The Abridged version:
- Jerkies, a local Jamaican food business, will host its second kitchen takeover at Empress Tavern on Sunday.
- Chef Najeary Bennett started the business to bring the flavors of his birthplace to his new home in Sacramento.
- At the first kitchen takeover event, demand was high and menu items quickly sold out.
This story was reported by a member of the Abridged by PBS KVIE Community Reporters program. The Community Reporters program empowers local residents to report stories with guidance and support from the Abridged editorial staff.
Jerkies, a Jamaican food business operated by chef Najeary Bennett, returns to Empress Tavern for its second kitchen takeover this Memorial Day weekend from 5-8 p.m. Sunday.
Jerkies’ inaugural kitchen takeover in April was a success, dishing out Jamaican classics like jerk chicken, tender, braised homestyle oxtail, a vegan friendly island coconut curry, sweet plantains and Miss Birdy’s sweet potato pudding.
This time, Jerkies returns with these options and more, adding fried festivals, curry goat and a set by DJ K Facil to the menu. At the April takeover, demand was so strong that the kitchen ran out of every item by the end of the night. If you want to guarantee your menu options this time, you should probably arrive early.
“Najeary pulled this incredible team in to help him, they had a good rhythm in the kitchen, and he sold out early of everything. That was a first for us,” said Julie Liebenbaum, program manager for Alchemist Kitchen, of Jerkies’ first kitchen takeover. Alchemist Kitchen is a program of Alchemist Community Development Corp. that offers business training and support for aspiring food entrepreneurs in Sacramento, primarily from low-income communities. Jerkies is part of the Alchemist Kitchen program.
“There are so many moving parts to running a restaurant, and we’re trying to give the entrepreneurs in our program the opportunity to see what those pieces are and put them together with the help of our staff in a beautiful setting. This way they can get real life practice before taking on the major debt and risks that come with opening their own brick and mortar restaurants,” Liebenbaum added.
For Bennett, cooking is a connection to his heritage and his family. The name Jerkies is a play on “jerk,” a cooking technique associated with Jamaica. “When people say the word ‘Jerkies,’ they always have a little smile,” Bennett said. “I wanted to play on the resilience and the playfulness of the culture. You can have substance and resistance and hope in food and also joy and laughter and dancing.”
The origins of jerk consisted of smoking meat with pimento wood underground, a form of cooking that the indigenous people of Jamaica, the Taíno, introduced to the Maroons. The Maroons were descendants of enslaved Africans who grasped their freedom by escaping to the mountains. “Underground because they didn’t want the smoke to show,” giving away their location, said Bennett, illustrating how the complex flavors and succulent tenderness were produced in the midst of a tenuous life.
“I feel like I cook with a sense of calling for ancestors,” Bennett said. “Calling for the Maroons, calling for the Taínos, because this is something that they gave me. I have this insane level of respect for jerk as a spiritual experience embodied in food.”
It’s been 12 years since Bennett left Jamaica, but Jamaica has not left him, and he is intent on bringing a taste of home to Sacramento. Bennett didn’t set out to move to California, but in 2021, after a colleague lost her husband, he set out for Grass Valley to help her around her property.
In the foothills, Bennett was struck, thinking, “This kind of reminds me of some parts of where I grew up in the hills.” One month turned to seven, and Bennett accessed a deep sense of peace, being outdoors, reflecting, going to the river and learning to drive. “I was truly able to rewire my nervous system,” he said.
Amidst the peaceful, restorative energy, Bennett envisioned what was next for him: Sacramento. From Grass Valley, he researched what would become his future home and saw a market for what Jerkies could offer.
“I look at my vision board that I had created during that time [and] I cry because I told myself that I would move down here, and I came to Sacramento,” he said. “I said I was going to manage REI, and I did that. I said I was going to find an apartment in Midtown, and I’m living in my second apartment in Midtown. I said I was going to enroll in the Alchemist program. And I did. I did this all while I was in Grass Valley.”
Bennett has no family in California, but what he has brought to life with Jerkies is inextricably linked to his relations. One menu item, Miss Birdy’s sweet potato pudding, is named after his late grandmother, a dish he religiously helped her prepare to sell in the market on Saturdays.
Bennett noted that he didn’t go to school to become a trained chef, but he did grow up helping in the kitchen and experiencing the rich flavors. Bennett’s father is a pastor and chef, and while Bennett’s identity as a queer man has been met with friction in his family and at home, Bennett’s connection to spirituality is steadfast, informed by both his queerness and connection to nature.
“The way the trees talk to me and soothe my energy, the way that the river talks to me and soothes my nervous system. … Feeding the chickens in the morning and talking to them, talking to the pigs when I’m cleaning their pen. … I grew up climbing mango trees and talking to lizards, so I have always had a connection to God. There was a moment when it was just through the lens of the church,” Bennett reflected. “I was once a little kid that didn’t even know what it was like to love myself or to trust myself, so, being able to share myself in my business practice is a testimony.”
When people describe Bennett’s food as filled with love, it’s a “beautiful dagger” in his spirit. Dynique Thompson, owner of local business OverLooked Coffee, tasted just that at Jerkies’ first kitchen takeover.
Thompson connected with Bennett through their participation in the Alchemist Kitchen program.
Thompson was moved by seeing Bennett in action running a kitchen. “You can taste the love, the patience and the time through all of that, especially when you get a jerk chicken, you get a little char on there,” Thompson said. “He spent that time to make sure that he is bringing home here to Sacramento.”
Thompson came along with her sister, Cherrisee, who said, “I love oxtails, and it’s super hard to find good oxtails, whether it’s here locally in Sacramento or the Bay Area. And his oxtails were very fall-off-the bone, succulent.”
Running Jerkies has been a lesson in learning to ask for help and rely on others.
“I’m relying on people within my cohort at Alchemist,” including local chefs like Kasandra Kachakji of Arabic and Mexican fusion restaurant Meza, Chef J Jordan of gluten free and vegan Brown Rice Bakery, and Chef Pablo Rivas of Salvoradoran fusion pop-up Old Coyote, Bennett said. Jerkies’ and Bennett’s success so far is a reflection of the vibrant community that Bennett has found and nurtured since making Sacramento home. For Bennett, this work is “healing in practice. Jerkies is my own redemption.”
Natachi Mez is a member of the Abridged Community Reporters program. Natachi is a poet, facilitator and event producer who was born and raised in the Sacramento region.