Photo by Juan Miguel Martinez
Pepperpot restaurant chicken
A Pepper Pot is a stewed meat dish that has been strongly flavored by Caribbean hot peppers. One of the most popular Jamaican dishes, jerk chicken, uses those Caribbean hot peppers as its main ingredient, which is usually scotch bonnets, a small, orange pepper that provides the heat and spice. It is merely something you suspect however, because Dwight Jackson, owner of Pepper Pot Catering, won’t tell you what is in his family’s recipe.
Pepperpot catering is a modest takeout restaurant (4120 W. Capitol Drive) on Milwaukee’s North Side. The sign has a blink-and-you-miss-it quality, obscured by trees that line the sidewalk. Once you walk inside, the aroma of spices and grilled meats greet you instantly. There is a large, thick pane of opaque glass that separates the kitchen from the customers, but all the cooking is on full display.
“The business is run by just me and my son, and all these recipes come from my family, who came to the United States from St. Catherine in Jamaica years ago,” Jackson tells me. The menu is small and written on a whiteboard in marker, hung under a long piece of plywood nailed to the wall. The place is reminiscent of the “hole in the wall” diners of the South, where an ambiance like this one almost always guarantees a meal crafted by someone with attention to detail and a love for tantalizing the palate.
Jackson and his son have been at this location for seven years but have both been cooking for the last twenty. “We started small, selling out of our kitchen to people who placed orders. We launched the restaurant so as to be able to keep up with the demand,” Jackson says. The prices are very reasonable—the most expensive items will set you back all of $20, which is the combo oxtail and shrimp kabob combos. A standard combo for one person will be $11.55 and the containers are filled to the brim, barely able to close.
The most popular item on the menu is the jerk chicken egg rolls, which is less of an egg roll and more of an overstuffed empanada. At $5, it is a bargain, considering how filling it is. While waiting for my food, I counted 10 customers who came and went, all ordering this item. I asked one of the customers if this was her favorite thing to order here. She, along with the other three people in the takeout area all turned to me and either nodded or said, “It’s fire.” That means yes.
“Our new location is opening up on 2215 N. Dr. Martin Luther King by January 5. This will be a full-fledged restaurant with a dining area as opposed to just take-out,” Jackson says. While there are no plans of returning to catering, the focus will be primarily on the new location, which has created excitement and buzz in the community.
Milwaukee has a vibrant food scene, and places like Pepperpot are proof of it. Caribbean dining has recently ramped up in the city with Uppa Yard only 15 blocks from Pepperpot, as well as a plethora of Puerto Rican restaurants and Cuban food trucks on the South Side. While there may not be flashy advertising from places like these, promotion comes by word of mouth, which is something no business can buy. It is simply won by perfecting a product that is imagined and then executed with a loving precision. Pepperpot is brick and mortar proof of it.
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Photo by Juan Miguel Martinez
Pepperpot
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Photo by Juan Miguel Martinez
Pepperpot
