Let me preface with the fact that i have eaten here about 15 times since it opened. I am not from, but spent a significant portion of my life in the Caribbean. When it first opened, I was excited, considering my only option for really...good island food was in Atlanta. I tried to like it, but it was just okay. I tried a couple of other times in the following months and it got a little better, but wasn't island food. About a year ago, I was running late and needed lunch and tried again. The food was literally amazing. The oxtail, the greens; wow. I probably had lunch or dinner there another 7 or 8 times , until recently. My friends (visiting from the Caribbean) had dinner there and I had expressed how wonderful the food is and it's near identical taste and soul to that found back home. It was awful. The oxtail, the goat, the greens. Even the rice was dry and tasteless. I'm not sure what happened in such a short window, perhaps the chef left or purveyors were changed, but it was just terrible. The only positive thing about the experience was the service. Needless to say, I will never be back. I will travel to larger cities when I crave Caribbean. I'm saddened by the potential this establishment had.More

I came to Asheville on vacation. It was my first time visiting. I had been told that Asheville had amazing restaurants and that I would enjoy every place I went...WRONG!!! When we were looking for places to eat Calypso stood out to me because I...am from the islands myself and my in-laws are from St. Lucia. I don't think I have ever eaten at a place this bad ever. It was truly disgusting. I intended to order at first the Piton Stew. I was told they didn't have any because they sold a lot of it the night before. Two things popped into my head... 1) They open at 2pm. Why don't they have all their menu items ready. 2) Were they planning to serve us food from last night instead of freshly made??? The answer to question #2 is definitely yes, but I'll get to that later. Since they didn't have stew ready, I went with the goat roti because you can never go wrong with goat roti...WRONG again! This was the worst goat roti ever. Some parts of the goat were overly salty and some parts were extremely bland...all cold. No type of heat for freshly prepared food. The roti skin was definitely not fresh by any means. It was hard and stiff, but it was hot. The two sides I had with my roti were dumplings and rice and peas. The dumplings were supposed to be sauteed in some type of curry butter. It was disgusting. They nailed the texture of the dumplings, but it was extremely bland. No type of seasoning. The curry butter didn't even have the essence of curry, it was just butter and it wasn't hot. The rice and peas, extremely mushy and bland. No salt, no seasoning. It was hot though. I even asked for extra gravy from the goat to see if it would help the taste. It didn't. When they brought the gravy, from the way it was caked around the dish, seem like it was microwaves. That made me question the freshness of the food altogether. We were at the restaurant when they opened at 2pm. We waited almost 40 minutes for our food. It's strange that meals literally came out half hot and half cold. I spent $30 for the worst meal ever. The only thing I enjoyed was the Tropical Rhythms juice which you can buy from any Caribbean grocery store. I called up my cousin from St. Lucia and said that this business would not survive if it was in a place with a heavy Caribbean community because the food was awful. The pic below is how I left my plate. I couldn't even eat it.More

Would have loved to ty this restaurant, however, there we were with an out of town guest on Wednesday, September 11th, arriving right on time with a confirmed reservation only to find a sign on the door saying that the restaurant was closed and would...fe-open in s new days. What made the experience even more unpalatable, hopefully not like the food we never got to try, was that approximately 3hours before our scheduled arrival time we received a "reminder" email, cautioning us to be on time as they would only hold the reservation for 15 minutes should we arrive late. Really sloppy way to run a busines!!!!More