From a 600-square-foot hole-in-the-wall, Nicola Blaque shot to culinary fame. From a Westside spot once occupied by a taco stand, she became a nationally recognized restaurateur.
When Blaque opened The Jerk Shack in 2018, she was hoping to make payroll. Within a year, though, her eatery, a walk-up window with picnic tables, was named one of America’s 16 best new restaurants.
Articles followed in GQ, Texas Monthly and Southern Living. CultureMap San Antonio crowned her Chef of the Year. The Michelin Guide awarded The Jerk Shack a Bib Gourmand.
The head-spinning accolades bewilder her today. She tells those who ask that she cannot offer advice because, well, she’s still learning the business. Don’t believe her? When Blaque earned a James Beard nomination in 2023, she went online to learn what it meant.
Unassuming and gifted. Humble and hard-working. These are the character traits of a master chef blindsided by success.
From dream to national acclaim
Inside The Jerk Shack, five words in lights explain how she got here: “It was all a dream.” This is not, as some customers believe, a reference to a song by The Notorious B.I.G.
In 2017, a deceased aunt appeared to Blaque as she slept. Blaque had seen her father’s sister, Pamela Reid, only once. But now, in a vivid dream, Reid was delivering a message: “You’re not living up to your potential.”
Blaque had no idea what her aunt meant. At the time, Blaque was a caterer and working as a private chef for a few San Antonio Spurs players.
The dream nudged Blaque and her husband, Cornelius Massey, to open an eatery off West Commerce Street. A subsequent dream came with instructions: Sell jerk chicken and share Jamaican culture.
“Those dreams,” Blaque said, “led me all the way to this.”
Nicola Blaque was born in Jamaica as Lattoia Massey. She moved to the U.S. at the age of 5, served 10 years in the Army, moved from Hawaii to San Antonio and graduated from the Culinary Institute of America. She worked as a caterer and private chef, changed her name to get more business and started a Caribbean food stand in a neighborhood of taquerias. On a rugged patch of asphalt, she cooked up wildly popular jerk chicken tacos with avocado creme and pineapple pico.
Seven years later, she works out of a 2,700-square-foot site on the city’s far West Side. The new Jerk Shack, steeped in Jamaican spice, holds reminders of an improbable journey. Framed articles and media acclaim adorn one wall. Awards and more recognition stretch across another. A television plays a loop of her appearance with Guy Fieri on “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives.”
“I’m like, wow,” Blaque said. “It’s crazy how I ended up in the restaurant industry.”
Humble beginnings
The original Jerk Shack had limited parking, meager financing and no refrigeration. It also had a saint of a customer, a regular who delivered timely gifts. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the regular brought gloves and masks to Blaque, who was pregnant with her first child.
“Chef,” the gentleman told her, “it’s really bad out there and I need you to take care of yourself.”
The customer offered more than a thoughtful gesture. He provided enormous financial support. “He basically kept my employees paid,” Blaque said.
In early 2021, a reporter wanted to interview Blaque’s best customer for a story. She called her friend, got his voicemail and left a message. A return call came from the man’s wife. Blaque’s friend had died from COVID.
She swallows hard at the memory, his words echoing. “I believe in you,” he once told her. “Restaurants are shutting down. But not yours. Not on my watch.”
Out of respect for his family, Blaque said, she does not want to disclose the benefactor’s name. But she remains grateful for his generosity.
“I feel like he watches over us,” she said.
Forever on the go
On a recent afternoon, business was strong, nearly every table filled. A Caribbean-infused menu of oxtail, chicken and shrimp attracts a diverse clientele. Awards and media keep the traffic flowing. The pace is so fast, the days so full, Blaque does not have time to post all the recognition.
There’s no plaque recognizing her James Beard nomination for Best Chef in Texas. There’s no mention of her second San Antonio Chef of the Year award or the national tout for serving the fourth-best fried chicken in the U.S. And there’s no evidence of her participation in the recent James Beard Foundation Taste America series at Hotel Emma.
There, for 175 guests, Blaque teamed with chef Geronimo Lopez, her former culinary instructor, to produce an elevated, four-course meal: kampachi tempura, silky black bean cream soup, braised oxtail and chocolate cake with coconut gelee and caramelized pineapple-rum chutney.
“It makes me proud to see someone like Nicola do so well,” said Lopez, the event’s host chef. “I’ve seen her sacrifice, her struggle to balance family and work, to keep the business going through difficult times. It’s not easy to make it on your own terms, but she did and I’m proud of that.”
Blaque is forever on the go, running a business, raising children and volunteering with Visit San Antonio, where she serves as a cultural and culinary advisor.
“I have a 3-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son,” she said. “I’m trying to find a balance between being a mom, a wife and a business owner and keeping my employees gainfully employed. But juggling is not unfamiliar to me. Serving 10 years in the Army brought me a lot of discipline and showed me how to tackle things on a daily basis.”
A mission in Afghanistan comes to mind. She’s in a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, rumbling over terrain to check military equipment. Gunfire erupts. Her vehicle is struck but she and her convoy escape injury.
Stress in the kitchen? Blaque has returned from war with a combat action badge.
It’s not easy building a business, one brick at a time. But life, to be sure, is as sweet as Blaque’s bread pudding, the Michelin-acclaimed dessert with rum-caramel sauce.
