Sharmz’s Perfect Curry Pot
Charmaine Bennett is the woman who started Sharmz Curry Pot
After a drunken beach trip my friend said he knew the perfect place to get dinner. Everyone in the car immediately agreed, but I was out of the loop. What or who is Sharmz and why on earth were we exiting the toll road at Angel’s Plaza? I discovered two things that evening: where the Spanish Town motor vehicle examination depot is and what a perfect plate of curry goat tastes like.
When Charmaine Bennett transformed the property her father operated as a wholesale at 36 Job Lane into a restaurant, her goal was to bring the family’s now famous curry tradition to the community in which they grew up. By then her sister, Morlyn Mangaroo-McBean, had opened the Moby Dick restaurant in Downtown Kingston. Bennett named the restaurant Sharmz Curry Pot in 1996 and never looked back. Since that fateful Saturday, I too have never looked back and often make the 53 kilometer (33 mile) roundtrip journey from my apartment in Kingston whenever I want curry goat.
*Joe Biden Voice* Let me be clear: I say, without fear of contradiction, that you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better plate of curry. The 100% local goat meat is scrumptious and melts on your tongue leaving a mouth-watering explosion of smoky, spicy, and savory flavor that only gets better when paired with buttery roti. This is curry done right and you will wolf down the hefty serving that comes with your order.
Romario Broomfield, the chef at Sharmz, starts his day by 6:00am, tending to the meats that have been marinating for at least 12 hours. By 7:00am, his pots are bubbling and his kitchen is bustling with other staff making sides and keeping the supply of mega-pots clean and ready for the next round of meat.
Sherida McBean-Morris (left) and Ricardo Broomfield: the dynamic duo that keeps Sharmz’s customers coming back.
“Di pot dem haffi big,” he laughed, noticing my astonishment at the sheer size of these vessels of culinary glory. When he gets there at 6:00am, however, Broomfield is likely to see one other person already busy: Sherida McBean-Morris. McBean-Morris, who now runs the business, starts her day at 5:00am.
“I started the business years ago, but my niece Sherida is the one who owns and runs it now and she’s doing an excellent job,” Bennett explained proudly from her usual seat at the register.
I ask McBean-Morris point blank how Sharmz has kept the food consistently good for so long. Her answer was quick and simple: “Everyone here loves what they do”.
“Listen,” she continued, “it makes no sense [if] you come to this job and you’re not happy. You’re not going to do the job well. I ask everyone that comes here to work ‘do you love food’ because if you don’t love it you won’t have an interest in it. But when yuh love it now, and for example, it’s in your bloodstream coming from your great-great-grandparents right down the line, then you enjoy what you do every day”.
Her great-great-grandparents migrated to Jamaica from India and carried a rich tradition of cooking and hard work with them. I ask as she prepares another round of fresh roti if it wouldn’t be easier and faster to source suitable pre-prepared products.
“Huh?” she quizzed. It’s clear that the thought never entered her mind and she dismissed the inquiry with a straight face by saying “No, home-cooked things are always better.”
Lavaughn Lewis grabs an early lunch from Sharmz Curry Pot.
For Broomfield, he’s proud that people know good food is always available at Sharmz. The casual eatery is usually packed with people from the community or those like me, who have made the journey from far-flung places.
Chef Ricardo Broomfield shows us some stew chicken, almost ready to serve.
“I feel really good about it. Everybody comes here, everyday people, celebrities, politicians and they all keep coming back. And they come from all over,” he said before naming some of his customers like the current Ministers of Culture and Health, Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange and Christopher Tufton.
It’s clear, however, that the humble chef doesn’t want to talk about himself. Instead Broomfield, who has been with the restaurant since it opened, is eager to show me one thing that makes the curry goat at Sharmz so delicious: wood.
“That’s the wood we use. Fresh lumber from the country. We only use wood to cook goat, it gives the goat a better flavor and texture,” he remarked, with reverence to the method and the meat I could not understand.
It made sense when he shared that Sharmz has “been doing it this way since we opened. It is how I learned from the chef before me. We cook other things with gas, but the goat is only cooked like this,” he reiterated, pointing to the still-smoldering fire pit as an assistant removed a massive pot of curry goat. The “other things” he mentioned include various chicken meals from curry to sweet and sour, oxtail, curry tripe and beans, curry cow foot, and more. The restaurant also serves goat head soup daily.
Asked what advice she would give about opening and running a successful restaurant, McBean-Morris, who’s also Mangaroo-McBean’s daughter and heir, comes back to a theme that has been common in our conversation: make sure you’re doing what you love.
“The profit [is] not suh big and with all the [price] hike ups going on, to keep the prices affordable for the customers…especially if you are someone who wants to use quality things. But again, I am doing what I love and the most important thing to me is that at the end of the week…I can make sure my employees are paid and they can go home and have some quality of life too and they can feed their families just as well as we feed our customers.”
She hopes that one of her three children will take over both the Sharmz and Moby Dick restaurants when that time comes.
“I have three kids and I’m hoping that one of them comes and takes over from me and keeps it going. As a matter of fact, in my mind I really want one to come take over Moby Dick and one to take over here [Sharmz] when I’m gone,” she hoped aloud, before adding that she’ll continue working in the restaurant until she “physically can’t do it anymore”.
Sharmz is open Monday to Saturday and is located at 36 Job Lane in Spanish Town, St Catherine in Jamaica. Stop by and enjoy some of the best food you can imagine. When you visit, whatever you order, make sure you ask for Nuff Gravy.
