Is there such a thing as “too decadent” when evaluating a cheeseburger? Where do you draw the line? The fourth piece of bacon? The Bordeaux foie gras pool? The fried macaroni and cheese burger on a half pound of ground beef?
Recently, while sitting on the patio of the Jerk Grill restaurant in Redlands, I contemplated how much was too much while staring at a double oxtail burger. It is an ugly piece of meat and bread wrapped in pale yellow paper that has become translucent from the mixture of juice and fat. Rude and sloppy, half the burger is a mix of ground beef, gravy, oxtail, and cheese with grilled onions slumped on the sides. A small pile of the meat and cheese mixture came off when I unwrapped it and piled up next to the burger.
There's no real plan of attack other than to ignore the spilled meat and onions for now, grab both sides of the bun as best you can, and be aggressive with your bites.
“It's been like a crazy success,” Jerk Grill chef and owner Lerone Mullin said on a recent call. “I had one the other day and I thought, 'Oh my God, he's pretty good.'”
The oxtail burger, like half of Jerk Grill's menu, combines Mullin's upbringing in Jamaica with his experience running a pop-up in Southern California. Mullin grew up helping her mother cook on her farm in St. Mary Parish. He attended culinary school in the United States and moved to Redlands, where he got a job managing a restaurant.
Just before the 2020 pandemic, Mullin began showing up at local breweries selling jerk chicken, festivals, and rice. He eventually quit his restaurant job and began performing at breweries three or four times a week and at catering events in nearby Lake Arrowhead.
“At first we were doing purely Jamaican stuff, but it wasn't really taking off,” Mullin said.
Many customers came to their stand ordering tacos and burritos.
“We thought we didn't have tacos, but we realized and started as California fusion with tacos, burritos and quesadillas,” he said.
Mullin gained an enthusiastic following with his adobo chicken tacos. He opened Jerk Grill in a shopping center on Barton Road in January 2022.
The oxtail smashburger, like the tacos, is designed as a gateway to Mullin's more traditional Jamaican dishes.
“I wanted to get something more familiar to people and combine it with something that everyone loves, oxtails,” he said. “We just combined the oxtails with a burger and it's been a big hit.”
The base of their oxtails is a rich brown stew fortified with Jamaican golden sauce, potatoes, carrots, bell pepper, onion and garlic. Mullin adds plenty of shredded oxtail and sauce to his ground burgers and then smashes them into the flat top. He tops the burgers with a drizzle of yellow mustard, American cheese, and what appears to be a whole onion grilled until the slices become tangled, wilted, and almost burnt.
Spread aioli on a potato bun and toast on both sides in an attempt to prevent the bread from becoming soggy.
The burger eats like a chopped cheese, with the oxtails and sauce creating a creamy, spicy mass of meat in the middle. There are pockets of potatoes and carrots, the vegetables soft and almost creamy. Charred onions are sweet.
Jerk Chicken Platter from Jerk Grille in Redlands.
(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)
Like the Jamaican equivalent of a Tommy's burger, it's intimidating in its size and general messiness, teetering on the edge of gluttony but falling short. My fingers and lips were shiny before I was a quarter of the way there. The aroma of charred meat and onions became the perfume of the day, lingering on my skin and hair until that night.
I didn't stop at the burger, I ordered a Jerk chicken plate with rice and plantains, festivals and a Jamaican burger. The burger's crust was the flakiest it's been in recent memory, buttery and almost melting with the ground beef filling.
Mullin's Jerk Chicken is marinated in 15 spices, smoked for a couple of hours, and then grilled. Without a source of scotch peppers at the moment, it achieves a slow but powerful burn with a hint of sweetness from both the habanero and bell peppers. The particular combination of smoke and heat, ginger and spices, is based on a family recipe. His cousin made roast chicken and sold it in St. Mary.
“Normally in Jamaica, Jerk chicken is not what we eat regularly,” Mullin said. “It's like a luxury or what tourists eat. “It is expensive because it contains a lot of spices.”
When his father visited him, Mullin would take him to Portland Parish to eat pork or chicken as a treat.
“I just think rotisserie chicken is really good and if enough people tried it, they would love it,” he said.
I'll be back for the chicken, burgers, and whatever else Mullin's cooking every time I head east on Highway 10.
Where to try oxtail smashburgers and jerk chicken
The Jerk Grill, 1560 Barton Road, Redlands, (951) 406-6644, thejerkgrillca.com
