The Albert Wiggan Story

The first day Albert Wiggan opened the doors to Albert’s Real Jamaican Foods, the air outside St. Clair West was cold, but inside the former Pizza Pizza, the smell of: curry chicken, scallion, and pimento smoked a promise into the neighborhood: something real had arrived.

He was exhausted. Working afternoons at a separate job, closing the restaurant at 3:00 a.m., and returning to unlock the door again by 10:00 a.m., Albert pushed forward on fumes and faith. “I would come in even when my workers did not,” he recalls. “Sometimes I felt like I was the only one who believed.”

Belief is powerful when it meets preparation and purpose, and that first pot of rice and peas. It was a revolution in a styrofoam container.

It is easy now to see Albert as the fixture he is; Toronto royalty in a chef’s apron, but to understand the full flavour of his journey, you have to go back to a humid kitchen in Jamaica, where a young boy watched his mother turn “Whatever she had” into something satisfying. “She would season the meat overnight. Use scallion, thyme, anything she had. She taught me that love shows up in how you feed people.”

Albert never knew his father; he passed young, but that absence was filled by his mother’s resilience and survival instincts. It planted the seed of self-reliance. “If you ever get married, and the food doesn’t taste good, you should know,” she would say with a wink. What she meant was: learn to carry yourself. Learn to provide.

So, Albert did.

Flash forward to Toronto in the early 1980s. A younger Albert walks into a Jamaican restaurant to grab lunch before work. He eats. He sits. He thinks. “I can do better than this,” he says out loud.

Just like that, the dream is plated.

He finds a space; an old Pizza Pizza on St. Clair West. He researches the community, talks with his wife, and does the math. There is nothing flashy about the move, but there is intention. “I knew there were people here craving something real. Not just food, but a piece of home.”

From day one, he cooked with memory. Ackee the way his mother made it. Jerk chicken that stung the lips and healed the soul. Callaloo that spoke in low tones of comfort, and people came for the feeling.

Still, the journey was not jerk chicken and sunshine.

There were: staff no-shows, broken fridges, slow winters, and missed birthdays, but nothing shook Albert more than the day he found out he had dyslexia.

“I was going to adult school and not doing well. I felt stupid,” he says. “One day, I heard a radio show about dyslexia and it hit me. I might be different, not dumb.”

He got tested. The diagnosis came back. “Mr. Wiggan,” they told him, “You are 100% dyslexic.” His stomach dropped. “I got upset. I asked her, ‘Do you think I am stupid?’” The woman shook her head. “No, Mr. Wiggan. I think you are brilliant. Just wired differently.”

That moment? It changed everything. “Once I knew the truth, I embraced it. I found out great people: Einstein, Da Vinci had dyslexia. I was in good company.”

He started reading about it, speaking about it, and in doing so, he became more than a restaurateur; he became an advocate.

That is what makes Albert’s Real Jamaican Foods different. It is a classroom. A therapy room. A church of culture and community. It is where students come to learn, elders come to reminisce, and the hungry come to be made whole.

Albert began speaking to groups about disability and difference. He served on human rights boards. “We all have some kind of disability,” he says. “That is human. That is life.”

Surrounding himself with brilliant people became his strategy. “I know what I know, but I also know what I do not. So, I learn from those around me.”

He became a quiet mentor. A loud advocate, and a man who, despite the odds, fed his community with courage.

There were rough patches: some say the staff can be impatient, the lines long, the cash-only policy a nuisance, but those who know Albert’s know this: the food is worth the wait. The jerk chicken hits differently. The curry goat tells stories, and the coleslaw? Surprisingly divine.

Albert agrees. “It ain’t about me. It is about the mission. Much is given to me, so much is expected. If you walk through my doors hungry, I am feeding you.”

The restaurant has stood strong through 40 years of: urban development, economic shifts, and gentrification. St. Clair West has changed, but Albert has not. He is still serving up soul. Still mentoring staff. Still talking about dyslexia. Still giving.

“Food carries history,” he says. “Every spice tells a story. I just want to keep telling ours.”

So, what is the one sentence this whole journey boils down to?

It took a learning difference for Albert Wiggan to discover his true power so he could help others find theirs. That is why Albert matters.

Not because he makes the best jerk chicken in Canada (which he might). Not because he has been holding it down for 40+ years (which he has), but because he turned a diagnosis into a dialogue, a struggle into a statement, and a restaurant into a revolution.

As the sun sets on another busy day on St. Clair West, Albert stands near the kitchen, greeting familiar faces. A young boy, maybe seven or eight, stares up at the menu board.

“You ever try oxtail?” Albert asks, smiling.

The boy shrugs.

“Come here, mi youth. Let me show you something real.”

Just like that, the legacy continues.