COOL JERKS: Nicola Shirley (RIGHT) and the Jerk Hut Staff.
photo: Jacqueline Neale
Nicola Shirley Jamaican Jerk Hut Restaurant
Table Talk with Michael Klein (food editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer...Wednesday, March 21, 2001)
Nicola Shirley of South Street's Jamaican Jerk Hut has two irons in the fire. One is a cookbook, titled Jamaican Run Down, which she is shopping around; the book tucks Jamaican culture and history among the recipes. (The title also is a pun, since run down is idiomatic for "a combination of Jamaican dishes.") She also is cooking up another restaurant, called JA (pronounced "jah") Hut, which in a couple of months will open across from Germantown High School on Germantown Avenue. It will be similar to the Jerk Hut, she says. (JA Hut also is a play on words, she says, as JA is the Rasta term for "God" and also is slang for "Jamaica.")
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July 16–23, 1998
food
Dining al fresco at the Jerk Hut is almost as good as a vacation in Jamaica.
by Katherine Dahlsgaard
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COOL JERKS: Nicola Shirley (RIGHT) and the Jerk Hut Staff. photo: Jacqueline Neale
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Jamaica, the beautiful Caribbean island. Philadelphia, the sweltering hellhole.
Jamaica, surrounded by a tranquil sea and clear blue skies, popularly known as the land of eternal summer.
Philadelphia, where the summers have a way of seeming eternal, too—in an endlessly stinking, sweaty, nasty, grimy, I-hate-myself-and-my-brother kind of way.
What possible escape from the heat? Consider the Jamaican Jerk Hut. A casual BYOB located between Broad and 15th on South, the Jerk Hut features authentic Caribbean food combined with outdoor seating, making the restaurant a delightful place for a summer dinner.
Opened four years ago as a tiny take-out restaurant by Nicola Shirley (who also serves as chef), the Jerk Hut expanded in 1995 to include a 60-seat, partially covered patio in the backyard. To get there, one must enter through a break in the decrepit fence to the east of the restaurant and walk through an abandoned and overgrown lot (41 carefully placed concrete tiles lead the way). Once you reach the patio, you will find round picnic tables covered with bright tablecloths, blooming hibiscus, palms and bamboo plants, the Goodyear blimp floating occasionally overhead, reggae playing softly in the background, and, as you dine, the sun setting peacefully in the west. The city will seem miles away.
On weekend nights, the patio takes on the atmosphere of a summer block party. It gets packed and loud, the beer-drinking wait for a table takes place in the abandoned lot, and live music is provided by reggae and steel bands. Starting the end of this month, the all-female Voices of Africa choral group will begin a once-a-month performance of traditional African songs.
Shirley, who grew up in Kingston, Jamaica before settling permanently here in the '80s, said that her original plan was to provide a clean, well-lighted place for such Jamaican delicacies as Jerk chicken, oxtail stew and roti curries: "I wanted to offer an upscale take-out for Caribbean food that was not intimidating, not inaccessible to anyone."
She has done just that, combining a diverse menu of strongly flavored and high-quality foods with a waitstaff so genuinely pleasant as to be nurturing.
I took along Jessica, one of those serene, beautiful, artistic types, and Johnny, who holds a genuine day job but whose first love is the stage, as evidenced by his role as the eccentric astrologer at this year's Renaissance Faire. As soon as we sat down, I insisted we order drinks.
Part of the Jerk Hut's fascination for me are the outstanding, all-natural, homemade juice drinks ($2.50-$3). All come in cute packaging and are described as having medicinal properties. The sorrel juice (made from the bud of the hibiscus flower) is not only a gorgeous garnet color and a floral, tart drink, but "acts as a blood purifier and is excellent for cancer, boils and tumors." All right! A bargain at any price! The homemade ginger beer (good for stomach upsets and colds) is like pure, liquefied ginger, sweetened just enough to take out the sting. And dig the copy on the Irish Moss, a.k.a. "The Drink of Champions." Apparently, "[t]his drink is very popular with the men. Folklore says Irish moss will give you the much needed energy to perform." A blend of seaweed and linseed, spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, it tastes like eggnog with all the Martha Stewart taken out.
I asked Chef Shirley if the Irish moss really delivered, and she told me that men come by the Hut everyday just to drink it. Swear by the stuff. Act like the world is over if they can't get it.
Johnny went nuts. "This is too good," he said, sucking it down. "I could live on this." "Well, it is very popular with the men," intoned Jessica. A day after our dinner I tried a little investigative reporting, called him up and inquired as to how Things were going. "I haven't had the need to perform yet," he said. "Okay, but if you did, would you partake in an Irish moss?" I asked. "Oh, yes, definitely."
Our meal included appetizers of a tangy mango salsa—with onions, lime and cilantro—served with tortilla chips ($4.75); a chewy, fresh conch salad, mayonnaise-based and spiced with peppers ($6.25); and a small, smooth calaloo ( a Caribbean leafy green vegetable) tart ($6). All are recommended.
Dinner included, of course, some of that divine jerk chicken, served with coconut rice and beans ($10). An invention of Jamaica, "jerk" refers to the traditional method of cooking the meat over an open fire. At the Jerk Hut, the meat of choice is cooked over a charcoal pit. The homemade jerk seasoning (a secret, but it contains ginger, thyme, all-spice, onions and soy) is rubbed onto the meat, creating a flavor that is tangy, spicy and smoky.
The escovish red snapper consisted of a pan-fried whole fish (head, tail and bones included) served under a melange of white onions, peppers and carrots that had been pickled in a sweet and sour vinegar mixture ($14). Sides were rice and beans, carrots sautéed in ginger and garlic, and fried plantains (a larger, barely sweet version of the banana).
As a final entree, we might have tried a vegetarian dish (there are several meat-free entrees on the menu), but we wanted to try the curry goat in roti: chunks of goat in a mild yellow curry, folded into the roti, a flat bread with mashed chickpeas between the layers ($7.50). To eat, you unfold the bread and, with your hands, pick up pieces of the goat and some mango chutney with the roti. These dishes were all great, too.
Desserts were interesting (Jamaican bread pudding, bean pie, a mango cinnamon crumble cake, $2-3), but none were as textured in flavor as the food which had preceded them. If you don't want something heavy to end your meal, try another juice drink. Who knows what you might be capable of after a dose of carrot milk or strawberry lemonade?
Jamaican Jerk Hut, 1436 South Street, 545-8644. (The Jerk Hut delivers! 20 percent increase on all delivered food, 413-7000). Open Monday to Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sunday 5-10 p.m. Reservations accepted; credit cards accepted. Outside seating is not wheelchair accessible.