After 14 years of nightly dinners at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Oak Bluffs, Chef Deon’s Kitchen will close for good later this month, serving its final meals on Sept. 21.

Chef-owner Deon Thomas told the Gazette he chose not to sign a new lease agreement with the veterans organization, although he emphasized that their parting is on good terms.

“It has been 14 wonderful years [and] I knew that it had to happen at some point,” said Mr. Thomas, whose spicy jerk chicken, conch fritters and lobster mac and cheese have helped make him one of the Island’s most popular chefs since he first arrived from the Caribbean 25 years ago.

Over the decades, Mr. Thomas and his wife Emily Thomas have opened and run restaurants in Chilmark, West Tisbury and Oak Bluffs, and catered for groups that have included two presidents and countless celebrities.

Great food and great fun were always on the menu.

Ray Ewing

Great food and great fun were always on the menu.

Ray Ewing

He’s not planning another restaurant in the near future, but Mr. Thomas said his signature dishes will still be available through his Chef Deon catering business, for groups of six to 25 people.

“You want to have me in your home? Chef Deon is just a call away. It’s just that, you know, I’ll be using your kitchen more,” he said with a smile.

Mr. Thomas also plans to continue his volunteer work, providing Thanksgiving turkey dinners for hungry Island families and meals for homeless shelter guests while also lending a hand to nonprofits such as the community greenhouse in Oak Bluffs, where he’s getting ready to teach a class on turning Scotch bonnet peppers into hot sauce.

“Hopefully this fall, I can put my gloves on and go and glean at IGI [Island Grown Initiative] and help,” he said. “I’m not gonna go sit on the couch.”

His main focus, however, will be on finishing his next book, Mr. Thomas said. Titled The Spirit and the Stove, it’s a memoir tracing Mr. Thomas’s life journey from Jamaica, where he was born and raised, to culinary school in the United States and the ownership of multiple, flourishing restaurants on Anguilla and the Vineyard.

Get your goat curry while you can.

Ray Ewing

Get your goat curry while you can.

Ray Ewing

Mr. Thomas gives much of the credit for his success to Ms. Thomas, who now owns Tilton Rent-All in Oak Bluffs. The couple have been together since high school and raised their two children on the Vineyard, where the family has lived full-time since 2010.

The Thomases first came to the Vineyard in 2000 at the invitation of Eleanor Pearlson, the late owner of Tea Lane Associates, who discovered Mr. Thomas’s cuisine — and his ebullient, can-do personality — at his cliffside Anguilla restaurant, The Overlook.

The Thomases later would name their firstborn child after Ms. Pearlson, who helped them find the Chilmark restaurant they opened in 2001 called At the Cornerway (it’s now the Chilmark Tavern).

The family remained seasonal Islanders for close to a decade, spending the Vineyard off-season in Anguilla, where the Thomases still owned four restaurants.

Then came the devastating hurricanes of 2009-2010, which laid waste to their Anguilla properties and led the couple, now with school-age children, to settle year-round on the Vineyard.

Chef Deon is looking forward to writing his memoir.

Ray Ewing

Chef Deon is looking forward to writing his memoir.

Ray Ewing

Joining fortunes with the VFW, Mr. Thomas quickly built a clientele of loyal diners. He also credits the veterans post with helping him connect with more year-round Islanders and nonprofit groups.

“It’s the VFW that really helped me to know the community,” he said.

Mr. Thomas first began writing his memoir years ago, he said, but found himself facing writer’s block and turned instead to his cookbook, Chef Deon’s Island Conch Cookery (2018).

He returned to his memoir with a fresh sense of purpose after the Trump administration’s crackdowns on immigrants, Mr. Thomas told the Gazette.

“The light just went off in my head, and I started writing again,” he said.

The finished manuscript was already being edited when Mr. Thomas decided to decline the VFW’s new lease terms, he said. He’s now writing another chapter of the book to close out that era of his career.

“I’m almost there,” he said.

But first, Mr. Thomas needs to close up his business at the restaurant, where his desk is tucked behind a white baby grand piano heaped high with cookbooks to be boxed up and taken home.

“I remember when I first put my hands on each one of those books,” he said, lingering before a stack that included Jessica B. Harris’s High on the Hog, Marcus Samuelsson’s The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food and From Julia Child’s Kitchen, still in its tattered paper jacket.

After the last meals are served on Sept. 21, Mr. Thomas will dismantle the rest of his restaurant, taking down the colorful Caribbean murals and the photographs of him with Ms. Pearlson and celebrity customers and removing everything by the end of the month.

“I’m just gracefully exiting, with thanks to the community,” he said.