With a tropical storm creeping up the Gulf, Friday night is quieter than usual in downtown Tampa. Stores and restaurants are closed, parking spots open, the sidewalks empty. The place is dead.
Unless you're somewhere near the corner of Tampa Street and Twiggs. Then you'll hear the music blasting out of a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that refuses to admit its surroundings. The Jerk Hut, a prime weekday lunch spot, has been throwing its Friday night shindigs for about a year. Across the street from a condemned building, the Jamaican restaurant draws folks with a live reggae band, a loaded buffet and the chance for a mean game of dominoes. All this for a measly $3 cover.
"You drink enough Red Stripes and the buildings start fading away and the ocean rolls in," says Andrew Ashmeade, Jerk Hut's 37-year-old owner. A friendly guy with one of those ear-to-ear smiles, Ashmeade nurses a Michelob Ultra at a plastic table on the sidewalk. "My wife says the only reason I [started the Friday night parties] was 'cause I wanted somewhere to go," he says. "What's wrong with that?"
Ashmeade came to the States in 1986 from rural Jamaica, where his parents owned a restaurant called Sheriff's. As a student at USF, Ashmeade would throw parties and charge a small cover, whipping up jerk pork in his small kitchen. After graduating, he opened the first Jerk Hut on Nebraska Avenue. The operation was small then; he bought food at the supermarket. "The only thing we could do to keep the business growing was be really, really nice to our customers," he says. "And we've done that."
But good service can only take you so far.
The Friday night buffet is a boiled-down version of the full menu, but it gives you a healthy enough taste to understand why Jerk Hut has really stayed in business. There is the traditional "rice and peas," made with red beans, coconut milk and Jamaican spices flown in weekly from the island. You can sample curry chicken, meatballs and chicken wings. But if you want to get the real experience, you've gotta go with the jerk chicken.
Grilled over an open flame, the tender meat falls off the bone at the slightest tug. And with a healthy dose of Ashmeade's sweet and tangy red sauce, the typical jerk kick gets cooled a bit. It's the kind of food you can get lost in.
"Jamaican food is really popular these days," says Ashmeade. "[It's] getting mainstream. You can get beef patties and Jamaican soda at Sam's [Club] now."
And on Friday nights, the jerk is free. You'd expect to see moochers in there, piling their plates high, not buying a beer, and skipping out just before they're ready to burst.
But with the rain bearing in off the coast, many folks have stayed home. "Most of the time, there's hardly any walking space," says Lorenzo Rodrigues, a regular and friend of Ashmeade's. Tonight, the place feels cozy. A few families sit around large circular tables, a couple canoodles over some jerk, and outside older men battle in fierce games of dominoes, slamming down the tiles with every play.
Ashmeade sits at his table, holding court with guys who work at the pizza joint next door (they've collaborated on a jerk chicken pie), and anyone else who might walk by. He leans back in his chair, his blue Hawaiian shirt half-unbuttoned. The eerie pre-storm air reminds him of home, he says. Behind him, Jerk Hut's storefront is decorated with a Jamaican glossary – Ashmeade's idea. He put it there so folks could understand the sayings he has lining the walls inside.
"The Jamaican language evolved like Jamaican food," he says. "A little bit of everything."
His favorite saying – "every mickle makes a mockle" – is plastered next to a thatch awning. "No matter how much it seems like you're not moving forward, if you're taking small steps you're making progress ," Ashmeade explains. Next to it he's printed a saying of his own.
"Be good, live good and you'll reap good."
That's the philosophy Ashmeade has tried to live by, and it's paying off, at least for his business. He's got two restaurants, an established Friday night event and a loyal customer base. And he's not stopping there.
A website's in the works – eshopjamaica.com – where you can buy Jamaican goods. (Jerk Hut already sells Jamaican flag bikinis, which Ashmeade says you can't get anywhere else in town.) Plans are in the works for a cookbook featuring the red sauce, and, eventually, Ashmeade will accept offers to franchise Jerk Hut into other Florida markets.
He also wants to expand the downtown operation, to move into a bigger place and start serving dinner. But that can't happen, not unless the latest stab at downtown revitalization actually leads to something.
"I'm hoping for that ship to come in," he says, standing outside the restaurant. It's the only one open for blocks.
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This article appears in Jun 15-21, 2005.