• Daria Bishop
• Shaneall Ferron of Thingz From Yaad

Dining hall food is notoriously terrible. But in Colchester, food in a former dining hall couldn't get much better.

Since early March, the cafeteria of the now-closed Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences has become a destination for oxtails, jerk chicken and curried goat. The building is under construction, but all you have to do to find Thingz From Yaad is follow your nose.

The Jamaican food biz, which offers catering and lunchtime pickup Monday through Wednesday, is just one of Shaneall Ferron's three entrepreneurial endeavors. She also owns a travel agency and Windsor Homecare & Staffing, a private home health care company.

"I'm a go-getter," Ferron, 30, said with a laugh.

A nurse by profession, she was working for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in her native Jamaica when her younger sister, who lived in Vermont, invited her to visit in spring 2021. By mid-June, she'd resigned from her job and made the move.

"I remember when the car hit the top of the hill on Main Street" in Burlington, Ferron recalled. "It was summer, and it was beautiful. I felt mushy — everything inside of me was just happy. I felt like this was a place I could do whatever my imagination was telling me to do."

• Daria Bishop
• Clockwise from bottom left: Ackee and saltfish with fried green plantains; signature jerk chicken salad; oxtails with rice and peas

At first, Ferron cooked at home and posted photos of her dishes on Instagram. She catered for the Vermont Professionals of Color Network in August 2022, and word started to spread. Thingz From Yaad's first big public event, Burlington's 2023 Juneteenth celebration, was a smash; Ferron sold out of more than 400 servings of food in an hour.

To make that event happen, she had help — and production space — from Maria Lara-Bregatta of local Dominican fusion restaurant Café Mamajuana. As of early March, the two friends share the former dining hall kitchen in Colchester. (Café Mamajuana currently offers catering and preordered meal pickups on Fridays.)

The pairing makes sense, Ferron said. She and Lara-Bregatta use many of the same ingredients, albeit in very different ways. "We have very similar cultures, both being from the Caribbean," she continued.

Ferron's food is a celebration of her home ("yaad" in Jamaica), from traditional meals such as ackee and saltfish, the national dish, to her own creations, such as coconut-crusted jerk corn. I tried a bit of both genres when I ordered lunch on a recent Tuesday: the fantastically fun jerk corn ($10), which comes studded with toasted coconut flakes and speared on a stick, and oxtails with rice and peas ($25).

• Daria Bishop
• Plantains in the fryer

Oxtails are an expensive meat in Jamaica, Ferron explained, and cooking the dish is "a sign that you had a good week." Eating her version — a rich, comforting stew, with meat so tender it seemed to fall off the bone just by looking at it — certainly made my week a good one. Every Thingz From Yaad order also comes with a cup of sorrel, a vibrant red hibiscus drink typically served around Christmas, which Ferron makes according to her mother's secret recipe.

Ferron grew up in a farming family on the island's rural northeast coast, and she learned to cook from her mother when she was 9 years old. Her mom, who died from cancer in 2017, had seven children but would often cook for at least 12.

"My mom's kitchen was a place where everybody would come and eat," Ferron said. "She was always cooking and giving."

On Friday, April 5, Ferron will host a family-style dinner she's calling "My Mother's Table" at Local Maverick's Burlington event space. It's her turn to bring people together through food.