Interview
Three Notting Hill Carnival food traders share their experiences working the festival
By Joanna Sarah-Freedman
23 Aug 2024
8m
Notting Hill Carnival is about to commence, and this very second, hundreds of passionate cooks are pulling out their jerk pans, prepping their chicken and getting ready to feed thousands of hungry bellies.
The second biggest festival in the world, the Caribbean Carnival has taken place in the UK since 1959, when it was first held at St Pancras Town Hall, in response to racism being directed at the Windrush Generation. It was a time for those who felt outcast to come together and share in familiar traditions, and remains an opportunity for the whole community to show love and acceptance, through music, parades, and (of course), food.
As over a million people prepare to descend across Westbourne Grove, Westbourne Park, Kensal Road and Ladbroke Grove over the next couple of days, we spoke to three of the food stalls who will be there this year, to learn about the hustle of a Carnival food trader and dig into their journeys to getting there.
READ MORE: Levi Roots: 'Reggae Reggae Sauce wouldn't exist without Notting Hill Carnival'
Sunvalley Jerk
For Michelle and Omar, a Jamaican jerk stall at Carnival was one of their first forays into selling food professionally.
The husband and wife duo had both moved to London from Jamaica, and after working high flying jobs in the city, decided it was time to do something for themselves.
Michelle had always loved cooking. Her mum ran a restaurant back in Kingsland, and she’d spent most of her years in London inundated with people telling her she should sell her food. The odds may have been in her favour, but it took blood, sweat and tears to succeed on the streets of Notting Hill.
“Our first Carnival was a bad one,” Michelle laughs. “We didn't know what to expect, and it was so fast paced.” She did most of the cooking whilst Omar manned the jerk pan, but they reflect on feeling unprepared, understaffed and dwarfed by all the other stalls in attendance.
Their second try was even worse. “I felt so depressed because my phone broke, my tent broke, the road we were on wasn’t the best, as it was so busy people weren't stopping for the food. I left saying I wasn't gonna do it again,” she says.
Fortunately the duo did return the following year, because stationed in a better spot, and with some useful learnings, they finally got the success they deserved.
“What I’ve learned is that the key is preparation,” Michelle says. “I have lots of friends who've been doing Carnival for 30 odd years, and they'll tell you that. One gentlemen who comes every year told me he starts prepping from June, just to make sure that everything is organised and that the flavours are right.”
While Michelle and Omar don't take quite as long, they still book out several weeks to source the ingredients like curry seasoning and pimento seeds all the way from Jamaica, perfect old family recipes and do a shed load of ingredient prepping.
The fruit of their labour is showing, though. A few years after they opened, the positive response spurred them to open a permanent food truck near Borough Market, they've launched a bottled sauce which is drawing a UK-wide fanbase, and are expecting around 2000 people to flock and eat their food at Notting Hill.
“Last year at Carnival, I remember this guy just would not leave. He kept coming back and saying, ‘what did you put in that curry mutton?’ He's actually from Jamaica, and he just couldn't get enough,” Michelle smiles.
“You’ll see people eat and then queue again to buy more food to take home. It swells me with immense pride to see my culture so well celebrated, and to give people a taste of Jamaica.”
“Authenticity is what has given us the recognition over the years,” says Omar, who hails from Sun Valley, Montego Bay. “Caribbean customers definitely notice.
“It’s important because of course there’s a place for twisting Caribbean food, but people need to know the traditional way of doing things too, so it doesn’t just fade into something different and totally change.”
Curtis Caribbean
Curtis fell into the world of cooking by accident. He moved to the UK from Jamaica aged 19, and while he intended on studying, the financial constraints of being an international student pushed him straight into the world of work.
He was given a job at a Caribbean restaurant through a friend, and from there, “the passion just kicked in”.
“My mum and sisters were always cooking in Jamaica, and I would just be around, watching what they do. I learned a lot that way,” he says. “[But] we come from a farming community, St Andrew, and it was very different from what I cook now. We had ground provisions, vegetables, and if you raised a chicken or anything you’d have that, but definitely not oxtail and curry goat.”
“Funnily enough, I never even had jerk chicken in Jamaica!” he adds. “I learned it all from the chefs [in the Caribbean restaurants] when I got here.”
Curtis hustled away until 2012, when he decided to go it alone. First, he set up a business selling cakes across north and east London, before eventually landing his own bricks and mortar restaurant, Curtis Caribbean, four years later.
“Within that same year, we were at Carnival,” he laughs. “And it was something! We opened in June, and were at Carnival in August.”
