Peppa's Jerk Chicken

Follow the smoke. On this stretch of Flatbush Avenue, just below the park, the charcoal has been going since the mid-1990s, when the shop opened as Danny and Pepper's, and it has set the neighborhood's standard for jerk ever since. There is a counter, a cleaver, and a short wait that tends to get longer the later it gets — and it gets very late here.

Order the jerk chicken by size and let them chop it on the block: the skin blackened and sticky, the meat wet with allspice and Scotch bonnet. The house sauce — somewhere between barbecue and jerk — lets you choose how much heat you want. Add rice and peas and fried plantain, or go for oxtail or curry goat if the chicken isn't the reason you came. It is food to eat on the walk home, or standing on the sidewalk.