New restaurants and bars are opening in downtown Ocean Springs as 2020 ends
Restaurants are closing across the country during the coronavirus pandemic, yet four new restaurants or bars are opening in Ocean Springs, three of them downtown.
A bright addition is Wagwan Jamaican Bistro at 711 Washington Ave., painted Caribbean green and yellow. The name means “what’s going on” in Jamaican.
Owners Kelvin and Marcia Isaac opened the restaurant this week for lunch and dinner. He is a French-American chef, he said. She is Jamaican.
“Ocean Springs is the home of food,” he said, and their restaurant lets people experience a new taste.
“I’m very excited,” said Ariuna Thurman, who lives downtown and stopped at the restaurant for take-out lunch. She met a couple who tried the restaurant a few days earlier and told her the oxtail was fall-off-the-bone tender and the best thing they ever tasted.
“It’s like my first time eating oxtail,” she said, and she also ordered Jamaican beef patties baked inside a flaky pastry. Veggie patties made with carrots, corn, peas, cabbage, peppers and onions and mildly seasoned also are on the menu.
In the kitchen, Marcia and her staff were stirring up colorful sauteed cabbage. They opened with family doing the work, and now are adding staff and looking for someone with a Caribbean background who knows the style of cooking.
They also are applying for a liquor license, Kelvin said.
The specialties are the oxtail, along with curried goat and jerk chicken or baby back ribs. The menu has a selection of sandwiches, like the guacamole BLT, salads, entrees and sides.
Friday and Saturday only customers can get a boneless ribeye steak, Caribbean-style fried red snapper or steamed red snapper in Caribbean spices, with carrots, pumpkins, potatoes and okra.
More bars, restaurants to come
“People are looking for things new — downtown, especially,” Kelvin said.
They’ll soon find a new bar, likely called Twisted Turtle, going in just down the street next to Knuckleheads restaurant.
Heath Allen from Ocean Springs owns Knuckleheads, at the corner of Porter and Washington. Because of the proximity to a church, he can’t get a liquor license at the restaurant but he can open a bar in the adjacent space at 522B Washington Ave.
A separate section of the large deck will be set aside for the bar.
In the same area downtown, crews are transforming what was RAW and The Shrimp Factory into a new restaurant.
The building at 708 Washington has a large area for patio dining off the restaurant, and a liquor license application was filed under the name “The Lady May.”
Outside of Ocean Springs near I-10, at 7300 Washington Ave., Jalapeno Grill will open in what was El Rancho restaurant. This is the second Jalapeno Grill on the Coast, with another on Pass Road in Gulfport.
In September, Keg and Barrel restaurant and beer emporium opened on U.S. 90 in Ocean Springs.
This story was originally published December 14, 2020 at 5:50 AM.
