Jerk Pan’s food truck lunch line can often lead down the block from the vehicle to Lexington Ave. Photo by: Amanda Williams.

For approximately three hours a day for five days a week, Andrew Chance brings pungent, distinctly-flavored Kington, Jamaican cuisine to an all-American corporate neighborhood. Over ten years ago, Jerk Pan has made its debut near Grand Central Station, on the corner of East 48th Street and Park Ave, the first international food truck to set up there.

Behind a line of dozens of people between Park Ave and Lexington on an average Friday afternoon, a large Jamaican flag flies above the roof of the black, yellow and green truck, symbolizing authentic West Indian cuisine.

The Jerk Pan restaurant location on Springfield Boulevard in Queens Village, which has been open since 2015, is where Chance, 45, spends most of his weekdays.

Before the opening of the restaurant just a few years after, Jerk Pan was only a food truck and a food cart on East 56^th and 3^rd Avenue. While his mother-in-law, Virginia Francis, manages the cart today, Andrew manages the restaurant and the truck on E 48th Street, which is only open for approximately three hours a day before it is driven back to the restaurant.

An average workday, which typically begins at 4 a.m., lasts for more than 15 hours. He reserves Sundays to observe his heritage and his religion with his loved ones.

“My husband is busy most of the time,” said Chance’s wife, Taneika. “We usually sit down mostly on a Sunday because everybody has different timing [on the weekdays].”

As Sunday evening approaches, the house is cloaked in an aroma of seasoned meat and brown rice. Chance and his family returned home from church four hours earlier.  Taneika changed from her church service attire into one of her many floral dresses from her wardrobe before attending to the steamed rice and stewing oxtails that she had started beforehand.

“Who set the table,” asked a voice in the dining room – Taneika’s mother, Virginia, whose husband was visiting the family in New York from Jamaica for the first time.

“A.J. did,” responded Taneika, as her eldest son, A.J., brought out the first dish to the dining room table.

“A.J., remember, the knife goes on the right and the fork goes on the left,” said Virginia.

It was his first attempt at setting the table for Sunday dinner. When she is not working on the food truck or assisting Taneika with preparing the fried chicken and salad dishes for dinner, Virginia usually sets the table. This Sunday, her grandson has become her protégé.

Sunday dinner dish choices are varied from week to week, but a full table is a sure thing in the Chance home. Photo by: Amanda Williams.

While his youngest son takes a nap downstairs in his room, Andrew returned home from errands for the upcoming work week; just in time to sit down to eat with the rest of the family. As his mother-in-law listened attentively to his father-in-law’s stories about the difference between American and West Indian languages, Andrew and Taneika shared smiles and laughter across the table. They have two sons together and have been married for nearly 18 years.

“[Preparing] Sunday dinner usually consists of me and my mom,” said Taneika. “My husband – that’s his ‘rest day.’ I try to feed him [myself] that day.”

“Every Sunday, it depends,” said Taneika. “Today, we [made] oxtail and fried chicken. The oxtail is marinated overnight. We use Lawry’s [seasoning], all-purpose seasoning and some types of Jamaican seasonings.”

But while Taneika calls the shots for Sunday dinner, her husband overseas the everything for the restaurant, the food truck, and the food cart.

Chance, who is a United States Army veteran, came to the U.S. from Kingston, Jamaica in 1986. In 2008, he bought the truck from a vehicle retailer in New York for approximately $100,000 in cash, which he had been saving for years prior.

Andrew Chance and his family reserve Sunday as a time to observe their heritage and religion. Photo by: Amanda Williams

Since then, he has stuck with the same routine, to run his business as effectively as possible.

“I go down to the restaurant, make sure everything okay,” said Chance. “Then I come back to drop off my kids to school, then I go back [to the restaurant] and send out the [food] truck and the cart one behind the other. I just make sure everything runs the way it’s supposed to run.”

Jerk Pan has seven employees who handle kitchen, serving and truck duties. Chance oversees everything, including assuring ensuring that everything is in place before business hours begin. At the end of every workday, leftover food is thrown out at the end of the day if the employees are not able to donate it all to locals, the truck and the cart is driven back to the Queens Village, and the gates come down on the storefront.

As he drives home from work every day, he looks forward to going home to his wife and his children, his biggest supporters. They are the ones who motivate him to keep moving forward with the business. “The initial plan is to save it for them,” he said.

Amanda Williams