Michael Walters is co-partner at Art & Jakes Sports Bar and Grill in Newnan, Georgia — a small-town spot that is exactly as advertised, except for the jerk chicken, which is the part the locals will tell you about if you give them an opening.
Jerk is one of those dishes a Caribbean cook either knows in their hands or doesn't, and the marker is the scotch bonnet. Walters used real scotch bonnets, scored the chicken to let the marinade penetrate, and grilled it over pimento wood — or as close as Georgia gets to pimento wood — for the smoke. Bobby's jerk, per the broadcast, was "not spicy enough." Not spicy enough is a polite way of saying it was not jerk.