DaJen Eats closes its doors after 7 years
Seven years after spinning up in a Rosemont gas station, DaJen Eats, the Jamaican eatery that brought vegan food to Eatonville, has closed.
Speaking to the Orlando Sentinel from Pennsylvania, Chef/Owner Jenn Ross was reflective — and relaxed — on a vacation that began at May’s end and, for now, will continue indefinitely.
Although some were shocked when she dropped the news this week, those closest to her knew she’d been leaning toward change for some time.
“I’ve been thinking about closing since I opened!” she jokes, but along the way, Ross has inspired many.
She began her journey in proprietorship in 2017, bringing a challenging concept to a challenging location in a challenging neighborhood.
“One of the reasons we started in the gas station was to make sure that people of color were included in the vegan conversation,” she told the Sentinel in 2020. “We’ve always been there, but just like in so many other things, we are underrepresented.”
By 2020, though, she’d taken DaJen Eats beyond a one-burner, minimart operation into a bright and colorful space in Orlando’s historic Eatonville community, where on opening day in August 2018, the queue wrapped around the building.
Ross would bring a new wave of culinary attention to the town — the oldest incorporated Black municipality in the United States — as well as additional focus on Orlando’s prominence for plant-based fare. But she recalls feeling overwhelmed even on night one.
“My team was fully capable of handling [the crowd],” Ross remembers, “and so I walked down the line, greeted everybody, hugged them, thanked them for coming and then continued walking until I got to Town Hall, which is the building next door. And I sat down on a bench there for an hour with my back turned to my own restaurant on the grand-opening night.”
It was an eye-opening moment. Precognitive in hindsight.
“It sums up what my experience has been,” she says. “My joy has been very much in the creation of it. I love creating and feeding people, but I also like to be by myself.”
Over the years, Ross, a Jamaican native, would lure many a committed carnivore to the vegan table with creative adaptations like her popular “hoaxtail” with rice and peas and decadent Irie Cream, a plant-based ice cream, as well as teach cooking classes and lead other events at her restaurant and elsewhere.
The latter is something she still feels great passion for — her “Dinner and a Story” book club events, with unique menus crafted from the pages of the featured reads continued to stoke her culinary fire, even as her interest in restauranting began to wane.
“These allowed me to do something that was completely different from what was on the menu,” she explains, noting the challenge, over time, of the routine.
Feeling burnt out, she toyed with closing about a year ago, she says, but a moving episode of the FX series “The Bear,” — “Forks,” she says, citing its name, “Episode 7, Season 2” — made her feel as though her time in the Eatonville kitchen wasn’t yet over.
A little more time spent with her employees, many of them neighborhood kids she’s grown to love, to see them through high school and off to college, brought a final round of joy. Her recent Pennsylvania getaway timed well with the school year’s end. Ross felt ready, and told those closest to her, along with her employees, before making the announcement.
“Last year, I wasn’t settled in my spirit that I had given it everything,” she says. “Now, I am certain that I have.”
She silenced her phone when she left town, readying herself for the change and for the reactions.
“It’s terrifying,” she says of the ‘radio silence,’ but also beneficial. “You have time to catch up with your thoughts, time to ask questions. When you’re running a business on the day-to-day … you don’t really get the luxury of thinking things through.”
Her mother questioned whether she was closing because running a restaurant is hard.
“I chuckled and said, ‘Mom, things have always been hard.’ But I like a challenge. I’m ready for new hard.”
A motivating force for many, Ross says that a sense of responsibility kept her in place longer than she might have stayed otherwise.
“I didn’t want to let anybody down,” she says. “There’s this idea that you’re a woman-owned, Black-owned business, and you’re doing well, and people will message you saying, ‘Hey, you inspired me to do this or that,’ … and I’d think now I have to stay open.”
Making the announcement on social media, she says, brought forth an avalanche of notes lamenting the loss of the restaurant but also well wishes and words of encouragement from friends and customers eager to see her find her next happiness.
“I told my bestie, who I met through DaJen Eats, no less, I’d stop when it’s not fun anymore, when I stop learning and discovering; when the work becomes a chore and a price I’m unwilling to pay,” Ross wrote in her post. “In the past, quiet times led to many dark thoughts but this period of rest simply left me aching for new discoveries.”
What’s next?
“I have no idea!” she laughs.
She’s not even certain when her stint in Pennsylvania will end, “but I think my next move is probably going to include teaching in some format, because that’s where my heart is,” she says. “I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know that I’m going to start it tomorrow or next week or next month. I’m just kind of being right now.”
Part of the “being” is being grateful. And she has nothing but gratitude for Orlando.
“Thank you for indulging me on this journey,” she says to those who’ve been there. “Having the community support us for so long has allowed me time to learn things, discover new things about food, abut restaurant life, about hospitality, about people, about myself…. Thank you.”
Want to reach out? Find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com. For more foodie fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group.