San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
3 great Jamaican spots part of Black Restaurant Week
Caribbean flavors lend event vibrance
Roger Crombie grew up playing and working at his family’s jerk shop in Clarendon, Jamaica. In San Antonio last summer, he turned that lifetime of experience cooking the distinctive grilled meat of his homeland into Real Real Jamaica, the North Side restaurant he owns with fellow Jamaican JodiAnn
Brown.
She makes the stews and curries; he’s in charge of the jerk, a collection of spices, sauces and techniques as ubiquitous in Jamaica as barbecue is in the States. It’s a success story that grew from a food truck wrapped in the bright yellows and greens of the Jamaican flag, a flag that also inspires Little Jamaica Foods on the Northeast Side and The Jerk Shack on the West Side. Together, they transport San Antonio to Jamaica, 1,500 miles away but close enough to taste.
All three restaurants have been participating in Black Restaurant Week this past week. Originally scheduled to end Sunday, the event’s been extended through March 7, and Little Jamaica and Real Real Jamaica will participate in that extended date.
Black Restaurant Week includes 30 Black-owned restaurants, food trucks and other vendors. They are donating $1 from each sale of special dishes to the San Antonio Food Bank, which is matched both weeks by the Tim Duncan Foundation, Spurs Give this week and the Valero Energy Foundation next week.
The Jerk Shack
It’s fair to say that The Jerk Shack shook me awake in 2018 with the fiery cooking of Lattoia Massey, a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, San Antonio, who goes by the nom de guerre Chef Nicola Blaque. It wasn’t just me. GQ magazine named The Jerk Shack one of its Best New Restaurants.
Her char-grilled jerk chicken ($15 per pound) still bristles with pepper and herbs, and that would be enough, if that’s all there was. But she’s livened up the menu by adding jerk pork ribs ($30 for a half-rack) worthy of a
Texas pitmaster, if that pitmaster listened to Jimmy Cliff.
The Jerk Shack, near
Our Lady of the Lake University, channels the casual air of a walk-up food stand with Jamaican beef patties ($3) like flaky pot pies you hold in your hand, plus smoky jerk pork tacos ($10 for three) and fried jerk wings with creamy mac and cheese ($15). But it also channels a chef vibe with silky braised oxtails in mahogany gravy served with cabbage and the Jamaican specialty rice and peas ($18).
The Jerk Shack family is growing. Last year, the team added the Caribbean
wrap stand Mi Roti at the Pearl’s Bottling Department food hall, and a second location of The Jerk Shack is planned near SeaWorld San Antonio in July. And in case all that plus a pandemic and building a new home for themselves wasn’t enough, Massey and her husband, Cornelius, will welcome their second child in June.
117 Matyear St., 210-7767780, Facebook: @thejerkshacksatx. Open 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Takeout and third-party delivery only.
Little Jamaica Foods
Almartino Stewart introduced me to brown stew chicken, and I thank him for that. The flavors of garlic, paprika and brown sugar intermingled in a rich brown gravy turn chicken into a glowing work of art ($10 for a large plate with two sides).
He learned to cook that dish in his native Jamaica. Together with his wife, Yolanda, who’s from Miami, they opened Little
Jamaica Foods near Windcrest in 2013. Their shop carries a greatest-hits list of Jamaican classics including rustic jerk chicken ($10 for a large plate with two sides) and oxtails that are fall-apart tender without going all fatty, with a disciplined brown gravy like a Sunday roast ($16 for a regular plate with two sides).
Side dishes make a big difference here, especially crispy and filling mashed and fried plantain slices and a big helping of rice and peas that reminded me of Cajun dirty rice. Add a cool bottle of Vita Malt, a Jamaican soda that’s like a nonalcoholic cross between an English brown ale and gingerbread.
5490 Walzem Road, 210-637-1293, Facebook: @littlejamaicafoods. Open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays; noon to 9 p.m. Saturdays. Dine-in, curbside and third-party delivery available.
Real Real Jamaica
The best way to pick a good Jamaican restaurant is to ask someone who knows. I’d say Massey of The Jerk Shack is someone who knows, and she recommended Real Real Jamaica on San Pedro near Oblate.
Get the curried goat and the saltfish with ackee, she said. Right on, and here’s why. The goat ($17 with two sides) tamed that rangy beast into tender bites enveloped in brown gravy that spoke just as loud with herbs as it did with garlic and curry. Ackee is a Caribbean fruit that cooks down like scrambled eggs, and it calms the funky flavors of saltfish for a plate that’s colorful and filling ($17 with two sides).
Chef and co-owner Crombie does his heritage proud with jerk chicken that wears its skin like a suit of amber silk, jeweled with pepper, garlic and herbs with the best jerk sauce in this report ($13 with two sides).
For sides, let me introduce macaroni pie, stacked as tall as a lasagna and bound together all gooey like your favorite mac and cheese. Get that, along with a salty-sweet tangle of cabbage sautéed with every vegetable in the kitchen.
But for sheer spectacle, go with red snapper escovitch ($16 with two sides), a whole fish fried to order, delicate and flaky against a background of pickled vegetables. Think of your favorite Mexican restaurant’s escabeche minus the jalapeños, and you’re there.
6828 San Pedro Ave., 210-858-3015, Facebook: @realrealjamaica. Open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Dine-in, curbside and third-party delivery available.