Roots

How Nicola Blaque Is Redefining Jerk Chicken in the South

By: The Local Palate

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Jamaican chef Nicola Blaque shares the recipes closest to her heart

For chef Nicola Blaque, cooking Caribbean food is the truest of callings. One night back in 2017, she was visited by her late aunt in a dream. “She’s telling me that I’m not living to my fullest potential,” says Blaque. “She wanted me to share my culture more.”

Blaque, today the celebrated chef-owner of The Jerk Shack and Freight Fried Chicken in San Antonio, Texas, had just visited her hometown in Jamaica for her aunt’s memorial service, where she experienced an inspiring dish. “Jerk chicken never tasted like what I tasted on this trip. Where I’m from, in Jamaica, jerk chicken is served very simple,” she says. “You might have some bread, some hot sauce. They might have some boiled yam with it. But you’re just appreciating the jerk chicken.” She told her husband that she wanted folks back home in Texas to experience the dish like this.

Blaque was born in Jamaica and moved to the US when she was 5. She joined the US Army at 18, and after she got out, her husband asked her what she really wanted to do. “I told him I just want to cook. That’s it. I want to go eat cool things, things that I don’t know about,” she says.

She started out as a private chef before quite literally dreaming up her first restaurant. “I could see our building that we’re now in, and it said, ‘The Jerk Shack.’ And so I woke up, shared it with my husband, and I was like, I think I need to be selling jerk chicken out of this building.”

The Jerk Shack opened in San Antonio in May 2018 and sold out on opening day, dishing out jerk chicken and fried chicken plates with sides like masala fries and mac and cheese (a recipe inspired by her cheesehead husband, who’s from Wisconsin). The accolades came pouring in: San Antonio Magazine’s Best New Restaurant. Eater’s Best Fried Chicken. A James Beard nomination. Michelin’s Bib Gourmand award.

In 2020, the chef opened Mi Roti serving Caribbean street food, later closing its doors to make way for Freight Fried Chicken in 2024, which honors the Black women who sold fried chicken to people traveling by train through Gordonsville, Virginia, after the Civil War. The chef has noticed a shift in recent years as the US embraces her culture and cuisine.

“I feel like Caribbean food is just now getting people’s attention,” says Blaque. “It’s heartfelt, it makes me want to cry sometimes, because growing up, I didn’t have anybody to share that with. I didn’t grow up seeing Caribbean restaurants. I didn’t get to grow up around the culture, and to know my restaurant could possibly be everywhere, and people are reading about my story, and coming and trying the food—it means a lot.”

For Blaque, sharing her culture means legacy. “[My kids are] Jamaican American, and I think having some continuity there for them in the future, to be able to see a Caribbean restaurant, to be able tell the story—I was very fortunate that my mom shared these lessons, recipes, and style of cooking with me,” says Blaque. “Now I’m able to share it with my kids on a larger level, but I’m also able to share it with kids that haven’t really been able to connect with their Caribbean heritage.”

After envisioning her future and seeing it come to life, the chef is recognizing how far she’s come, sharing the recipe for her jerk chicken for the first time. “I’ve been kind of iffy about sharing my recipe, because it’s something that I’ve had to work really hard on, and obviously we’ve been recognized for it,” says Blaque. “Now I’m to the point, it’s like, hooray. I think we’re here.”