Jerk Pork on the beach at the Ritz
Jerk Chicken getting the sauce at Scotchie's
Viv enjoying a Jerk Fish down by the beachAckee and saltfish is the national dish of Jamaica, but the Jamaicans I spoke to admitted, when pressed, that actually, when it really came down to it, they preferred Jerk.
A simple barbeque dish, Jerk refers both to a set of spices used to marinade chicken, pork, and fish alike, as well as to a sweet-and-spicy sauce that the resulting meat is drenched in. It's served in "jerk centers", mostly shacks with a few tables and a steel-drum barbeque and a few drunks.
Chickens are the most classic food to Jerk. The birds, whole, are splayed opened ("butterflied"), rubbed deep with spice mix, left to marinade in a cooler for a day or two, then cooked slow over a wood fire. The meat gets cooked to a juicy perfection, but the skin barely caramelizes and hardly gets a chance to render, leaving it fatty and delicious.
Upon an order, a chicken is pulled from the grilled, and hacked into bite sized pieces by a strong armed man with a cleaver. The meat is piled into a stryrofoam box or piece of tinfoil, in a manner not a little reminiscent of Chinatown.
The classic sides are "rice and peas" (what we would call "ice and beans"), although this being Passover I focused instead on the popular alternatives of (humongous) roast sweet potatoes and yams, breadfruit, and something called "festival", which as far as I could tell was a cornmeal dumpling. I hope it was cornmeal, because they were good and I ate a lot of them.
In the four days I was in Jamaica, I think I had 6 jerk meals. The best, by far, was a Scotchie's, a roadside joint whose charming ramshackle local character is somewhat diminished by the expensive looking flat screen TV under thatched bar, and, gasp, a white woman who looked like a proprietor darting around in the back. The food was good, and the many local patrons didn't seem to mind the lack of complete ramshackle authenticity. Those I spoke to agreed it was the best, and apparently it recently won some sort of award from a magazine.
I'm almost ashamed to mention it, but the "Jerk center" at the Ritz, right down the beach, actually did a pretty damn good jerk pork, which may have been better than Scotchie's. It also cost $17, about five times as much. BUT, when served directly to our immaculately turned out lounge chairs facing the beach, and eaten with the sea breeze at our backs in pina coladas in our spare hands, we were not counting pennies.
A simple barbeque dish, Jerk refers both to a set of spices used to marinade chicken, pork, and fish alike, as well as to a sweet-and-spicy sauce that the resulting meat is drenched in. It's served in "jerk centers", mostly shacks with a few tables and a steel-drum barbeque and a few drunks.
Chickens are the most classic food to Jerk. The birds, whole, are splayed opened ("butterflied"), rubbed deep with spice mix, left to marinade in a cooler for a day or two, then cooked slow over a wood fire. The meat gets cooked to a juicy perfection, but the skin barely caramelizes and hardly gets a chance to render, leaving it fatty and delicious.
Upon an order, a chicken is pulled from the grilled, and hacked into bite sized pieces by a strong armed man with a cleaver. The meat is piled into a stryrofoam box or piece of tinfoil, in a manner not a little reminiscent of Chinatown.
The classic sides are "rice and peas" (what we would call "ice and beans"), although this being Passover I focused instead on the popular alternatives of (humongous) roast sweet potatoes and yams, breadfruit, and something called "festival", which as far as I could tell was a cornmeal dumpling. I hope it was cornmeal, because they were good and I ate a lot of them.
In the four days I was in Jamaica, I think I had 6 jerk meals. The best, by far, was a Scotchie's, a roadside joint whose charming ramshackle local character is somewhat diminished by the expensive looking flat screen TV under thatched bar, and, gasp, a white woman who looked like a proprietor darting around in the back. The food was good, and the many local patrons didn't seem to mind the lack of complete ramshackle authenticity. Those I spoke to agreed it was the best, and apparently it recently won some sort of award from a magazine.
I'm almost ashamed to mention it, but the "Jerk center" at the Ritz, right down the beach, actually did a pretty damn good jerk pork, which may have been better than Scotchie's. It also cost $17, about five times as much. BUT, when served directly to our immaculately turned out lounge chairs facing the beach, and eaten with the sea breeze at our backs in pina coladas in our spare hands, we were not counting pennies.
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