Natalie Dinning: Lesley’s Sauces

Everybody has a story. The Jerk Kitchen is a real Islington family business. Here Natalie Dinning the new owner explains the move from a match-day Caribbean food stall, set up and run by her Dad, to focusing on selling their range of sauces, including their Jerk Sauce which was originally made from her mum’s own recipe. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill.

Q: How has the lockdown and Covid-19 impacted you?
“I have two boys, aged 11 and 15 and 2020 was a really big transition year for us – my eldest was leaving secondary and going into either sixth form or college and my youngest is leaving primary and going into secondary. It feels like this all got halted. We’ve done home schooling and lots of different projects, but it’s very challenging. My youngest struggled at the beginning massively. He just couldn’t understand why everything was closing. He is very active — he plays a lot of sport and attends Crown And Manor Boys Club playing and training basketball which he loves. It is also a great place for homework club and the staff are great mentors, they are amazing and he was really into it. It was just heart-breaking when he couldn’t go. As time has gone on, we’ve got a bit used to everything being shut. My oldest has not done his GCSE exams and his school will be giving predicted results which he didn’t like the sound of. He was so ready for his exams, we’d put a big cork noticeboard up in the kitchen with revision notes and quotes, timetables and motivational systems — but now no exams. I feel he really struggled at times with lockdown because he felt that it now was all out of his hands, and he felt deflated.”

FOLLOW ISLINGTON FACES a new interview is published every week. If you’d like to become a voting member of the charity Islington Faces our trustees need you! Please send an email to islingtonfaces@gmail.com with your name and reason why you’d like to support Islington Faces. Thanks.

Meet Natalie
Natalie Dinning, 36, has lived in Islington her whole life. Right now, home is near Essex Road.  “I used to go to Highbury Fields School, when the head was Ann Mullins. Later when I was one of the parent governors of my youngest son’s school Laycock, she actually chaired the governing body. I still call her Miss Mullins,” laughs Natalie as she starts to explain the story of Lesley’s Sauces.

“My Dad, Neil, who has worked in the council’s Print Department for 30+ years, originally set up The Jerk Kitchen at the Arsenal Stadium at Drayton Park, to offer something different from the usual football match day burger and chips. He set it up in 2006 and very soon was really warmly welcomed by the football fans, and also the local community. Everyone loved it because it was something different, and the food was delicious,” says Natalie who is now the owner of the business born out of the stall. Her business sells sauces influenced with a burst of Caribbean flavour, with their famous Jerk Sauce taking the centre stage. Her younger brother, Luke, started the marketing and set up the website, and her Mum, Lesley, has played a unique role in the handing over her original recipe for the Jerk Sauce, and Natalie’s sons help with loading the car for deliveries in this all-Islington business.

Lesley’s Sauces was launched after Natalie’s Dad, Natalie and family noticed how much their customers loved adding their Jerk Sauce to their meals. At the same time, they were being asked by butchers if they could stock the sauce.

“My mum would make the sauces for us in her kitchen. But then it became too much when we started selling on our stall and stocking shops, so we use a condiment family-run business in Sussex— they’re really lovely. They produce our sauces for us, using our recipes. We wanted a manufacturer that had the same ethics as us and not put rubbish ingredients in it. Even though we sold meat on the stall all of our sauces are suitable for vegans,” explains Natalie.

There is now a range of Lesley’s Sauces. “The Jerk Sauce was the first but in the last couple of years the Hot Pepper sauces has soared. People really love it —it’s quite well balanced. Hot heads say it’s not hot enough, but it’s flavoursome with a kick of heat. It’s a misconception that all Caribbean food is super-hot, we love flavours and this is a good family sauce, so hot sauce loving kids can have it too.” Natalie’s favourite is “the Pineapple Sweet Chilli Sauce – the consistency is runnier than the rest but everyone says they like it like that, so we listened to them”. For a while they also had a plum sauce in the range.

The Jerk Kitchen stall only closed in 2019 but Islington Faces’ readers may remember Neil cooking Caribbean specialities – jerk chicken, curry goat and patties. The jerk chicken was cooked on a barrel (some people call it a drum) and the wonderful smell would float down Drayton Park.

