Foodletter Eats: The Jerk Spot's Secret Weapon & Pizza at Bellawood Farm
We recently checked out the Jamaican food spot at Budd Dairy, plus a new destination for pizza in Canal Winchester.
The Jerk Spot is Off to a Smoking Hot Start
By Erin Edwards
Sitting outside Budd Dairy Food Hall’s brick building is a custom-built offset smoker that belongs to Toledo-born chef Troy Wheat.
That smoker is one secret weapon behind Wheat’s Caribbean-inspired eatery, The Jerk Spot, which has been occupying Budd Dairy’s incubator space, The Hatch, since February. Wheat runs The Jerk Spot with his wife, Nina, his other secret weapon in the front of the house.
The Jerk Spot was expected to end its limited run at Budd Dairy this month, but Wheat and team gave the food hall’s operator, Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, no choice but to extend their stay for another year. The Jerk Stop’s sales have been exceptional, setting records for both single day sales and weekly sales for The Hatch.
You would think The Jerk Spot’s fine jerk chicken would be its best seller. Instead, it’s the hard-to-cook (and even harder-to-find) oxtails that have garnered the most buzz for Wheat’s small business.
“We've had people from Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, because [we] went viral on TikTok,” Wheat says, describing the response after The Jerk Spot filmed a customer’s reaction to the oxtails. The TikTok video now has about 96,600 views.
“Father's Day was insane,” Wheat tells the Foodletter, estimating that he sold 87 orders of oxtails alone—not counting the eatery’s jerk chicken, Rasta Pasta or popular pineapple bowl. That’s when The Jerk Spot set the single day record for a Hatch business.
What’s the secret? Wheat tells me the oxtails are cleaned and trimmed of excessive fat, seasoned and then smoked for an hour or so before they hit the oven for several more hours, rendering the notoriously tough protein into a tender, best-seller. “The whole total cook time is like five hours,” Wheat says. “Everybody wants a good oxtail, but I have a very good gravy that you put with it. Then I pair it with saffron rice.”
Wheat, who isn’t Jamaican, says he decided to start cooking Caribbean fare because he admires the time it takes to get it right. “Some things you can cook and make in 30 minutes. It's a lot of preparation for this,” he says about Caribbean cuisine. “You don't just throw this stuff together. … It's a lot of love you have to put in. It's a lot of ingredients, and I just love the culture and the food. So that's why I did it, and it's working.”
While the oxtails draw a lot of customers, be sure not to overlook The Jerk Spot’s namesake dish.
After seasoning his jerk chicken (Wheat wisely didn’t share the recipe), Wheat lets it rest in that paste for two days before the chicken is placed in the smoker.
“It’s hard to get pimento wood here in the States,” Wheat says, referring to the wood traditionally used to cook jerk chicken. “I use apple and cherry [wood] and I use pimento seeds [in the smoker], so it gives it that flavor.” The Jerk Spot’s chicken is served with sweet cornbread, a very-hot Scotch bonnet pepper and saffron rice. Perhaps in a nod to beach life, the rice has chunks of pineapple that have been soaked in coconut water—the only thing missing is rum.
The Jerk Spot is a full-circle experience for chef Wheat, who previously worked for Cameron Mitchell Restaurants for 14 years. He spent time at Marcella’s, Cap City Grandview, Cap City Gahanna and even as part of the leadership team in the run up to Budd Dairy’s opening. Now he’s a Budd Dairy vendor. It’s a small CMR world, sometimes.
Wheat says his next endeavor is a food truck for The Jerk Spot, and he and Nina continue to operate a Springfield-based catering business called All Seasons Catering.
If he ever gets a larger kitchen—a possibility if The Jerk Spot ever becomes a permanent chef partner at Budd Diary—Wheat says he’d love to add more dishes to his Jamaican repertoire. Think: curry goat, escovich fish, beef patties and more. For now, given The Hatch’s limited space, Wheat wants to maintain a focused, manageable menu. “I'm all about execution. I don't want people waiting forever,” he says.
Besides, to quote chef Wheat himself: “It’s working.”
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A Good Thing Going at Bellawood
You may recall the saga of Canal Winchester’s Blystone Farm and its owner, ex-Ohio governor candidate Joe Blystone. What you may not know is that the 82-acre cattle farm, butcher shop, restaurant and events venue is now under new ownership.
Now called Bellawood Farm, the veteran-owned business offers a nice stop in the country for wood-fired pizzas, sips in the beer garden, corn hole, live music and a little farm-market shopping.
I stopped by over the weekend and enjoyed the Italian Sausage pizza, featuring a white sauce, sausage, mozz, tomatoes and healthy dose of Calabrian chile oil on a chewy, wood-fired dough. The crust needed maybe 30 more seconds in the oven, but otherwise this was a very enjoyable pie.
Perhaps when it’s cooler outside, I plan a return visit to enjoy the farm’s beer garden and try the chicken pickle pizza—topped with ranch dressing, of course.—Erin Edwards