Plot Twist: Chef Jay Powell’s Unique Turn
Combine the flair for promotion of Barnum, a voice that roars like Ali and a level of culinary talent that spans styles and borders, and you can begin to get an idea of the makeup of Jay Powell, chef owner of JP’s Twisted BBQ. It is a mighty combination that can draw out the shiest of wallflowers and satisfy the most finicky of palates. It has also led him from his acclaimed hotspot in Western Massachusetts to national television, and now to Cape Cod. Currently, Jay and his wife Nancy have set up JP’s Twisted BBQ’s smokers at Cape Cod Beer, and he has settled into the role of chef-in-residence. This is just the latest chapter in one man’s journey through the world of food that has been fueled by one overarching motivation: To spread joy through food. It is a drive he learned long ago.
Growing up in Millbury, Massachusetts, Jay Powell realized early on where his passion lies. Jay’s mother Connie had him working next to her at the stove at the tender age of four. “She’d pull up a chair next to the stove while she was cooking and have me stir the eggs to make scrambled eggs,” he remembers. While his friends were laughing along to Saturday morning cartoons, he was watching Julia Child, Martin Yan of Yan Can Cook fame, and the Cajun chef Justin Wilson with his catchphrase “I gar-on-tee!” As he got a little older, professional wrestling took some of his attention away from the cooking shows, but not entirely. “I would watch George ‘The Animal’ Steele tear apart a turnbuckle with his teeth and flip over to Julia Child de-boning a duck!” Jay laughs.
Powell’s growth into the chef he has become is similar to that of other highly skilled artists. The initial spark of interest he showed toward cooking was inherent and further nurtured by family, with unique opportunities to be exposed to new experiences. Jay’s paternal grandparents were from Bermuda (he has dual citizenship), and his grandmother, Grace Powell, was revered on the island, particularly for her desserts. “She was known as the Bermudian Julia Child,” he claims. As a boy, Jay’s maternal grandparents owned several rental cottages on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. “My grandfather would host a potluck supper the first night, which was Saturday night, for all the guests,” he shares. Jay would dash between cottages to see what dishes folks from many different ethnicities were making, and how they were making them. To further expose her children to a world of flavors, Connie Powell would make them try one tablespoon’s worth of whatever she prepared for that meal if it was something new. “One tablespoon. That’s it. If we didn’t like, we didn’t like it and she was cool with that,” he says.
After earning a degree in industrial engineering at Central New England College, Jay was working at Digital Equipment’s semi-conductor plant when he got his first taste of success. It tasted like chili. “I entered this huge chili contest at Digital,” he recalls. “There was, like, 300 of us that entered. I knew what I wanted to do — what I wanted the result of the chili to be. I was flavor profiling at a young age. So, I finally got to a recipe I was happy with, I entered, and I won!” he shouts. This would be just the first in a long line of chili competitions he would go on to win. It also turned into his first paying gig as a friend asked Jay to cater his son’s first birthday party. “I had no clue how to cater an event. There was no internet back then, and there was very little written on the subject of catering,” he points out. Using his own voracious twenty-something appetite as a guide, Jay went to work on the menu that featured grilled chicken, burgers, hot dogs, potato salad, macaroni salad and garden salad. “I figured one chicken per person, a half-pound of potato salad,” Jay breaks up laughing before he can continue the list. After having been catering for some time, Powell finally figured out just how far off he was on his calculations. “The party was for 25 people. I had enough food for 130!” he howls.
Powell’s catering career was off and running. Working under the name Uncle Jay’s Homemade Chili, he grew his catering business to handle events of up to 50 people while still working at Digital. He knew, however, splitting his time between the two divergent careers would soon come to an end. “Every time I had an event, every time I had a catering job, I didn’t want it to end,” Jay stresses. “I had found my joy.” It was at this time Powell ran into a chef from Worcester who suggested he advance his learning by working stages. A stage (sounds likes mirage) is a brief, unpaid internship cooks or chefs perform in another chef ‘s kitchen to be exposed to and learn new techniques and cuisines. It comes from the French word, stagiaire meaning trainee or apprentice. “I did a bunch of them with chefs like Jasper White and Anthony Ambrose. Anthony and I are still really good friends. And Christian Delouvrier,” he points out. “Christian made me realize I wanted to be a French chef.”
An opportunity came along to take over The Twisted Fork Bistro in Leicester, and Jay jumped at the chance. French and Italian inspired breakfasts and lunches were offered seven days a week along with dinner service Thursday through Saturday. It was here that he really focused on locally sourcing his ingredients to show his clientele the benefits of eating local and erase any preconceived notions they may have had about it. “I wanted to bring the idea of fresh and local to the Worcester area. You got to remember that it’s blue collar around there, and I wanted to dispel the uppity image [that local sourcing of food may have had],” Jay says. “I had organic gardens and would grow what I needed from seed to fork.” A following started to form. The number of regulars began to swell, and a buzz was building. One day the Boston-based television show “The Phantom Gourmet” featured The Twisted Fork on an episode. “That brought our exposure to another level,” Jay remembers. “There was no turning back after that.” Indeed, Powell was now getting people through his doors from as far away as Boston, over an hour away. He could tell whenever the episode re-aired by a sudden upswell in orders for the dishes featured on it. “All of a sudden there’d be a ton of orders for Bananas Foster on my tickets and I’d say, ‘welp, they must have just re-ran the show!’” he booms.
