Jamaica Jerk

In the early part of this decade, condos in Rogers Park were selling like lightsabers at Comic Con. The neighborhood seemed on the edge of an upswing, and with a new crop of locals looking for places to spend their money, Stanley Waite decided Rogers Park was just the right spot to open his restaurant. This wasn’t an impulse decision. In fact, it came after a few years of nudging by his wife, Paulette, who had cooked curry goat and stew chicken in the couple’s native Jamaica from the time she was tall enough to reach the stove. After immigrating to the States, Stanley supported his family (which eventually grew to include three kids) in banking, and Paulette eventually enrolled in the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago. When Stanley found himself out of work in 2002, Paulette took it as a sign for change and convinced her husband it was time to put her culinary degree to good use. “We really wanted to create a nice place to dine for the neighborhood,” Stanley says. “So many Jamaican places tend to just be takeout. We wanted to be more than that, to show more of a range of Jamaican cooking in a nice atmosphere.”

There’s no confusing Jamaica Jerk with a gritty carryout joint. With walls painted a tranquil sea blue, white lattice rimming the room, plants lining the windows and reggae providing the soundtrack, the Waites’ restaurant is the kind of place a bottle of rum easily disappears during a two-hour meal (it’s BYO, and you’ll want to get a carafe each of Paulette’s pineapple sorrel and ginger beer for spiking). Plump shrimp are rolled in coconut shreds and fried crunchy, conch is formed into discs with celery and diced Scotch bonnets then pan-fried into little fritters, crispy-skinned jerk chicken lacks the heat of some versions but packs in the allspice just the same. Of the entrées, the goat stands out for its potato-studded turmeric curry, the oxtails for their meaty gravy, as dark, fragrant and flavorful as a Mexican mole negro. Addictive knots of savory fried dough dubbed festival threaten to spoil your appetite, but you should order dessert anyway, if only to try the unofficial ice-cream flavor of Jamaica: Grape-Nuts. To hear Stanley tell it, “It’s so common to have Grape-Nuts in ice cream back home that it wasn’t until I moved to America that I realized it was even a cereal.”

While the food is generally consistent, the dining room sits empty some nights, waiting for locals whose condos have since gone into foreclosure, sending them fleeing to other areas and returning the neighborhood to its pre-gentrification crossroads of poverty and belt-tightening. A small handwritten sign advertising a chicken tender combo for $3.50 is aimed at residents who can’t, or don’t want to, pay $12 for a sit-down dinner, but it’s a concession the Waites made reluctantly. “We want to remain a nice restaurant for the neighborhood, even though it has not changed or improved as fast as I had hoped and expected,” Stanley says. “We are not closing tomorrow, but I wonder because from day to day it’s so difficult. Some days it’s so quiet and then some days you feel hopeful and think ‘this is a good day.’ We just need more of those.”

1631 W Howard St (773-764-1546). El: Red, Purple (rush hrs), Yellow to Howard. Bus: 22, 97, 147, 151, Pace 215, Pace 290. Brunch (Sun), lunch, dinner (closed Mon). Average main course: $12. BYOB.

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