It’s a sensory experience to travel to a part of London still upsettingly devoid of the Tube — call it the “ginger line” all you like, the Overground doesn’t count — and be met with the noise, smoke and vibrations of Selhurst Park. SE25 is the home of Crystal Palace football club, Premier League minnows voraciously punching above their weight, but also Original Tasty Jerk, where some of the most comforting food in London is acquired. Together, on match days, when the stadium and its locale are a festival of red and blue, these combine to become one powerful force. The flowing sound of song binds itself to flavours of barbecued meat and hot pepper sauce.
Tasty Jerk is one of those places that has, for the most part, sailed by largely unnoticed. It has always been known to Palace fans and south Londoners, more recently a band of hard-working food writers, but it sits in a part of London less charted than most and rarely visited by the trudging masses. It is a local institution, not a pin on a sightseer’s map. This despite the fact some seem to treat it like a box to be ticked. Visitors on internet forums call it “off the beaten track”, even going so far as to herald the place “run-down”. To them we say: welcome to deep south London, the former stomping ground of Stormzy, Lola Young and Kate Moss. And where the food and football are nourishing.
Eating on the hoof
There are always queues of locals and supporters. On match days, chants of “Eagles” echo along Whitehorse Lane to the stadium, wonky and part-hidden behind a Sainsbury’s supermarket, as jerk chicken and pork belly are scorched and seasoned in rising flames. But on any evening there is likely to be a wait, as customers gather on the pavement outside. And you know when Tasty Jerk is open: its tall chimney billows grey smoke into the sky, a signal that the parade of oil drums are fired up and cooking. Just as it has on occasion in the past when Crystal Palace have announced a new manager, a mirror to the Vatican when a Pope has been decided.
Outside, for years, the takeaway used to be more understated, as the best things often are, with a simple white sign and a frontage of dark grey. Today, two blocks of windows sit below a more colourful sign, “Original Tasty Jerk Ltd”, bordered in green, yellow and red, a bolder nod to the Jamaican food within.
The kitchen is bigger than the waiting area. Chefs are always busy barbecuing and chopping chicken, pork, mutton and goat on red boards with a mighty thud under cleavers. There might be lobster, even sea bass on occasion, though these are treated a little differently. And there is traditional rice and peas, pots of deep gravy, and rich coleslaw.
Tasty Jerk is the south-east London Vatican for the new manager announcements from Palace
Food is served in tinfoil takeaway trays, then placed in blue carrier bags to be taken home and devoured, though there are countless people who eat on the hoof or sit in the adjacent car park, perched on the wall of the petrol station or on the curb with nowhere else to rest. Many drive over and eat in the car.
On match days, cans of lager are bedfellows to meat and the punching aroma of barbecue fills the air. All the better, the food bookends a fixture — a winning one, Palace fans would hope — tempering beer with sobering notes of heat. Those who travel by bus or train after matches might open up their boxes while journeying home and nobody would dare complain.
It is also the simplicity of the food that brings in the punters: meat and fish are expertly cooked until wobbly and tender. Jerk chicken slides from the bone; pork arrives with its fat juicy, charred in allspice; mutton is soft, earthy, flecked by chilli and melting almost into itself. Protein alone is meal enough though all the better for the famous scotch bonnet sauce, a fiery concoction for dipping. The eating is intoxicating — a tropical holiday beneath the blazing lights of Selhurst Park.
Though founder Murphy Lawrence is no longer in situ, recipes have hardly changed in the years Tasty Jerk has been there. There is some mystery to the place — no phone lines (just Deliveroo nowadays, no calling for collection), no Instagram, no website. It’s old school.
Why not? The reputation of the food precedes and there is really no need for anything beyond marination and the careful fanning of flames. And it is a point of pride for any food-loving Palace fan, as one, hospitality consultant Jack Barton, explains: “Tasty Jerk is not just the south-east London Vatican for new manager announcements, it’s a match day Mecca. We don’t just worry about the football score, but about whether or not we’ll get any chicken before it sells out.
“Visiting requires much organisation and an early arrival. If this isn’t possible, my eldest son and I routinely wait patiently for up to an hour after the game for coveted jerk, rice and peas with a generous portion of gravy. Players are routinely seen there after too, kit and all.”
Tasty Jerk is many things. It is a midweek necessity or a post-match scramble. It is a gentle reminder of a life before, else a welcome introduction to those who have never been.
It is, if nothing else, a little place in a lesser-trod part of town where, it might be said, a £10 dinner can be bought that is so good it is happily eaten in a car park at the foot of a raucous Premier League football ground.