“It was hard work,” says Natalie who often helped her Dad. “Literally everything was cooked fresh on the day by my Dad. The Jerk chicken was cleaned and marinated for 24-48 hours before cooking, my Dad would dry season it and cook it on the barrel and then continuously base it with the Jerk BBQ sauce created by my Mum, Lesley. My mum and dad are separated, though they both still live in Islington, but really my mum had nothing to do with the food stall business – except for that famous Jerk Sauce.”

===============

Places Natalie Dinning loves in Islington

• I love Highbury Fields play park – it’s really nostalgic for me, and my kids have played there. And it’s the middle of Islington which I love.
• It’s easy to walk to the British Library which I love – I find it very therapeutic and peaceful and being in that environment is inspiring and encouraging. Also, I use the British Library IP Centre and I’ve joined some of their free seminars which are really helpful – I enjoyed learning about the brand behind Green & Black. And I won a prize at the end of it, a free marketing workshop. Driving in King’s Cross is awkward because it is so congested, so I walk and sometimes use the red Jump electric bikes. I also love going to Central Library off Holloway Road: I’ve always loved books. https://www.bl.uk/business-and-ip-centre
• I love the Arsenal stadium – and Arsenal do a lot for the community. One of my sons has actually played on the pitch at the Emirates Stadium through an event for schools. He was ecstatic!  One time I rented out one Jump bike for 8 of us – my sons and their friends – and we rode around the Arsenal stadium for about an hour. It taught them to share and take turns – one would be riding and one sitting on the back. It was so amazing and got them off the computer. One of the boys couldn’t ride a bike, so he kind of learnt. I did Natalie’s boot camp running up and down the stairs. We did time trials! And it only cost me a fiver to entertain us all.
• Hands down my favourite shop is Cass Art. I paint and my kids do a lot of creative things. I love having that there on our doorstep and then Waterstones is opposite on Islington Green. I do sometimes buy things from Molly Meg on Essex Road, next to the library. It’s an independent brand and she’s a really nice girl – I love the colourful windows and they do a lot of workshops for younger kids in there.

===================

Who’s Lesley?
“It’s my Mum, I get called Lesley all the time! It was my Mum’s homemade sauce and we asked if we could use her recipe, and she said it was fine and gave us her blessing. We basted our chicken with it, then we’d ask our customers if they wanted Jerk Sauce over their meal, and it just grew in popularity. People kept asking if they could buy it. Then one day we thought how about launching the Jerk Sauce. Initially we sold it in plastic bottles for the football crowd at our food stall at the Arsenal. Then it just grew in popularity. People would come down and get food and sauces, even though they were not going to the match.”

Family business
“I loved the stall because it was our family business. It was more than food, it was a little hub. The Jerk Kitchen was a meeting spot for people. And the locals would come and get their dinner when the crowds had gone into the game. “We had a lovely family whose daughter was 5 or 6 and absolutely loved the Jerk Sauce and Chicken Rice ’n’ Peas, she’d always be brought around for her tea. “I’ve got so many photos of the younger kids and all the customers who came and ate at the stall.”

It’s clear Natalie misses the contact with people that the stall gave. “We actually shut the doors of the kitchen at the end of last season in 2019. We were there for 13 years. We were approached to do Pop Up Kitchens and the sauces really began to take-off,” says Natalie.

“A lot of people were really angry and upset we’d gone, and we still get asked if and when we’ll come back. Some even saying ‘let’s petition to get you in the Arsenal Stadium!’” It’s also a source of pride that The Arsenal Fan TV interviewed us on the first days when we set up and came back to interview us on our last day — they called it the Farewell to The Jerk Kitchen, which you can search on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZjTL2-TxTE

Natalie admits that the stall was hard work, however much she loved it. “We would set up way before the game. Sometimes, it was bucketing down with rain, or strong winds. We’d have to hold on to the tarpaulin for dear life, and we were even out there in the snow. Once at the time of setting up we were the only stall with the entire road covered in snow, our hands were freezing, needless to say we decided to take everything down and close that day. I often got told off by my uncle for not wearing the right shoes as I always wore Vans” she says. This interview is done over the phone (because of lockdown) but I get the feeling Natalie has Vans on her feet right now too.

