The Caribbean Islands are about 1,200 miles away from College Park, but a small pocket of Jamaican culture lies just down the road from the University of Maryland.
Operating out of a once-abandoned house on Route 1, The Jerk Pit dishes up authentic Jamaican cuisine while customers mingle to the sounds of Reggae music and the sights of palm tree-painted walls.
“I want you to feel like you’re in the Caribbean when you step in,” said Lisa Nash, owner and founder of the restaurant. “It should be warm, inviting.”
Nash, who is from Jamaica, opened The Jerk Pit in January 2005 and has run and grown the business ever since.
After graduating from high school, Nash moved to the United States and enrolled at Howard University, earning a communications degree, according to an Our Today article featured on The Jerk Pit’s website. Her studies helped her develop the skills she needs to talk to customers and advertise the restaurant, she said.
Nash originally owned The Jerk Pit in College Park’s Campus Village Shoppes, a strip of now-closed restaurants and stores on Route 1, but relocated five years later when she discovered the old abandoned house down the road.
She said she chose College Park because of its familiarity — she lives nearby in Laurel — and its close proximity to this university. Nash said she also noticed a lack of other Jamaican and Caribbean restaurants in the area.
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The Jerk Pit features a variety of spaces, including a main room for customers to order and pick up food, a dining room, an outdoor patio and a lounge and bar. Throughout the restaurant, bright colored decorations, string lights and phrases and words written in Jamaican Patois, an English-based Creole language, line the walls.
“I wanted to be true to home,” Nash said. “What makes it worthwhile is … when people appreciate what we have.”
In addition to the restaurant’s atmosphere, The Jerk Pit offers a range of authentic Jamaican dishes, including Oxtail, Curry Chicken and Escoveitch, or Jerk Fish. But according to Nash, the restaurant specializes in Jerk Chicken — a type of seasoned grilled chicken common in the Caribbean that the business is named after.
Several customers said the authenticity and sharp flavor of The Jerk Pit’s cuisine keeps them coming back.
Tanaya Jha, a Gaithersburg resident and second-time customer, said the restaurant’s food was her main reason for returning. Jha said she likes to order dark-meat chicken, plantains and an extra side of Jamaican Jerk Sauce, which she added is “very important.”
Even though she doesn’t live very close to The Jerk Pit, Jha said she still made the trip because she enjoyed her first experience.
Another customer, Eric Watson, who lives in Washington, D.C., said he has been to The Jerk Pit more than a dozen times.
“Normally, the cook makes Jerk Chicken out on the grill, and it’s delicious,” he said, referring to a set of three large grills on the patio. “Unlike some other Jamaican restaurants [that] may cook it inside.”
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Watson said The Jerk Pit’s large portion sizes make it stand out from other Jamaican restaurants he has tried.
Nash now runs the business with the help of her husband and son. Some of her staff have been with the business for more than 10 years. She calls them all her family and likes knowing she can depend on them, she said.
“Everybody likes being there and has the same goals, the same ideals,” she said. “We’re all in it together.”
The Jerk Pit opened up a second location in Adams Morgan in Washington, D.C., in October, a decision Nash said she had been contemplating since establishing the first one 20 years ago.
Nash wasn’t sure if she wanted to open the new location, but she said it would allow the business to branch out. Washington, D.C.’s abundance of office parties and special events also gives her a chance to capitalize and expand The Jerk Pit’s catering business, she said.
Nash said she would consider opening more locations in the future if the opportunity arises, but, she doesn’t want to “spread [her] wings too thin” because the restaurant’s brand means so much to her.
“The name Jerk Pit means a lot to me,” she said. “It’s my name, you know, it’s all me.”
