Just months after opening his first brick and mortar restaurant in Jamaica Plain, Chef Ernie Campbell is expanding his famous Jamaica Mi Hungry brand again!

Beginning on Friday, June 19, Jamaica Mi Hungry will open a pop-up location at 182 Western Ave. in Allston through the end of 2020 as a program of the Zone 3 initiative. The Jamaica Mi Hungry Pop-Up will start by serving lunch (M-F, 11-2, for pick-up only) from its iconic food truck in the parking lot of the pop-up restaurant space.

By the fall, the pop-up plans to transition inside to the restaurant space and will add dinner service, also for take-out only, per City of Boston reopening regulations. The menu will feature Chef Campbell’s signature dishes like Jerk Chicken, Oxtail, coconut rice and beans, sweet plantains, and several vegetarian/vegan options. The menu will also feature new grab-and-go meals like Jerk Chicken Caesar Salad and Jerk Chicken Wraps.

It is especially significant that this Black-owned restaurant is opening on Juneteenth, a day commemorating when the news of abolition finally reached enslaved Black people in Texas. This sacred celebration was first marked 155 years ago but as thousands of us marching in the streets over the past few weeks have made clear, the full promise of Juneteenth is sadly very far from being fulfilled. For Chef Ernie Campbell, Black economic empowerment has always been a core piece of Jamaica Mi Hungry since its inception.

Jamaica Mi Hungry’s expansion to Allston comes at a time when so many local restaurants and small businesses are simply struggling to survive. While many restaurateurs would balk at expanding during such an uncertain time, Owner/Chef Ernie Campbell is no stranger to
overcoming the odds. He came to Boston from Jamaica in 2001 with little money and few connections. But with his boundless energy, exceptional culinary skills, keen entrepreneurial mind, and experience working in the kitchen’s some of Jamaica’s best resorts he had all the

ingredients for success. After years of working as a cook and personal chef, he launched a catering company in 2012, added food trucks three years later, a seasonal restaurant in Hampton Beach, NH in 2016, a pop-up at CommonWealth Kitchen’s kiosk in Kendall Square in
2018, and a restaurant in Jamaica Pain in 2019. In addition to recently reopening his Jamaica Plain restaurant under new COVID-19 restrictions and planning for this expansion in Allston, Campbell has spent the past three months managing kitchen operations for CommonWealth Kitchen’s CommonTable initiative. CommonTable leverages CommonWealth Kitchen’s network of member food businesses, neighborhood restaurants, farm partners, and community-based organizations to produce delicious, culturally diverse, prepared meals to feed families in need during this time of community crisis. Campbell has led a culinary team to prepare over 25,000 meals since mid-April, adding to the 30,000 prepared by local restaurant partners.

The Jamaica Mi Hungry Pop-Up is a program of Zone 3 and builds on the success of the Cafe Beatrice Pop-Up and Rabottini’s Pizza Pop-Up before that, both of which helped activate this same retail space in Barry’s Corner in 2019 and 2018 also as programs of Zone 3. Zone 3 is a Harvard-sparked initiative to further activate and energize Western Ave with creative programs, events, public art, and retail experiments.

Learn more about the pop-up on our website