Like many first time traders, the restaurateur hadn’t quite prepared himself for the hard slog that lay ahead.
“We missed the first day because we were so burnt out,” he says. “On the Monday, some of the deliveries didn't come, so we only had jerk chicken which we sold with hard dough bread. Funnily enough, we did manage to make it work."
The beauty of starting the restaurant and his Carnival career in tandem is that Curtis was able to learn from both as time went on. He’s finessed a huge menu at Curtis Caribbean, but quickly realised that some foods just didn’t lend themselves to the bustling streets of Notting Hill.
Jerk chicken, curry goat and patties have remained, while fish, roti and even his famous cakes were resigned to the Carnival scrap heap.
“We tried lots of things. Roti took too long to make and held us up,” he says. “The fish worked but we didn’t get the numbers right, and it definitely wasn’t the right environment for cake!”
While Curtis makes no bones about the fact Notting Hill Carnival is tough, it’s clear the festival holds a special place in his heart.
“It gets hot when you’re cooking all day, but you're trying to just focus on what you are doing, and hoping everything goes well,” he says. “If you are chopping away a nice fresh piece of jerk chicken and you see the anticipation on a customer’s face… yeah, it just feels good.
“Year after year, we keep seeing a lot of the same crowd – people who have come to the restaurant and then found us at Carnival – [but] we also have people coming to try Caribbean food for the first time, and they love it.
“You look around and you see people doing similar things...you see all those jerk pans, the excitement, the smiles, the passion.
“I find it as a privilege being there and playing a role, because it’s a celebration and appreciation of the culture, and without the [traders], Carnival is not the same.”
Chip n Jerk
Kelvin fronts Chip n Jerk, which has been part of the Carnival food scene, in one form or another, for ten years.
He started the stall alongside his mother, who has a long history in hospitality and owned her own popular Ghanaian restaurant, Sweet Handz, in north London. But a decade ago, the family discovered that a loyal local customer base wasn’t quite enough to succeed at Notting Hill Carnival.
“Me and my mum just thought, ‘we're gonna go there and sell our Ghanaian food', which is Jollof rice, chicken stew and that sort of thing, but no word of a lie, we didn't sell anything,” he recalls. “At that time, West African food wasn't really as popular as it is now. It was very foreign, and Carnival wasn’t ready for that. We didn’t get the memo.”
Like all good business owners, Kelvin and his mother were only fuelled by their failure, returning the following year as a Ghanaian restaurant but with some Caribbean dishes like rice and peas and jerk chicken, to appease the punters.
“We just kept evolving, and one day I said, ‘you know what? I think your restaurant has to stay in north London, and we have to create something just for Carnival’. That’s how Chip n Jerk came about.”
They launched their new, totally Caribbean food stall in 2018, and had their most successful year of Carnival ever. Fast forward a few years and culinary school-trained Kelvin had begun work as a private chef. His ambitions were growing, so his mother handed him over the reigns and allowed him to make their stall his own.
He's been careful to stretch the boundaries just the right amount, offering a modern take on Caribbean flavours, whilst not straying too far from what people know.
“I don't sell traditional patties, I do mini patties so that you can have a variety of bite sized flavours,” he says. Crispy mango jerk wings have also made the menu, alongside the likes of curry goat balls, which can be grabbed and eaten on the go.
“I was overwhelmed with what happened last year,” he smiles. “From when we opened, we just didn't stop, and the food that I bought for two days sold out in four hours. We’ve never had that in nine years of Carnival. I remember turning around and watching my mum staring, thinking ‘wow’.”
Instilled with confidence from their Carnival success, the next stage of Chip n Jerk is an exciting one. By complete chance, Kelvin realised his mum’s old restaurant, which shut down during Covid, was up for let again.
“Mum is a very tough woman, but the day [I secured the restaurant], I literally saw a little toddler. She cried her eyes out. I think, for her, to go from losing the restaurant, which was such a big part of all our lives, to seeing me start my thing in that same building…it was overwhelming.
“Mum was the first person that showed me that you're not supposed to get it right the first time, but you just try and it will eventually grow. I’m so happy I took that advice!”
Whilst Kelvin was forced to adapt to make his business a success, he's happy to see new African businesses thriving at Carnival today.
“A lot of people say Carnival isn't really Carnival anymore, but I feel like, if anything, it's just brought a new layer. Now I see dedicated stores selling African food, and the queue is the same as the Caribbean stores.
“It's still gonna always be Carnival, but it's celebrating even more cultures than it did before, which I think is amazing," he says.
Featured image: Curtis Caribbean/ Sunvalley Jerk
