Inside Tommie’s Jerk Chicken

The aroma of jerk chicken was still in the air when the men and women reached into pockets and purses and slapped money on the table.

Tobias Brown watched.

For generations Jamaican jerk chicken wings had passed through Brown’s family like an heirloom. But it was on that late-spring day eight years ago that Brown realized his recipe was something special.

The men and women sat in a circle, slapping money down on the table. 

A few minutes earlier, Brown brought a plate of his Jamaican jerk chicken wings to the table. It was a dish that has been passed down through his family for several generations, but Brown had only recently tried to perfect it himself. 

Brown, who moved to Surrey in 2013 after an education career in Illinois, was asked to help out a friend at a graduation party. 

For years after moving to Canada, Brown struggled to carve out a career. 

Although he had a degree and previous education experience — he taught at elementary, middle and secondary school and was a curriculum and instruction manager at the University of Illinois Chicago — obtaining a work permit to teach proved difficult. 

“I just couldn’t get an answer why I can’t teach,” Brown said. “Like, why can’t I teach? I just wanted to teach.” 

The rejection forced him to make a midlife career pivot to the culinary arts, a passion from his childhood. Now he is recognized as one of the top immigrants in Canada. 

His mother, otherwise known as Aunt Tommie, grew up in Jamaica and taught Brown how to cook at an early age. 

First, he watched her mix onions and peppers with herbs and spices to create a sauce. Next, as he got older, Brown would hand her a bowl or spoon to speed up the mixing process. He then started giving her the ingredients itself, and eventually, prepping the meat — becoming his mother’s personal sous chef. 

“I just started drawing on her lessons,” Brown said. “[My family] was always helping her. If someone said, ‘Hey, my child is graduating, we’re gonna have 150 guests, can you feed us?’ She’d be like, ‘ya, no problem.’”  

So Brown jumped at the chance to help out at a graduation party in the Lower Mainland in 2016.

He cut the ingredients and combined them into a marinade. He pierced the chicken, allowing the marinade to sink deeper into the meat, and rubbed on the sauce. The chicken was a hit from the start, with many party guests asking for second and third servings. 

“You should sell these, because I would buy these,” one guest said, as a collection of other people started to mumble mhhm, mhhm, mhhhhm. All the praise sparked an idea.

“Do me a favour,” he said aloud to the table of roughly 20 to 30 people. “If you would pay for this, put money on the table, even if it’s just a loonie.” 

One by one, people started putting $10 and $20 on the table. Throughout the rest of the evening, Brown estimates he got up to $800 or $900 — which he ultimately ended up giving to the teenager who was celebrating her graduation that night.

“I don’t need money right now,” he told her. “They just told me that this is a thing.” 

The thing resulted in Tommies Jerk, a Jamaican cuisine business that he launched in 2021 and has quickly become a hidden gem. 

Over the last few years, multiple Reddit threads have praised Brown’s culinary skills and the affordability of his jerk chicken, with some anonymous users going so far to say that his restaurant is one of the best spots for Jamaican food in the Lower Mainland.

“It’s just amazing that people let me know that this was a thing,” said Brown.

But he still needed validation from his relatives. Since he got serious about making jerk chicken nearly one decade ago, he has travelled back to Jamaica roughly a dozen times. The first few times he went back, Brown sought out (and gained) approval of his jerk chicken recipe from elders. 

“I need them to say, ‘You’re on to something,’” Brown said. “Because older people don’t lie.” 

His work has also been recognized by many other organizations.

In 2023, Brown was selected as a top 10 Black entrepreneur by the BIPOC Foundation, and this year, he was named a top 25 finalist for the annual Canadian Immigrant awards.

“Everyone is amazing, I looked at everyone’s profile and they are all amazing people,” Brown said.

After the graduation ceremony in 2016, Brown catered to many more backyard parties. At those informal events, once again, he noticed people devoured his chicken. 

“One time turned into five, turned into 10 backyard parties,” Brown said. “My food was gone before everybody else’s food was gone.” 

He did that casually for a few years prior to the pandemic. After the pandemic, he decided to get his business licence. He also started renting space out of the Cloverdale Community Kitchen, a non-profit community kitchen, where he primarily creates and offers takeout jerk chicken.

“There is a definite warmth and contagiousness about him. His love for providing quality food to the community is evident,” wrote Marty Jones, executive director of the Cloverdale Community Kitchen, in an email last year. 

(In September 2024, Tommie’s Jerk announced on social media that it was moving to a new location. As of Jan. 6, 2025, the location has not been announced. Customers can still pick up Tommie’s Jerk at One Love in White Rock and the Reggae Market in Langley.)

Prior to the announcement, Brown told the Citizen that he has aspirations to launch his own storefront in the future. And that’s a move Jones also said is a reasonable next step.

“The public deserves to be able to have his food available more than two days a week,” Jones wrote.