Bonfire Restaurant is back on the MS Coast. But is it just as good as it used to be?
It’s exceedingly rare for me to try something on the Coast that I end up detesting.
You may know that if you read my reviews each week. Maybe it’s tired, at this point. Perhaps you’re waiting for a poor review, and you’re hoping today is that day.
I have bad news for you, friend. Today is not that day.
Bonfire Restaurant took some time off in between locations and is back serving its fusion of Jamaican and Southern culinary twists at a Gulfport location at 2079 E Pass Rd.
Bonfire delivers health-conscious food both unique to the Caribbean and familiar to South Mississippi.
Nearly two years to the day since we visited the former Biloxi location, it was time to see just how well the just-opened-in-August version was carrying the establishment’s legacy as a highly-regarded secret.
In short: pretty dang well.
This was one of those meals. One that comes around every once in a waning crescent moon with exactly 33.17 percent illumination. This was a transcultural concoction of taste that left me bitter I wasn’t alerted of its makers sooner.
The menu is hearty. It’s filling. It’s an exploration of taste that fuses what’s known with what’s new. That’s the intersection Bonfire works within.
A crosshair that combines the fried chicken your grandmother makes with the coco bread picked up from a Jamaican market.
And that coco bread is life-altering at Bonfire. It’s gluten-free and made in-house. A splash of coconut milk is used in the process of making the Jamaican delicacy. The chef recommends pairing with a beef patty.
We had it with their crumbled and salty butter. It was phenomenal. As we’ll learn again later, the bread here is elite.
My entree arrived as a sliced steak, drizzled in a balsamic glaze and served atop a bed of pasta. The combination of tastes was a microcosm of a menu that’s packed with such mergers of flavor.
Then there was the jerk chicken. Extremely tender and dripping off the bone, the meat was flavorful all the way through. It came paired with a divine jerk sauce.
And speaking of sauce, the stew chicken gravy that soaked the serving of rice was otherworldly.
Finally, we tried the festivals. These were sweet bread knots that tasted as if you were biting into a funnel cake from the carnival, but all of its powdered sugar had blown off in the wind.
Our meal was beyond filling, and ended in to-go boxes. Including a box of rum cake.
Bonfire achieves the coalescence of coast and island brilliantly. None of the spices used were overbearing, either. For locals accustomed to the heat carried in Cajun cooking, the seasonings fit right in.
Cajun and creole have many of their origins buried deep in Caribbean cuisine. The marriage Bonfire accomplishes isn’t far-fetched, at all. It’s a blend of the traditional with the local between two ideas that have been tied together through time in a single location.
I recommend.
