Tesnim Hassan has lived in the Chicago area for about 10 years. But she is originally from Los Angeles.

Back in LA, she grew up in Leimert Park, a diverse neighborhood with immigrants from all over the world. Hassan, who is African American, likes to connect with black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, especially Jamaica. She loves Jamaican culture, the music and the food, including the tasty jerk sauce – a blend of salty, sweet and spicy flavors that complements any type of grilled meat.

In Chicago, she has made friends with Caribbean immigrants, some of them Jamaican. And she’s also found plenty of Jamaican restaurant options—much more than she ever did in LA

During her commute to work, Hassan can easily drive past about 30 chicken joints, “not exaggerating,” she said.

That made her ask Curious city: Why are there so many crappy restaurants in Chicago? And she wonders if there is a big enough Jamaican community to justify all these places.

There are several layers to that answer. The simple one: Many Chicagoans love jerk, and its popularity has created a demand for more restaurants. A quick search on Yelp revealed 218 jerk restaurants in Chicagoland, and that doesn’t even include food stands and restaurants that offer jerk options.

Hassan is right. The Jamaican population in the Chicago area is not huge.

Recent census data indicates that about 20,000 Jamaicans lived in the Chicago metropolitan area in 2021—about the same size as LA, but significantly less than other metropolitan areas such as New York and Miami. But even though the Jamaican population is relatively small, Jamaicans in Chicago have marked themselves culturally and socially in the city. Jamaican food, including jerk, may be the most visible, but it’s certainly not the only one.

Jamaica’s influence in Chicago goes beyond food

Since the early twentieth century, Jamaican migration to the United States and Chicago has been influenced by a search for livable wages and new opportunities.

During World War II, American companies heavily recruited thousands of agricultural, domestic and health workers from the Caribbean including Jamaica, according to the Migration Policy Institute. In the 1950s and 60s, some of that migration was also influenced by Jamaicans seeking higher education in Chicago and other parts of the country. Many sought engineering degrees or pursued nursing jobs.

Jamaica gained its independence from Great Britain in 1962. Soon after, US immigration reforms such as the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 opened the doors to Caribbean immigrants, many of whom chose Chicago as their home. The Hart Cell Act put an end to longstanding immigration policies that favored those from northern and western Europe.

Some experts believe Jamaicans in Chicago have electrified the local black community.

“Through reggae, through music, through Bob Marley, through Rastafarianism, through food,” said Erik S. McDuffie, associate professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “The people’s pride is contagious.”

McDuffie said executives such as Marcus Garvey, co-founder of Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)played a key role in the empowerment of black people throughout the world and the United States, including in Chicago.

“The Midwest, especially Chicago, was a hotspot for Garveyism in the early ’20s,” McDuffie said, adding that Garveyism laid the foundation for a number of black power movements.

Chef Mark Johnson’s recipe for jerk

Mark Johnson, also known as Belly, is one of the many proud Jamaicans living on Chicago’s South Side.

He has run a food business called Belly Up for two decades. He caters in the winter, and in the warmer months he sets up the grill at a local South Side beach. This summer, he plans to set up shop at 57th Street Beach.

“When I came to America, I couldn’t find anything that suited my taste buds,” Johnson said. “And that’s when I really started cooking for myself. Just like I was raised.” He soon began sharing his dishes with friends and neighbors. “I gave people a sample and they all go crazy.”

His Jamaican style dishes include jerk chicken, jerk lamb chops, curry chicken, yellow and white rice, red snapper and fried plantains.

He starts by making the authentic jerk sauce using fresh herbs such as ginger, garlic, allspice, thyme, scotch bonnet pepper and garlic – never powdered spices.

Then he says that the secret behind the best dishes is how long you marinate the meat, how fresh the sauce is and the way you grill it. In Jamaica, pimento wood is used, which gives the meat a smoky taste.

But Belly said there is also an important ingredient, the music.

“So the music and the food go together perfectly,” Johnson said. “Good music, good food, you can’t beat it.”

Adriana Cardona-Maguigad is a WBEZ reporter. Ffollow her on Twitter @WBEZCuriousCity and @AdrianaCardMag.