Carly Day

Image credits: Carly Day and the Ja Joint

Our Chef Ambassador and owner of the Ja Joint, Carly Day shares her thoughts on how food and music bring people together and how to perfect the ultimate Jamaican dish.

The Ja Joint is…

The Ja Joint is a cultural experience – inclusive of all people.

Our experiences are based around elevating the senses. We describe it as food and musical theatre. Incredible Jamaican food, music and culture based performance.

Food and music raise our natural vibration state. They are pure and real. They connect us to what’s tangible and important in life, allowing us to experience and express the great pleasures in life.

The last 10 years of food in Australia…

People are gaining a massive interest in their health and diet, becoming knowledgeable in what they consume. The effects of mass production, and chemicals on the human body are unfortunately staggering, resulting in food intolerances and other conditions.

This gained sense of knowledge and people taking action in making better choices is exciting. I believe what you consume holds an energetic blue print. If it originates from bad sources or the intention is not to create amazing food, this will be felt within the body, mind and soul.

There’s increased interest in Jamaican food and culture is also exciting for us as it gives our values as a brand a much broader platform.

The value of cultural diversity…

We recently held a private event, creating Jamaican food and musical theatre.

The majority of guests were from Australia and there were kids from as young as two and adults as old as 83. Most of these people had not experienced Jamaican food and music before and loved the high vibrational experience.

It’s pretty special to get kids and grandparents loving Jamaican vegan food and dancing to dancehall music together. This demonstrates the value and power of embracing culturally diverse activities.

Our crew’s cultural roots hold huge value in our experiences. Coming from different cultural customs, ways of life and cooking means we blend all our experiences and values together with the base foundation of being a good person to produce soul popping food and music performance for our clients. Essentially, that’s at the base of all progressive societies.

The greatest cultural challenge for me has been…

One challenge would be people thinking I am from every non-western country on Earth. I get a lot of strangers talking to me in their native tongue!

It’s always funny when I respond in a very London accent and that always makes both parties smile!

Perfecting the ultimate Jamaican dish…

First and foremost, cook from your heart and trust your intuition. That will always produce the best food. Hands down. Use an equal balance of chilli, garlic, onion, thyme and all spice as your base flavours. The rest is practise and trust.

Feeling inspired to share in Jamaican food at your workplace? Register to hold A Taste of Harmony here!