There was simply no way Chris Morgan and Gerald Addison would be able to reproduce the jerk chicken they ate in Boston Bay. But at Bammy’s, their new Caribbean-style takeout place that opens today in Navy Yard, the chefs hope to come close.
Morgan and Addison, the former co-chefs who helped turn Michelin-starred Maydan into one of the hottest restaurants in the country, are stuck on a special chicken they found in a slice of Portland Parish in the Northeast corner of Jamaica. Boston Bay is designated as the birthplace of jerk, and the best chicken there slowly sizzles while sitting directly on pimento wood. Cooks use pieces of corrugated metal to trap the smoke.
Traveling there was part of the research and development for their restaurant, which starts dishing out online takeout orders at 2 p.m. on the banks of the Anacostia River. The partners have put in a ton of effort to honor the cooking they fell in love with through family connections — Morgan has a Jamaican aunt — and meals at carryouts from D.C. to New York.
“It’s a culture so rich with high energy and positivity and a really fun way of life, and the food ties right into that,” Morgan says.
The partners planned to plant a full-service operation into the former Whaley’s raw bar space, but the novel coronavirus crisis forced them to delay the opening and design a limited menu for takeout. That starts with jerk chicken that gets cured in allspice, salt, and aromatics before it’s marinated in a “green seasoning” with more allspice. Soaked oak scraps and allspice berries perfume birds as they get smoked, then grilled, then finished in the oven to crisp up the skin. For $20, half chickens at Bammy’s come with sides of stewed cabbage and rice and peas. The restaurant plans to sell hot orders of food and refrigerated portions that come with reheating instructions.
“What’s the best way we can emulate this and pay the most respect to it without really having everything that we’d have there?” Addison asks. “I think it took us a lot of time just kind of reworking it and kind of trying to get it close.”
Addison grew up in D.C. but moved to New York City when he was 18. As he explored Jamaican and Trinidadian carryouts in Bed-Stuy and Flatbush, he found that everywhere he went he had to order the jerk chicken and the curry goat. Bammy’s serves both curry goat ($18) and curry veggies ($14). For those recipes, Morgan and Addison have leaned on the expertise of Nico Leslie, the Jamaican-born chef de cuisine who hails from Montego Bay.
“I cook curry goat myself a lot of times, and I feel like I’ve never really nailed it,” Addison says. “He came in the kitchen one time, and I’m like, ‘Oh, why am I even trying?’”
The Bammy’s owners say humility is a big part of what they do. Addison admits he was probably trying to do too much to the curry goat. Leslie’s recipes stood out for their simplicity and their allegiance to Jamaican brands of curry powder.
“We grew up being fortunate enough to try and eat this food,” says Morgan, whose aunt used to gift him homemade pepper jelly and frozen scotch bonnet chiles. “We know for a fact that people are going to come in here and say the jerk chicken is wrong or the curry is wrong. But we kind of welcome that. We want to learn.”
Addison points out how that went at Maydan, which used a wood-fired hearth to produce dishes from across North Africa and the Middle East. One of the restaurant’s earliest customers told them their toum, a whipped garlic condiment, was all wrong.
“We both took a pen and paper down and made toum with her,” Addison says. “I think that was really funny and spoke to our time there.”
Along with Maydan owner Rose Previte, Morgan and Addison traveled extensively for research at Maydan. They built that travel into the cost of opening Bammy’s, which was how they ended up pulling a U-turn on a cliffside road in the Jamaican town of Oracabessa so they eat brown stew chicken at Dor’s Fish Pot. The chef there allowed them into her kitchen and has continued to offer feedback throughout the opening. The pickles (carrots, onion, garlic, allspice, hot and mild peppers) on the Bammy’s menu call back to her escovitch.
Along with those pickles, $1 condiments at Bammy’s include pepper jelly, allspice mayo, and a fiery jerk sauce.
While the partners have done their homework, not everything on the menu is strictly traditional. A spicy cheese appetizer is a take on Trinidadian cheese paste that’s similar to pimento cheese. Addison has dubbed the accompanying coco house rolls a “cutesy” mash-up of coco bread and Parker house rolls.
There are $5 bottles of Red Stripe beer, and two rum cocktails to start: an Appleton painkiller and a mix up with a grapefruit cordial, soda, Campari, and overproof Wray and Nephew rum. The latter will eventually be served frozen.
Although D.C. is allowing restaurants to reopen patios at half capacity today, Bammy’s will stick with takeout only to start while the owners gauge the staff’s comfort level with coming back to work. Bammy’s namesake dish, a cassava and coconut milk fritter, didn’t make sense as a to-go item, so it’s ironically excluded from the menu for now. Plans are also in the works to commission Caribbean ice creams like Grape Nut, Guinness, roasted banana, and rum raisin from the local producers at Milk Cult.
It’s not an ideal time to open a restaurant, but the Bammy’s partners are making it work the best they can.
“We’re in a rare situation where we’re able to provide something fun for people in a not so exciting time, and we really want to take ownership of that and try to put some smiles on people’s faces,” Morgan says.
Bammy’s (301 Water Street SE Suite 1150) is open for hot or cold carryout Wednesday through Sunday from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m.