Ground Provisions: Cooking With Suzanne Couch

Words by Chenee Daley, Photos by Carlo Less—

On a recent Monday night, I drove up the steep, winding roads of Jack’s Hill overlooking Kingston to interview renowned Jamaican restaurateur and musician Suzanne Couch about her new culinary and musical ventures at home and abroad. Before, I asked Susan for directions, since an out-of-Kingston transplant like me doesn’t know how to navigate the serpentine route to her home. Her speech moves, like her life, at rapid-fire pace and so I’m forced to ask her to slow down. Sweet and upbeat, she accommodates me and I arrive to find her bustling and, as usual, wearing many hats: head chef, artist and interviewee.

I sat down with Suzanne to discuss her new role as culinary director of NYC Jamaican restaurant Miss Lily’s, her music career, and the future of the Kingston-based eatery she owns formerly called Café What’s On. Our interview swings from the subject of cicada bugs to the detriments of Monsanto corn. And her wealth of miscellaneous knowledge seemed to find practical application in just about everything she did. As we spoke, her bandmates spilled into the venue for their usual Monday rehearsal and she bartered with them: her signature eats for their rehearsal time.

“I went very light tonight, because I just came in from New York, so it’s curried chicken and curried chickpeas with white rice and vegetables, some cookies, and a cheesecake I brought in from Junior’s,” she says. She’s intent on feeding everyone in her presence. “Have something to eat” she insists. “Lawd, don’t tell mi yuh on a diet.”

“I love to prepare food, but my music is my life,” says the singer, known in reggae for her cover of Carly Simon’s “Why,” produced by legendary dancehall duo Steely & Clevie, and the more recent single “Smile.” “They say I won’t make any money from it, but I’ll have to die trying.”

With the backdrop of Kingston’s city lights energetically keeping watch and a hubbub of activity before us, she went on to describe the many things clamoring for her time and energy.

LargeUp: How did your involvement with Miss Lily’s start?

Suzanne Couch: Two years ago, I started helping [Miss Lily’s owner] Paul [Salmon]. He needed a little tweaking on the menu and a mutual friend, one of the investors in Miss Lily’s, suggested they call me. I started working with them to sort out a few little things on the menu. Since then, I’ve been getting more and more involved and, now, I devised three sauces for them.

LU: Tell me about your jerk sauces for Miss Lily’s…

SC: It’s actually three sauces: the Jerk BBQ sauce, a Jerk marinade and a RassHotJerk BBQ sauce. You just throw it on the chicken, keep it there for at least half an hour, and throw it on the grill. As best as somebody that’s moving around in America would want to achieve by something that’s a 1-2-3 step. They retail at $7. We just got into Gourmet Garage and Dean and Deluca. So we are going to be doing a lot to advertise the sauces. I actually just did a food segment for Kelsey’s Essentials on the Cooking Channel.

LU: What about the launch at the GoogaMooga Festival?

SC: We wanted to go the festival and showcase Miss Lily’s and the whole factor of the jerk chicken, and let me tell you, it was really amazing. The chicken was amazing. I was really proud of it and even the chefs were impressed. The positioning was actually a disaster because it rained, and the festival had to be cancelled on the Sunday. The chicken was amazing, but we made too much. But the chicken…the chef said he’s never tasted chicken like that. It was really good.

LU: What are your thoughts on the rise of foodie fans, and chefs being dubbed the new “rock stars”?

http://www.livefromdarylshouse.com/currentep.html?ep_id=17

SC: There is definitely a bigger interest in food. I have a story to tell you: Daryl Hall came to Jamaica two years ago to film the Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival. He has an online show called Live from Daryl’s House that’s about artists coming to Daryl’s home and singing his songs and, during the show, they have a little cooking segment. Fans kept writing to him, telling him that they wanted more cooking in his music show. So when he came to Jamaica to do the festival, I was asked to be the chef. He came and recorded with Toots at Brian and Wayne Jobson’s house down in St Ann, where I was the chef, and I got to sing “Sweet and Dandy” with them.

It was great because when they showcased me, they used my music and food and it’s been one of the most popular episodes. I think the ABC network picked up the show and put it at like 11 o’clock on Saturday nights, which is amazing. It’s an internet show that got picked up for television and went on some obscure time like 11 o’clock at night on some LA channel. But from that, they’ve just been bought by a bigger station and they’re going to be doing even more food. Why? Because the whole synergy of food and music is great.

Read on for Part 2.

LU: Do you have any plans to pair your own music and food?

SC: When I did the segment with Daryl, I said to myself this is ridiculous. I want to do something like this because I really do food and music – Darryl only brings chefs in. I’m not going to do a music show like Daryl; this will be a food show but with a lot of music—sort of like a reality-type show of these nights that I have at my home. All kinds of people come here. When the rehearsals start you will see it; it’s crazy, man! We’ve been rehearsing for like two-and-a-half years, and we’ve only done about two shows. The music is so difficult and we only rehearse once a week but it’s not reggae, it’s not hardcore pop, it’s just songs that I wrote. You can’t really put it in a category per se. I’ve done a lot of tapings with filmmaker Carlo Less, and we’ve been compiling footage because we want to do the pilot for a 13-show internet series.

LU: Tell me about the status and future of Café What’s On.

SC: It’s now an artist space and the name has changed; it’s called What’s On Creative Warehouse Café and Espresso Bar. It’s an actual house and we have about eight rooms up there. What I want to do is to have the café downstairs and artists upstairs—everybody gets a room, similar to residencies. I’ve been getting into spray painting the café. I got this guy, a friend of my daughter Sarah, to come in and paint the outside of my wall. If you go to 133 Barbican Road, you’ll see a painting from this artist called Mau Mau from England, who does very controversial paintings. He decided to do David and Goliath; David as the little farmer throwing his ital seed at Goliath, the Monsanto man. Monsanto corn is taking over the planet right and you know the whole controversy with that.

I have about 86 cans of paint in Miami right now waiting to be shipped to Jamaica so I can finish the wall and I think I’m going to do something for Kingston On the Edge. I’m going to invite the artists and people from the Grants Pen community out, and we are going to do a spray fest. You know Art Basel in Miami? I would love to do Grants Pen like that. Just paint the entire community, so that when people drive through, they are really impressed and I think that would just uplift the entire area. But the rehearsal is about to start.

Miss Lily’s sauces are now available here. Suzanne Couch and her band perform tonight in Kingston, Jamaica, at Redbones Blues Cafe.