Ama’Gees Jamaican Cuisine

Jamaican restaurant in Durham, NC

Address
2001 Avondale Dr, Durham, NC, 27704
Phone
(919) 450-6351
Website
amagees.com

About Ama’Gees Jamaican Cuisine

Looking for authentic Jamaican food in Durham? Ama'Gees Jamaican Cuisine is the answer: jerk chicken, curry chicken, brown stew chicken, oxtails, and escovitch red snapper, each plate built out with rice and peas, stir-fried cabbage, and fried sweet plantains. The kitchen belongs to Dwayne and Andrea Cole, a married couple who both grew up in St. Catherine Parish, Jamaica, and who cook the food they were raised on. The short version of what to order: the oxtails, slow-cooked until they fall off the bone, are the dish regulars come back for. Jerk chicken and curry chicken anchor the everyday menu, and the red snapper can be had boneless or bone-in and prepared escovitch, brown stew, or fried. Curry shrimp, mac and cheese, festival, cocoa bread, and Jamaican beef, chicken, and oxtail patties round it out. Tying much of it together is the house "Oooooo Weeee Sauce," a sweet-and-spicy condiment the Coles make themselves and sell alongside the plates. How it began matters here. The Coles met in Queens, New York, after each moved there from Jamaica in 2007, and relocated to Durham in 2011 for a steadier cost of living. They started by cooking out of their home part-time, spreading word the old-fashioned way, with flyers left in corner stores, hair salons, and libraries. In 2017 they bought a 1990 Chevrolet delivery truck and spent roughly three years converting it into a kitchen on wheels, launching the food truck in East Durham before moving through South Durham and, in 2020, to Phoenix Square in the historically Black Hayti District. That climb was not a smooth one, and the family has been open about the hardship behind it, including a devastating personal loss in 2019 and the financial strain of opening during the pandemic. The work drew notice: Ama'Gees received a $10,000 small-business grant from Lenovo, recognition of a food truck that had earned a following the hard way. The following is real. Customers describe the food as tasting like it was cooked with love, and the portions as generous, the kind of plate that reads as a home-cooked Jamaican meal rather than a quick takeout box. It is a mobile operation as much as a storefront, so the truck's whereabouts shift; the surest way to catch it is to check its Instagram or Facebook before heading out. Hours run late and lean toward the back half of the week, with the kitchen open Wednesday through Sunday evenings and staying open past midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, closed Monday and Tuesday. For anyone typing "Jamaican food near me" into a Durham search bar looking for jerk, curry, oxtail, and snapper made by cooks who grew up eating it, Ama'Gees is a direct hit.

Ama'Gees Jamaican Cuisine was built by Dwayne and Andrea Cole, both raised in St. Catherine Parish, Jamaica. They met in Queens, New York, after separately emigrating in 2007, married, and moved to Durham in 2011. The business began as part-time home cooking marketed through flyers in corner stores, salons, and libraries; in 2017 the couple bought a 1990 Chevrolet delivery truck and spent about three years converting it before launching in 2019, later basing the truck at Phoenix Square in Durham's historic Hayti District. The journey included serious hardship, a devastating family loss in 2019 and pandemic-era financial strain, and drew a $10,000 grant from Lenovo. Customers consistently describe the food as tasting like it was cooked with love and praise the generous, home-style portions, with oxtails, jerk chicken, curry dishes, and escovitch snapper among the most-mentioned plates.

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