I love jerk sauce.
I love Jamaican jerk sauce so much that I made it a mission, two years ago, to learn how to make my own jerk sauce from scratch. After two weeks of painstaking experimentation (painstaking because it really hammered home the point that I either need the wear gloves while chopping Scotch Bonnets, or refrain from touching any mucus membranes for twelve hours afterwards), I got it right. Since I got it right, my jerk roasted pork ribs have been a hit every time I've made them. Adam, my token Jamaican friend, inhaled an entire rack at last year's rugby team potluck. Though, he's a 240-pound prop and will inhale just about anything, so maybe I shouldn't use him as an example as to the authenticity of my jerk.
But the point is: I love my jerk. I'm a motherloving jerk sauce connoisseur.
The new Caribbean street cart is at the Yonge and St. Clair intersection, on the south-east side. On offer is a jerk chicken wrap -- with a choice of hot or mild jerk sauce, and white or whole-wheat pita bread -- for $5, and a grilled pineapple side for $2.
I went for the hot jerk chicken on a whole-wheat pita. The cart vendor heated up a couple of pre-cooked chicken slices on a fry-top, then wrapped them up in a pita along with a nice amount of lettuce and mango salad.
While the vendor was spooning the chicken into the pita, she asked me again, "Hot, right?" I replied with a nonchalant, "Absolutely." She gave me a bemused look while spooning the jerk sauce onto the pita: a look that left me debating whether I should be excited that this jerk sauce might actually be spicy, or insulted that I evidently looked like I wouldn't be able to handle her 'hot' jerk sauce.
Anyway, she gave me a hearty, "Enjoy your meal!", handed me the wrap, and I was on my way.
Before I even bit into the wrap, I was impressed by one thing. Unlike my three previous street cart meals, this was food that you could actually eat on the go. No utensils necessary; all you needed was your hands. All you needed was one hand, actually; one to shove it into your mouth. To prove the point, I ate my meal while walking the kilometre up to Davisville Station before hopping back onto the subway.
I was even more impressed when the wrap turned out to be tasty. Damn tasty. The jerk sauce was pretty classic -- with great allspice, scotch bonnet, garlic and thyme flavour -- and the mango salad added a nice sweet and tangy contrast. The fresh lettuce and julienned carrot also provided a nice crunch. The chicken even had a nice char on it -- alleviating one of my major complaints with the bulgogi from the Korean cart at Yonge and Eglinton.
And the heat? That was something else. After three bites of my wrap, I didn't feel a God-blessed thing. Nothing. I was walking past the Mount Pleasant Cemetery over-confident in the knowledge that anything labeled 'hot' for the North American palette wasn't remotely enough to tickle a tongue I'd trained to handle naked drops of five-hundred thousand Scoville hot sauce.
Then, on the fourth bite, the heat kicked in. By the time I finished about three minutes later, my mouth was on fire. My tongue was burning. The corners of my lips were scorched. It was fantastic.
Lest I be sweep away in a torrent of gushing over this wrap, I have to point out there were two problems with the meal. The pita was somewhat stale -- while it tasted okay, parts of it just crumbled while I was eating it. The second problem was that the chicken was dry -- as with the other carts, this was a problem of food being cooked off-site and reheated at the cart. Ordinarily, the two problems would have earned a failing grade from me, but the jerk sauce and mango salad saved everything.
It really was that damn tasty.
Four down; four more to go.
Part I (Chicken Biryani)
Part II (Pad Thai)
Part III (Bulgogi)
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