(BALTIMORE – July 31, 2026) – Ever drive past Island Quizine? You see one in Woodlawn. Then you see one on Liberty Road. Then you find out the owner, Donovan Murphy, is now serving jerk chicken in Montgomery County, too. This is not a game. Island Quizine is about their business.
Count them up: Reisterstown. Pikesville. Woodlawn/Windsor Mill. Milford Mill. Towson. Silver Spring in Montgomery County. Murphy says the count is actually seven stores strong, plus a catering business and a vending business layered on top — and that’s before you even get to the trucks on the road.
Baltimore has produced its share of hustlers who turned a plate of food into an empire, but few have taken it as far — literally — as Donovan Murphy. As the man behind logistics for Island Quizine, the Jamaican restaurant and catering brand with roots on Reisterstown Road, Murphy has spent this summer proving that Baltimore-grown Caribbean flavor can hold its own on some of the biggest stages in the country.
In the span of a few weeks, Island Quizine’s trucks rolled through Essence Festival in New Orleans, the Cincinnati Music Festival, the Detroit African World Festival, Myrtle Beach, Metro Beach, and a catering stop in Pittsburgh — with a world festival appearance in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and a stop in Chicago still ahead. Layer on an annual pre-show run at Essence Festival and a football bowl game every season, and it’s a pace that would break most operations. For Murphy’s team, it’s just the season.
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