimes can taste a bit off. What I mean by is this: do not order from their lunch special. I'm not sure why but when I order from the lunch menu for pick up, it's very greasy and doesn't taste as good as dinner. Maybe it's much cheaper?..
This place is absolutely amazing. Took mom for Mother's Day lunch! We had jerked shrimp for appetizer, fried rice along with curry lamb and white rice. To top it off we had cheese cake for dessert! Honestly, I'd totally recommend this spot for Caribbean food! The staff is user friendly and the train is literally 3 blocks away. Very personal, classy and family oriented kinda environment!!
This is only for the food.. People please gimme a break with the decor, your in richmond hill… get over it. Yes its cheesy but are you really going there for decor and ambiance.. NO!!
The house special fried rice was amazing, also had spiced shrimp lo mein, it was good. The shrimp tasted fresh and cooked perfectly. The lo mein was alittle sweet for me, but i did enjoy it and took home the rest for lunch the next day. LOL
The staff was fine, came by to check on us more often then other places ive been to lately.
would totally go back!
In search of Guy-Chi (Guyanese Chinese food), I came to take out food from Kaiteur and was not disappointed. Order the Pepper Shrimp. It's worth the trip!
Kaieteur is located off of the intersetion of Lefferts Blvd and Jamaica Ave in the Richmond Hill Neighborhood of Queens. (It's about 2 blocks from the J and a short drive off the Van Wyck.) It's a Guyanese restaurant. (As distinguished from a Jamaican restaurant, for example. There are some differences in West Indian cuisine.) Most importantly, Kaieteur seems to feature Guyanese-Chinese food as its specialty.
As you walk in there are two doors, as Mike T. below mentions. The left is to the bar and the right is to the restaurant. (There's a foyer where both meet.) Inside there are a bunch of nicely appointed tables for the restaurant and a booth where you can order out.
I ordered Shrimp Fried Rice and Pepper Shrimp (as well as a Pineapple soda.) The Shrimp Fried Rice, save the pepper sauce, is very close to your well-done shrimp fried rice done anywhere. The shrimp was small and well cleaned. The rice was good — although there was a cucumber for good measure?
But the Pepper Shrimp was the star. I ordered it as an appetizer to share and should have ordered it as a main course. It was both sweet and spicy in a way different from the way you'd expect a Chinese restaurant to sell the same dish. That was awesome.
The pineapple soda was sweet and helped wash the meal down.
A couple of notes on the reviews so far:
1. Parking is difficult. I parked in the neighborhood. There's a police precinct in the middle of a block lined with Victorian homes. I have no idea where you could park as there are a bunch of curb cuts, the train, and businesses that do not let you park outside. I'd recommend something like that. The J I am sure will be predictably slow.
2. The bar, for me at least, was a nice place to get a stiff drink for the like 5 minutes it took to get the food together. However, there were not a lot of women when I went at 9 on a Saturday. Very nice bar though and I enjoyed the drink.
3. Folks tend to think of West Indian food as being homogenous. However, Guyanese food is heavily influenced by Indian cuisine, more so than say Jamaican food — and that's just the English speaking islands/countries. This is Guyanese Chinese food. That's something different altogether. I say that in case some are looking for a Jamaican restaurant — or even a Trini restaurant. There are substantial differences. This was very good.
4. The neon lights on the outside suggest its about to go down as a party place. Perhaps that starts later, but I found it to be quiet when I went.
So I am definitely headed back for the Pepper Shrimp. That's worth a return trip all by itself. (Perhaps over rice.) There's much more to see here and this is was great food.