The customers at the stall were a huge support for The Jerk Kitchen, and often helped the business towards new milestones. “Our first ever uniform were aprons printed up with The Jerk Kitchen that a customer and his daughter had bought for us, it was incredible!” We had hairnets and food hygiene gloves. Soon they also had The Jerk Kitchen t-shirts plus good footwear.

Natalie is clear that serving the public on the stall was amazing. We got to meet people from all different walks of life, some living locally and some who had travelled from other countries to visit Arsenal. We would have a great laugh, pre-match predictions, and generally set the world to rights over a shared love of football, good music and good food. My Dad really created a great vibe at The Jerk Kitchen, he is Amazing, hard-working and great with people, he has a wealth of wisdom and knowledge which has definitely helped me to be a strong person.

Where next?
Lesley’s Sauces are sold on their website but are so popular they quickly sell out. Natalie now runs the show and explains that their sauces are “stocked around London in about 30+ shops and also in Surrey and Essex. I deliver everything in my car. It’s really good to touch base with all of our stockists. We catch up and get customer feedback, we a have a lot of respect for them and vice versa. They know our story and pass it on.”

In Islington you can find Lesley’s Sauces in the following shops White Brothers Greengrocers on Blackstock Road —”it’s a really versatile business,” says Natalie admiringly. Budgens in Campdale Road, N7 just off Tufnell Park Road, and Turner & George Butchers, St John Street EC1V. We are also stocked in Harvest N16, run by Ergun and Ibrahim close to Clissold Park.

Natalie has been amazed by the way some areas show a particular preference for one of the sauces. She says, “One butcher – Provenance Village butchers with branches in Notting Hill, Chelsea, Queens Park and Little Venice sell out of our Sauces quickly —their customers can’t get enough of the Hot Pepper, with the pineapple selling less in some of their shops”. Clearly west London has different tastes to the north London crowd as Islington Faces’ favourite is definitely the Pineapple Sweet-Chilli.

Learning curve
It’s early June 2020 and Natalie explains that she’s waiting for the next batch of sauces to be bottled up ready for her to distribute. “It’s not easy to get stocked in a shop, it comes with a lot of work such as sample drops and speaking with people who are really busy. It would be really nice if it was easier and more shops wanted to support local businesses.” But the good news is that wherever Lesley’s Sauces are stocked, they normally fly off the shelves. They are also part of an ‘Artisan Food Club’ , run by Marcus, which bridges the gap between producers and shops.

She’s also made sure that as an Islington family business during the coronavirus crisis they’ve helped out people in need. “We donated loads of sauces to the ARC food bank in St Paul Street, near COLA-I school. I wanted the sauces to go to a food bank that was small and local. We gave lots of bottles of Pineapple Sweet-Chilli and Hot Pepper sauce. Helping out is close to our hearts. We were always community based, but by not having our stall at the Arsenal we don’t have that base anymore, so this is just one of the ways to give back,” says Natalie.

“Mum loves the sauces. Having them named after her is lovely for her and we feel madly proud to be honouring her. A lot of people in Islington and beyond are really proud of our sauce brand,” says Natalie. She pauses and then points out, “There are a lot of people in Islington doing good things that people don’t always know about.” It’s so true —and one of the reasons Islington Faces was created, a chance to share stories of people doing inspiring things around the borough.

At just under £5 for a bottle, Lesley’s Sauces are a very special product, something that peps up your meals, lasts for many days (depending on your craving for good condiments) and is created by an Islington family. Islington Faces felt honoured to interview Natalie and find out more about the story of The Jerk Kitchen’s move from food stall to fabulous Condiment sellers. Good luck to all.

• You can buy Lesley’s Sauces at the online shop – try Jerk, Hot Pepper or Sweet Chilli Pineapple (a 250ml bottle is £4.95) – at https://www.thejerkkitchen.co.uk/shop/ or try visiting Islington stockists including Budgens in Tufnell Park; White Brothers greengrocers on Blackstock Road and Steve Hatt fishmongers on Essex Road.
• Follow on Insta @thejerkkitchen

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola