Yello Yard is bringing Jamaican and Caribbean cooking to Sneinton Market
The jerk deli produces patties, sandos, and plenty of bold flavours
Nottingham’s food scene is ever-expanding – and Yello Yard’s shop in Sneinton Market is one of the latest additions to this.
We spoke with co-founders Mahalia Chambers and Jowayne Marks about the beauty of Jamaican and Caribbean food, why showcase this is important to them, and what they’ve got cooking up in their brick-and-mortar store after years of being on the road.
If you’re looking for places to eat in Nottingham, Yello Yard’s patties, sandos, and loaded pots are well worth checking out. For more features and guides, subscribe to The Notts Edit to receive our articles in your inbox for free.
Yello Yard is bringing Jamaican and Caribbean cooking to Sneinton Market
Words and photos by Eve Smallman
Sunshine patties. Loaded sandos. Hot mac and cheese. Specialising in Jamaican and Caribbean cuisine, Yello Yard’s delicious food has firmly taken over Nottingham’s markets and Instagram feeds – and now the brand has opened up shop in Sneinton Market.
Its co-founders are Mahalia Chambers and Jowayne Marks, who both grew up with big Jamaican flavours and family cooking. “Jamaican cooking has quite a strong global impact when it comes to music and food. My inspiration is from an expression aspect, where I’m putting food that people enjoy out there, and wondering what kind of narratives can be put around it,” Jowayne says. “For me, that has inspired me – the whole experience, the visuals, the taste, the conversation.”
Before the pair started cooking food for Yello Yard, they were toying with the idea of starting a YouTube. “This was around the advent of where everything happened with George Floyd, so naturally, what came about was conversations of inequality in different sectors,” Joywayne says. However, they found it was a little bit quiet in the food and cuisine space. “It brought about questions as to the representation with Michelin star distribution and who’s the head chefs in certain spaces.”
He also says that, a lot of the time, Caribbean food is pigeonholed in terms of price, high-endness, and unspoken rules. “There are certain things like that that we want to break, and to get through a certain ceiling just by doing something different,” Jowayne explains. “Those conversations are goals of ours and very much our mission – that’s why we are now opening a jerk deli, because we don’t want to be a monolith.”
After returning to Nottingham from London pre-Covid, they noticed a gap for just this. “We noticed that the thing that we’re most passionate about, which is Caribbean food, there wasn’t a lot of variance as to what could be created, compared to what we saw in London,” says Jowayne. “We had bakeries, we had jerk spots, we had high-end restaurants, convenience, and when we came back, it was kind of like one thing.”
They originally decided to start with just one thing – their famous patties, as they remembered having quality artisan patties in London. They did these fully vegan originally, selling at Sneinton Vegan Market – but they soon hit a crossroads. Jowayne says, “Did we want to be fully vegan and gluten-free and fully accessible, or do we want to go more in the direction of trying to make the best that we can?”
In the end, they decided to go for quality, and continued with patties like beef and saltfish, and even had a sub-brand called Just Patties. “The idea was no compromise, no bullshit – but we decided we wanted to slowly expand to help us accelerate,” Jowayne says.
After an initial Prince’s Trust bid (“they probably felt like we were a bit too ambitious with our numbers – but we went to make those targets anyway), they brought barbecue into the fold – and from there, they realised they couldn’t really do vegan markets from this. However, this did then bring them onto their next expansion.
Mahalia explains, “We wondered how we could incorporate baking and barbecue together without feeling disconnected and still keeping in with our Caribbean roots and also growing up in England – I think that’s where we came up over time with the sandos, marrying those two with the jerk meats and coco bread.” The loaded sandos are truly iconic, with fillings like jerk chicken, jerk pork, and oxtail and cheese.
In their Sneinton Market shop, they have these, as well as a carefully-curated set of additions. “We’ll also have our loads, which will be our bowl of treats with deli options and our mac and cheese,” says Jowayne. “We’ll have cornbread, which might be like peach cobbler style, and a standard one that goes well with our mac and cheese,” adds Mahalia. “We’ll also have rum cake and our Jamaican-style doughnuts.”
The space in Sneinton Market will allow them to further develop into sweet bakes, such as Guinness punch donuts, inspired by the Jamaican Guinness punch drink with condensed milk, spices, and vanilla. While they originally bought Guinness for this, they soon found Neon Raptor – also in Sneinton Market – which has its own stout.
“We’re finding a really good symbiosis here – Martin from By Our Hands We Make Our Way gave us some fruit wood chips for our barbecue to try, Sarah Manton has been super helpful, and we’re working with Foragers’ Kitchen on jerk seitan,” Jowayne explains. “We’ve collaborated with Paddy from Working Man’s Kitchen before, and that’s been a hit – so a lot of things just work.”
The food scene in Nottingham has never been more exciting – and for Jowayne and Mahalia, they’re finding that people’s appetites, tolerances, and eyes for culture are opening up even more. “There’s this transition with seeing, like for example, Ethiopian restaurants open up and being well received and an increase of really cool Vietnamese restaurants,” Jowayne says.
He continues, “I think what it shows is where it was stuck in the medieval times where it was only Indian and Chinese takeaway, we’re now just spoilt for choice, and what it forces is a sense of quality that we all have to abide by – and it only brings everybody else up.”
In terms of their favourite places to go in Nottingham, Jowayne and Mahalia are big fans of GB Cafe Oriental Diner and Sushi Bar (“the menu is vast, but they still uphold the quality as they have three kitchens”), Pici (“we really like what Ryon’s done there – it’s beautiful food), and Boulangerie de Saigon (“it’s so nice and we’re sandwich people!”).
When it comes to the future, they’re looking at how they can open the space up for workshops. But for now? They’re simply focusing on showing that Jamaican/Caribbean cuisine isn’t a monolith and that there are so many levels to it.
Jowayne finishes by saying, “I hope people feel like the format is exciting and different enough for them to understand the different layers in depth of Jamaican culture – so that’s what I’m excited about.”
Judging by the never-ending queues on opening day? I’d say they’re already there.
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