San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Jerk Shack chef/owner’s vision working like a dream
At the top of a wall inside The Jerk Shack are five words spelled out in big, bright letters: “It was all a dream.”
The words are from the song by Notorious B.I.G., but they also tell the story of the Caribbean restaurant’s origin. Owner and founder Latoia Massey — who’s better known as Nicola Blaque — said she was inspired to open it by a vision after a 2017 visit to Jamaica for the funeral of her aunt. While there, she ate “some of the best jerk chicken of my life.”
“I felt like, honestly, my aunt was talking to me from the grave,” Blaque said. “When I ate that jerk chicken, I was like, ‘This is what I need to be doing in San Antonio. I need to be paying homage to my heritage and using my chef ’s skills to the best of my ability.’ ”
Since opening in 2018, the restaurant has received accolades from publications such as Eater and GQ, both of which named it one of the best new restaurants in the U.S. for 2019 and 2020, respectively. Blaque went on to open Mi
Roti in the Pearl’s Food Hall at Bottling Department shortly before the pandemic, and she’s in talks to open another restaurant at Hemisfair.
Born in Jamaica, Blaque grew up from the age of 5 in the United States. She learned to cook Caribbean staples by helping her mother in the kitchen. Because her stepfather was in the U.S. Air Force, she spent her childhood moving between such places as New Hampshire, Hawaii and Washington state.
She went on to serve 10 years
in the U.S. Army with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. After she left the military, her husband — who was then her boyfriend — encouraged her to pursue her passion for cooking. While attending The Culinary Institute of America, San Antonio, she began a career as a caterer. That led her to become a restaurateur.
Blaque designed the interior of The Jerk Shack to bring to mind a typical Caribbean jerk shack — a restaurant where jerk chicken is served — with wood tables and metal chairs. Many of the meals are served in baskets on top of imitation
newspaper.
She recently sat with the Express-News to discuss what makes jerk chicken special, her efforts to “modernize” Caribbean cooking and the difficulties facing female restaurateurs in San Antonio. The following has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Q: Did you enjoy your time in the military?
A:
I learned a lot. I learned leadership, I learned camaraderie — things that I don’t know that a lot of people pick up in life.
Q: Have the skills you gained in the military served you well as a restaurateur?
A: In the military they have a saying: “You never leave your battle buddy.” I look at that mentality the same way with my business. I try to do everything that I can, not just for my leadership employees but for all of my employees. I try to know their family situation if they’re in hard times. During the pandemic, I didn’t let anyone go. I figured out a way to keep it going because I realized that these people are counting on me to make the best decision.
Q: I would imagine your experience as a logistics specialist has come in handy.
A:
You kind of feel like you’re micromanaging, but the military taught me to be organized in every step of the process. I feel like with restaurant owners, you have to know every part of that process and you have to be organized with it.
Q: There used to be two Jerk Shacks, right? Did you have to close the other?
A:
I did, just because of manpower and the situation there. I just didn’t like it, so I’m focusing on this location and the future contract that I have with Hemisfair.
Q: When do you hope to open your restaurant at Hemisfair?
A:
I’m hoping that by the end of this year I could start breaking ground. You know, the pandemic has put a little bit of financial strain on restaurants. It’s harder to get loans. Even with this restaurant, our loan, we couldn’t close on it. Because I closed for a few weeks and the banks were like, “So many restaurants are closing and defaulting on their loans. How are you not going to let that happen?” So I ended up having to go an untraditional route.
Q: You have a restaurant at the Pearl, and you’re going to have one at Hemisfair — two of the most important places in the urban core.
A:
People ask me, “Did you plan for that?” And I’m like,
“No, I didn’t.” When the Pearl had reached out to me, I was eight months pregnant with my son. It was right before the pandemic kicked off. It happened so fast, and it was unexpected.
Q: Has the location been successful?
A: You know, it’s been a learning experience, I can put it like that. A lot of factors can affect how your business goes there. Weather is a big one. When we have a lot of changes — during the pandemic, tables in, tables out — all of that affects your sales. But for the most part, I’m just happy to be there, the fact that I’m spreading the word of Caribbean food.
Q: Even though you grew up in the U.S., I would imagine there was a lot of Jamaican culture in the house.
A: There was. My mom wanted to make sure we understood our heritage and our food, and my grandparents would mail us care packages of Caribbean spices, because
some of the places we lived you just couldn’t get that stuff.
Q: When did you become interested in cooking?
A: Always, always. Just watching my mom cook in the kitchen, I don’t know, since the minute I can hold a knife, probably 7 or 8, I’ve just loved it. When I really found out that it was a part of me was probably when I was getting out of the military. The only thing that made me happy was cooking, you know. My husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, he was like, “If that’s what makes you happy, that’s what you have to follow.”
Q: How is jerk chicken different from regular chicken?
A: It’s super-spicy. It’s not a spicy like the hot wing, where you taste it first. It’s more savory, you know? What’s special about our jerk chicken is we grind it in spices so it’s got a nice, tender texture to it. There’s a little bit of sweetness and saltiness, and then you start to taste the spice and the
thyme and the onion and the garlic and then boom! You feel the heat.
Q: You consider yourself to be modernizing Caribbean cooking. Could you explain how?
A: I feel like Caribbean food, it’s kind of a soulful comfort food, you know? People are used to making it one way. What I mean by modernizing is in techniques, like how to do it in high volume. And fusion, right? I live in San Antonio, Texas, where most people don’t even know what Caribbean food is. So I’ve had to take my culture in the way that I cook food and merge it with what the city is known for, i.e., tacos. We’ve done things like burgers, and we do lamb. It’s not so much that I’m trying to take away what Caribbean food is, but bring more exposure to it. When you go to a city it’s very rare that you’ll find that they have a Caribbean restaurant. I feel like if we can kind of change the techniques, rather than keeping it more comfort and homey and soulful to
where only a few of us can enjoy it, we’ll be able to share with the world what Caribbean food is.
Q: I noticed you have jackfruit as an option, right? So you cater to vegans?
A: My best friend has been a vegan, I think, before anyone was vegan. She’s been a vegan close to 20 years. So I learned a lot about cooking vegan cuisine. I just said, “I’m going to do it, because I know for people like her it matters.”
Q: Do you see this becoming a chain?
A: You know, I always like to revisit the story of Torchy’s (Tacos) and how it started out with just one, the trailer. If my story happened like Torchy’s, I’d just know that I helped a lot of people. You know, I look at what he’s done and the lives that he’s impacted and how successful the brand is, and I hope to even be half of what he’s done.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share about
your business?
A: In this city, the community of female minority-owned businesses is so small. We all see each other at the same events. I don’t know where the disconnect is for them to open up. When I decided that I was going to open the restaurant, you know, of course I was scared, but I didn’t even think twice. I had a vision that was so strong and it was burning so hard inside of me nobody could have talked to me out of it. The hurdle, you know? I wish that more women did that jump. You know, we’re all here to support you.
Q: Do you think there are societal barriers?
A: I think there are! Because a lot of times when I walk into a room, if I’m walking in with one of my meal chefs and my husband, they automatically assume that they’re the chef and they’re the owner and I’m just tagging along for the ride. So many kinds of people, they just underestimate who I am. I do feel like this city has some hurdles for female chefs.