The long hours and hard work would pay off in the recognition he received from several publications that named him the top chef in central Massachusetts and one of the top 75 chefs in the country. A casting company reached out to Powell about coming in for a screen test for a future production. “After The Phantom Gourmet, I knew I was comfortable in front of the camera,” Jay says. The cameras, and the producers behind them, loved what they saw. A pilot was shot for a cooking contest entitled “Cooking Roulette”, where a wheel is spun to determine the featured ingredient, and Jay was part of the production. That show never aired, but The Food Network realized what they had on their hands, and Jay has been brought back several times to be featured on shows like “Cooks vs. Cons”, “Supermarket Stakeout” and a new competition show yet to be aired.
After ten years and no longer desiring the frenetic pace and the demands that a 70-seat restaurant can bring, Jay sold The Twisted Fork in 2018 and came down to Cape Cod with a different business model in mind. Scale down the size of the operation and refocus on catering with JP’s Twisted BBQ. “Twisted” because Jay uses French and Italian techniques to create his own menu items and handmade sauces that go beyond the traditional definition of the term “barbeque”. The barbeque itself is an amalgamation of Carolina, Memphis, and Kansas City styles. The creativity is on display across the menu and through his specials like the Miami hot dog, which is a spin on a traditional Cuban sandwich on a hot dog roll with ham, salami, Jay’s own mustard and pickle spear to accompany the frank. He and Nancy completely understand when you’re back at the trailer correcting your original mistake of only ordering one the first time. While the smokers are routinely fired up for the ribs and chicken wings, Jay will also smoke several turkeys along with a 25-pound prime rib…for sandwiches! A prime rib smoked over hardwood is not to be missed. It’s unlike any other prime you may have had. The smoke adds a flavor that a gas oven simply can’t reproduce. His network of local suppliers is growing as he and Nancy continue to develop roots on the Cape. Always wanting to source as much of his ingredients as locally as possible, Jay routinely turns to Sprout Farm in Mashpee and Crow Farms in Sandwich for his produce. F/V Isabel and Lilee provides the scallops he offers as a stuffed scallop, yet another twist on the more familiar stuffed clam.
Jay opened his JP’s Twisted BBQ as a pop-up restaurant with an eye toward very specific locations to set up shop: breweries. Powell took his 24-foot trailer that is a complete working kitchen and his smokers to Naukabout Brewing Company’s Mashpee location several times, as well as Cape Cod Beer, who included him in their regular rotation of visiting restaurants who would set up in the brewery’s new kitchen space they had added to expand food offerings. Along with the familiar parties and events, his catering company also filled the need of another specific niche: movie production sets. “I love working on movie sets,” Jay gushes. “They want upscale and local.” He goes on to explain his main objective. “Keeping the crew happy is my primary goal. A happy crew means a smooth-running shoot, and that’s what everybody wants.” A pop-up restaurant and a catering company that handles parties, events and movie shoots that can last weeks. How do Jay and Nancy do it all? “I’ve got around a hundred people I can reach out to when needed,” he proudly states. “A lot of guys are retired, and nobody wants to work full time, but a one-off party or event? Working on a movie set? Sure, that’s fun!”
The nomadic ways of a pop-up eatery have stabilized for the foreseeable future, as JP’s Twisted BBQ has found a home at Cape Cod Beer. “We belong here,” Jay enthuses. “Todd and Beth [Cape Cod Beer Owners] are two of the nicest people you’re ever going to find. The staff are all incredible here.” Both businesses joined to lift each other up when things looked their absolute worst. When state-mandated shutdowns were in effect, Cape Cod Beer’s wholesale business was virtually wiped out when restaurants reverted to to-go only service. Eventually, breweries were able to open their doors to the public, but food needed to be offered if breweries were going to sell beer for on-site consumption. Enter JP’s Twisted BBQ. Cape Cod Beer’s Beth Marcus puts it simply, “He literally saved our business.” She goes on to explain, “I don’t know what we would have done without him, and when he said ‘yes’, he was totally in one hundred percent.” The two entities would go on to join forces and come up with creative special events like a Meatball Throwdown with other local restaurants, beer dinners and barbeque nights as well as dinners featuring more traditional French or Italian menus which will continue.
What is a top chef trained in classic French and Italian styles doing at a brewery slinging barbeque? Shouldn’t he be somewhere more formal where he can explore the full range of his talents to a packed dining room night after night? “Been there, done that,” is Jay’s response. Standing inside his trailer kitchen (which is surprisingly roomy), Jay looks out over the beer garden of Cape Cod Beer to the guests sipping some of the many refreshing beer offerings while digging into Jay’s perfectly-spiced jerk chicken special of the day. “We’re at a brewery!” he exclaims. “People come here in a good mood. I’m helping them to have an even more enjoyable experience. What’s better than that?” He shouts with a shake of the head that makes it all so obvious. It is about the joy. Sure, the flavors he imparts in his own “twisted” version of barbeque and beyond are to be enjoyed time and time again. The ideal amount of smoke combined with just the right measure of sweetness and nip of spice make JP’s Twisted BBQ some of the finest you’ll find anywhere including Memphis or Kansas City. The joy he has been spreading all these years, however, is his own infectious brand that booms out from the kitchen and across the room…even if it’s an outdoor beer garden. It’s a joy that’ll warm you in a way no amount of spice could ever do.
JP’s Twisted BBQ
Located at Cape Cod Beer
1336 Phinney’s Lane, Hyannis
774-994-4492
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