Jamaican patties are the delicious result of generously spiced meat, fish, or vegetables encased in flaky, turmeric-tinted pastry—best served steaming hot and straight out of a paper bag. Beef is arguably the most popular patty filling, but other options like chicken and lamb are close runners up. An iconic Jamaican street food, the patty is now a much loved snack in Britain; sold at corner shops, Afro-Caribbean groceries, market stalls, and major supermarkets across the country.
But how did the patty become the star of the UK’s Caribbean snack scene? Its popularity can be traced back to the first influx of Caribbean immigrants in Britain, who arrived on The Empire Windrush in the late 1940s. They brought with them recipes for traditional island dishes including the patty, which evolved from the introduction of the Cornish pasty to the Caribbean during colonial times. Businesses catering to this desire for cultural comfort food popped up in the neighbourhoods where Caribbean communities had settled, most commonly West Indian takeaways selling traditional home-style dishes.
As a London-born Brit of Jamaican heritage, patties have been a part of my diet for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I’d accompany my mum on weekly visits to the local West Indian market. The highlight of these trips was heading to the patty stall where I’d always ask for my favourite, which back then was chicken.
“Chicken is most popular with the kiddies,” says Wade Lyn, founder and managing director of Cleone Foods, which manufactures the UK’s market leading patty brand Island Delight.
Jamaican-born Lyn moved to England in 1966 when he was a teenager, and formed his Birmingham-based company in 1988.
“My idea from the very beginning was to target the major multiples [top supermarkets], so from the word go, I wanted to be number one at what I did,” he explains. “We set up a factory which was small scale, manufacturing about 1,000 patties an hour. The idea was to get everything up and running, gradually improve our process and move it forward.”
Today, Lyn makes more than 200,000 patties a week and sells to Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, ASDA, Tesco, and Co-op Food, bringing in an annual turnover of around £4.8 million.
Lyn credits tourism for the increased demand for patties, saying: “Over a number of years, you’ve had various people go to Jamaica. They try the food and then come back and want to experience that Caribbean feel.”
Convenience ranks as another of the patty’s key selling points.
“The good thing with a patty is that it’s all wrapped up in pastry. It’s quick so you can have it on-the-go,” says Anthony Davis, director of The Original Pattie Company.
Many patty-lovers, including Joy and Keysha, concur.
“They’re a quick and convenient snack,” says Joy, and Keysha agrees: “I love a patty because it’s a tasty, inexpensive snack you can eat on-the-go that fills the hunger gap between meals.”
The Original Pattie Company has been manufacturing patties from its base in Wolverhampton for more than 50 years, originally under the name Quick Food Products. But after a rebrand in 2016, Davis and his team reassessed their strategy and went from selling their products to independent retailers to landing on the shelves of ASDA and Costco, with the former taking on all seven of the brand’s flavours.
“We’ve got very aggressive marketing now because we realised that the pattie market is very, very fierce,” Davis admits.
With Britain’s biggest supermarkets now stocking the Jamaican pattie, the pastry has truly cemented itself as one of Britain’s favourite snacks. A Morrisons spokesman tells me: “Our customers tell us that they really enjoy these products and some stores are already working to meet growing demand.”
But it’s not just the mass-produced patties that have enlightened the country’s taste buds and driven awareness of Jamaican cuisine. Somewhere between the much loved local West Indian takeaways and the supermarket giants sits establishments like Theresa Roberts’ Jamaica Patty Co., which was founded in 2013.
Jamaican-born Roberts chose London’s Covent Garden as the location for her shop, saying: “It was my ambition to sell my patties to the world and I thought if I went to a prime location with international footfall, I’d get more people to recognise how good Jamaican patties are.”
She now welcomes a diverse clientele.
“We have our lunchtime local office workers who love the product and we get a lot of Caribbeans who come to the West End to see plays or go to the theatre and they eat here before or after they go,” Roberts says. “I also have the tourists who’ve never eaten or seen Jamaican food before.”
Ultimately, she wants Jamaican patties to continue to receive the recognition and respect that they’re worthy of.
“It’s a food that I wanted to elevate because it’s always been considered a cheap snack,” Roberts says. “I think it deserves more than that.”
