And only after they are assured that, yes, these are true flavors, learned at a mother's knee in Portland on the east side of the island, do they tentatively put in an order.
And then they come back, and back again - Jamaican taxi drivers, non-Jamaican school district workers, community college students, immigration officers, parking lot attendants. All waiting patiently at the curbside. Some milling about, before the noon-time opening, bent on scoring stewed oxtail which, when it's gone (all 30 pounds of it), it's gone for the day.
The oxtails arethat good. They rest overnight in a moist rub of onion, garlic, fresh thyme and allspice ("pimento" in Jamaica), and are stewed for two hours in the morning, giving up a sweet, rich, fragrant brown sauce.
In the $6 "small" container, they are heaped over gravy-drenched rice and beans, with a side of collard greens or, well, I always gravitate to the buttery, translucent steamed cabbage. (It, too, is seasoned with onion, scallion, herbs, bell pepper, and an extra sweetener, shredded carrot.)
The chunked, curried goat - also tender, not gristly like some - features a mild green curry. The jerk chicken is mild-mannered as well: "I don't like my food too hot," says Dave Dawes, who owns the truck (and for six months now a spin-off restaurant of the same name in Germantown) with his wife, Celeeda, a business graduate of Rosemont College out on the Main Line.
The "D's" stands for The Dawes, and in a roundabout way, it was the misfortune of Dave's father, Herman, who was laid off from his job as a cabin steward for Carnival Cruise Lines, that sowed the seeds for the family enterprise: Dave, who had come to Philadelphia in 2001 from Jamaica and was studying electronic engineering at the community college, suddenly found himself without money for tuition.
