Chris Clarke started working the kitchen as a young lad, chopping up coleslaw and seasoning meats in the back of his mom’s restaurant, Potluck Caribbean Cuisine. His siblings would help out, too: his sister would stand on a box and man the cash register, another would help serve.
You could say he was born to the restaurant life — and after years of working as a professional dancer, he has returned to slinging Jamaican cuisine. He recently opened Potluck in the Junction, the first Toronto location of Potluck Caribbean Cuisine, a rare GTA-based, Black-run food chain which has been going strong for 30 years now and spans six locations across Mississauga and Waterloo and now the Junction.
It’s a birthright of sorts: his mother, former nurse Sharon Johnson, built the chain, along with a vast community of people who adore not only her jerk chicken and curry goat but her warmth and kindness. Many of them call her Auntie Sharon. “There’s a lot of persons who really love the food, and that gives me the encouragement to continue,” Johnson says. Many customers have Johnson on speed dial so they can call her to tell her if any employee isn’t doing something just right, if the balance of pimento and thyme, garlic and scallion is just so. She has found most of her new locations when diners spot places for rent and bring the idea to Johnson; she also converted several of her locations into franchisees, turning over the eateries to devoted long-time employees so they, too, could become owners. “What fulfills her is the fact that she’s created so many jobs, so many opportunities — that she’s given so much to so many people over the years,” Clarke says about his mentor.
Just like Auntie Sharon, Clarke had a nickname, too. Customers got so used to seeing him at the restaurants during his childhood that everyone began calling him Potluck Bwoy. They would shout it at him at the mall, on the movie-theatre escalator, on the train. Years ago, Clarke was rehearsing some choreography for a live New Year’s Eve TV special starring Divine Brown; once the music stopped, someone’s voice echoed out from the audience: “Hey, isn’t that Potluck Bwoy?”
After years of being annoyed at the nickname, he decided to embrace his identity and rejoin the family business. He turned his moniker into a superhero character Potluck Bwoy, the cartoon face of his new line of spicy jerk chicken and crispy fry chicken waffle bowls. These are part of the “Junction-style” menu unique to his location, which also boasts lollipop chicken and salmon lettuce wraps.
Clarke was eager to decorate the rest of the walls of the new Junction location with nods to their Caribbean heritage: dishes like “rice and peas” and “fried dumpling” are spelled out in cursive, photos of crispy plantain and cool cups of carrot juice pop. But Johnson’s portrait was the first thing Clarke put up in the place. “There was nothing else in here yet because I wanted to lead with her mindframe and I thought the best way to build on something that is already so incredible was to make sure that (she was at) the foundation of it,” Clarke says. “I’ve learned so much (in) how my mom saw everyone and how she treats people. So this is an opportunity to put that all out there while extending the legacy.” The naturally shy Johnson was slightly horrified when she discovered this decor choice: “I was so frightened when I saw my picture on the wall!” she says.
But family will always be at the heart of Potluck, whether it was Johnson working alongside her children at the first location or the customers who became honourary kin over the decades. “It truly was a family effort, right?” Clarke says. “And that’s what legacies are built on.”
