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This tiny Jamaican restaurant is smaller than most studio apartments, but its huge, flavorful portions have earned it a devoted, outsize following. The cozy two-level place has its cooking quarters downstairs and a snug, four-table dining room upstairs; most patrons opt for takeout, waiting downstairs at a small wooden bar overlooking the rotisserie. Here, gossiping cooks and loud radio evoke the friendly disorder of a domestic kitchen, and the resulting entrées taste similarly homemade. Each bite of crisp-fried chicken yields tender meat well seasoned with green herbs; the curry goat, smoky, mild, and pleasantly mellow; and the macaroni and cheese, baked in countless layers of cheddar and bread crumbs, is served in heart-stoppingly hefty slabs. The Islands’ signature dish, jerk chicken, is slow-cooked with honey, barbecue sauce, and a palpable spicy kick. For a hideaway meal, buck the takeout trend and climb the green corrugated-steel staircase next to the kitchen. Upstairs is a low-ceilinged attic dining room, painted bright yellow and decorated with carvings of birds and island watercolors; the street says Brooklyn, but the plates are all-Carib, like the birds-of-paradise flowers that enhance the room’s tropical flair. — Laurel Fantauzzo

Curry goat, $9; jerk chicken, $8; macaroni and cheese, $5; fried chicken, $8

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• Map No. 13: Prospect Heights (12/18/06)