I lived most of my Brooklyn life in Prospect Heights, and I fell hard for the food of the West Indian community there. My family was friendly with a Jamaican chef named Patrick (memory tells me his last name was Smith, but I’m not certain) who ran a restaurant around the corner from my mom’s place. He eventually opened another spot, called Crispy Cream Quisine, on Vanderbilt Avenue, and he’d often be out there on the sidewalk with his offset smoker, cooking up big batches of jerk chicken, fiery-hot and fragrant from a complex rub of Scotch bonnet peppers, allspice, and more. He and I would talk for a while, and I’d eventually head home with a dinner of the chicken, or sometimes a tray of fatty, tender, and deeply beefy braised oxtail in a rich brown sauce, which was completely irresistible.
Patrick passed away very suddenly many years ago, so his restaurants are gone, but you can still find plenty of sources for jerk chicken and oxtail in Brooklyn, though not nearly as many in Prospect Heights as there once were. One of my top picks for both dishes is Peppa’s Jerk Chicken on Flatbush Avenue in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, a worn and dim takeout place where they grill the bird over flaming charcoal briquettes while eager customers queue up, waiting their turns to grab smoking-hot pieces right as they come off the grate.
