Home Away from Home: Kool Runnings

As Memorial Drive passes through Old Fourth Ward, Belvedere Park and then Stone Mountain, it slowly morphs into a scattered, somewhat dingy stretch of small businesses and restaurants offering cuisines from around the world – like Buford Highway, but less promising. Kool Runnings, one of the better-known Jamaican restaurants in the area, sits next to a car dealership and a sign advertising a useful, albeit random selection of services:

“CAR RENTAL $28 A DAY
“AUTO REPAIR $18 OIL CHANGE
“MATTRESS $49.”

Owner Tony Reid, a native Jamaican, opened this particular Kool Runnings in 1993 – the same year that Disney premiered its live-action film Cool Runnings, starring John Candy as an Olympic gold medalist-turned-Olympic coach and Doug E. Doug as one of four earnest Jamaicans in the nation’s first-ever bobsledding team. Reid opened three more locations in the 15 years that followed – including one at Atlantic Station in 2008, where Sean Kingston was set to perform during its grand opening – but now, the Stone Mountain Kool Runnings remains both the first one ever built and the last one standing.

Based on the menu board posted above the cafeteria set-up of heat lamps and steaming pans, Kool Runnings presumably offers a few dozen options, including the requisite jerk pork and chicken, curry goat roti and tripe. However, on this particular Thursday afternoon, Kool Runnings had just four plates to try: oxtails, stewed beef, stewed chicken and curry chicken. Two women, one of them Chinese, were taking orders and offering samples. Reid was absent.

Stripped sprigs of thyme, presumably thrown in at the start of cooking, suddenly appeared in between bites like stray threads. The mustard-colored juices of the tender curry chicken stained our plastic forks after just the first bite. As indicated by those sprigs and stains, Kool Runnings clearly remembered to add a generous amount of flavor and spice to our curry chicken and stewed beef. Unfortunately, its stews had already congealed over our beans and rice by the time our plates arrived. Clearly, they had forgotten to keep these dishes hot throughout lunchtime.

A huge, wooden chandelier hovers over the other, solemn eaters as they stare at their plates and, perhaps, the reggae concert calendars shoved underneath the glass tabletops. Outside, postcard-sized flyers were strewn all over the ground, and much of the exterior red, yellow and green paint had faded and started to peel. Kool Runnings may be a long-standing, earnest attempt at a family business, but it is also a rather strange artifact – of this brief period in time in which Cool Runnings actually felt like a refreshing twist on yet another PG-rated sports comedy, and when Tony Reid realized that he could play up his heritage in a business opportunity. Its fading décor can be pretty distracting – more memorable, really, than the food itself.

‘Home Away from Home’ is PURGE’s semi-regular, darndest attempts to find the best in Atlanta shack eating – those mom and pop shops marked with just ‘BBQ,’ or the ones set up shop at gas stations, even those without a proper website. E-mail suggestions at info@purgeatl.com.

Photo Credit: Tim Song