Huntsville, here’s authentic Jamaican food you gotta try: ‘We cook with love’

What Americans call a smoker, the submarine-shaped outdoor appliance often used to cook barbecue, in Jamaica they call a pan. They use it to prepare jerk, aromatic slow-cooked dishes, traditionally chicken or pork. Hence, it’s a “jerk pan.”

About 18 months ago, Jamaica native Denis Francis was looking for a name for the food truck business he and his son Jowayne Francis were starting up in Huntsville, Alabama. They initially settled on the name Di Jerk Spot.

Denis’ other son was printing up some business cards for them. “And he made a mistake,” Denis says, “and put ‘Di Jerk Pan’ instead of ‘Di Jerk Spot.’ So we just said, alright, that’s the name and we just go with it.”

Housed in gray trailer and towed by a white van, Di Jerk Pan serves delectable authentic Jamaican fare. Most days they do service in a corner of the parking lot for a Best Way Rent-To-Own franchise, at 2901 Bob Wallace Avenue.

One of Di Jerk Pan’s taglines in their social media marketing is, “Good food. Good mood.” No lies detected during my recent visit.

Jerk chicken is of course on the menu, and it smelled amazing as Denis finished a batch on the jerk pan, beneath a red canopy by the trailer.

Jerk chicken is a gateway Jamaican dish. As much as I adore a real-deal version, felt like this was place and time for a deeper dive. And into funkier motherland.

Ordered plates of oxtail and brown stew turkey neck. If you’re lucky enough to have a mom who makes a mean beef roast, like I do, oxtail, the way Denis does it, will trigger memories of that.

Hearty, flavorful, and tender as a first kiss. Butter beans are also in play. It takes time, skill and tradition to make food like this.

Earthy, mystical aromas. If a perfumer made cologne that smelled like Di Jerk Pan’s oxtails, I’d probably wear it.

The turkey neck, amid swampy stew and carrot slices, evoked a spliff-enhanced Thanksgiving meal. It forever altered my opinion of avian vertebrae.

Like many Jamaican joints, Di Jerk Pan’s plates have sides of rice and peas, steamed veggies and cooked plantains. Denis also throws in a “festival,” a Jamaican corn fritter.

Di Jerk Pan’s menu also gets into curry chicken, curry beef, stew chicken, chicken soup. There’s a vegan soup, too. You can clock the menu, prices and hours on their Facebook page.

Di Jerk Pan also does catering for groups of, as Denis puts it, “one to 500.” They’ve done a couple local events and would like to do more. It’s difficult for a relatively recent food truck to break into those though, he says, as long-running trucks often get prime gigs.

Huntsville now has several options for Jamaican cuisine. These include Island Jerk, La Jamaica and M&K restaurants, and Island Spice and Jerk King food trucks. Tamarind Island Grille, inside outdoor music venue The Camp at Mid City, does fantastic Caribbean soul food.

A couple decades ago, I went to Jamaica and its picturesque juxtapositions. Waterfalls and jungles. Pushers and gangsters. Resorts with bikinis and breakfast bars, and homes the size of sheds Americans keep lawnmowers in. A locals bar with a dirt floor. There were also crocodiles. Loved it.

I’d been a longtime fan of Jamaican music, artists like Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff, Congos, Toots and the Maytals, Peter Tosh. And of course Bob Marley. But never truly got that music until I went where it came from.

Di Jerk Pan’s food exudes those vibrant roots, rhythms and tones. A return trip to Jamaica isn’t for me right now. But thanks to Di Jerk Pan’s slow-cooked sorcery, at least my mouth can go.

For Denis, cooking is “a generational thing,” he says. “My dad used to do big yard cooking, that means in a bulk, and I gravitate to it. So when we cook, we cook with love and passion. I try to really use up the Jamaican spice a lot. I don’t go for, you know, the stuff that we don’t know about.”

Those seasonings include pimento berry, thyme, and Jamaican scallions. “We have a supplier in Atlanta we buy things [from],” Denis says. “It’s a Jamaican-based company, so they have the Jamaican stuff.”

On days the food truck’s operating, Denis gets up at 4:30 a.m. to start the oxtail, turkey neck, curry beef, and rice. The jerk chicken, he cooks later onsite. On that jerk pan that gives the business its name.

Like his father, Jowayne Francis speaks in lilting Jamaican patois. He’s happy building business with his dad. Doing what Dad was born to do. And he’s happy other people are into it, too.

“The customer coming in and enjoying the meal, just as you,” Jowayne tells me. “My dad, he’s a general in this, and he’s here to guide us through the legacy. We’re here to encourage him and support.”

The Francis family hails from St. Thomas Parish, in southeastern Jamaica, where the lush Blue Mountains extend into. Denis’ other son moved to Huntsville first.

“I start to come here on vacation, and I see that they are cool people,” Denis says of Huntsville. “Green vegetation. Lots of green. This is the closest, away from Florida, we can ever get [in the Southeastern U.S.] to there [Jamaica]. It’s a wonderful place.”