'Mama Rose' gives Pittsburgh Jamaica's many flavours
article found in the jamaica observer March 11 ,2004

	Melrose Ottey (Photo: Joseph Wellington) Some time this morning, "Mama Rose" should be arriving at her Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania home to broad smiles from her customers who, for the last four months, unwillingly made do without her Jamaican lunches.

act, so eager e Pittsburgh'svacation in Jamaica.

"My husband called me today and told me that people have been coming by, asking whether I am back," she chuckles in an interview last week with Thursday Life.

Such client loyalty fills "Mama Rose" with pride, and while she is obviously too modest to admit it, people who have tasted her cooking will quickly tell you that it is darn good.
"Cooking is just my hobby," she says. "I really love to cook."
Spoken like a true mother with a large family.'Mama Rose' gives Pittsburgh Jamaica's many flavours
Vernon Davidson, Senior

That, indeed, is Mama Rose's experience, with her six children - three of them girls - and a husband to feed. Other relatives, she said, would come to her house on Sundays for a big family dinner.

That tradition was upheld when she and her family left Jamaica in 1985 for Pittsburgh; and even while she worked two jobs as a nurse's aid between 1986 and 1988.
But the jobs, she says, were not paying enough to cover her expenses. So she quit and returned to Jamaica for a few months.

"I didn't know what to do," she admits.
While she pondered her future, the thought hit her. Why not cook and sell?

Convinced that this was her calling, "Mama Rose" opened a small business at her rented house in 1988. But slow sales and the fact that she operated from rented premises forced her to close it down a year later.

That year, though, she managed to buy her own house, but spent most of the next two years out of work before opening another restaurant - The Coral Reef - with two partners in 1992.

But after two years, Mama Rose found herself having to again take the painful decision of closing her business.
The reasons?

"High overheads and poor sales."

This time, her employment drought lasted four years before she figured on cooking and selling from her own house.
It worked.

"The business just picked up," she says. "People who came and bought the lunches told their friends and so it spread."
Today, Mama Rose's business has grown from a small take-out-only service to a restaurant in her back yard.

Her customers, she says, have a particular love for Jerk Chicken and Oxtail. But she also prepares Curried Shrimps, Brown Stewed Chicken, Curried Chicken and Peppered Steak daily - all of which are usually sold off. She also makes her own carrot juice and fruit punch, adding ginger and lime to give them that special flavour.

So popular has her cooking become that Mama Rose has been contracted on a number of occasions to cater for events, especially graduations. But she ensures that she gives back to her community by contributing food each Wednesday to her church's post-prayer meeting social.

Church for Mama Rose is her only outlet from her six-day-a-week routine. But even on Sundays, she finds that she has to go shopping for foods and seasonings after spending the morning worshipping at New Life Church of God.

She does all her seasoning overnight, gets up at 6:30 am and by 11:00 am all cooking is completed. "When I am finished cooking," she says, "I pray and ask God's blessing on the food and my customers."

She closes the restaurant at 8:00 pm and after seasoning meats for the next day, she again prays. "I thank God for the day and the sales," she says

 

mostly white folk been for Mese Ottey's cooking, that they have been calling at her Mayflower Street house since last w hoping that she was backm her annual