Forget Sit-Down Restaurants and Start Liming: How to Eat in Kingston, Jamaica, Like a Local

When it comes to the food of Jamaica, too many of the two million or so Americans who visit the Caribbean island every year think no further than the buffets and hotel restaurants they frequent between sunbathing sessions on the beach at their gated, all-inclusive resorts.

But they’re missing out on a whole country’s worth of delectable cuisine, the ever-evolving product of a vibrant food culture that’s a mélange of the island’s African, British, Spanish, and Taino inhabitants, spiced up with contributions from Portuguese Jews, French Huguenots, Syrians, Lebanese, Germans, Scots, and Irish immigrants—all built upon Jamaica’s agricultural bounty and access to both reef- and deep-sea fishing.

It’s also a deeply family- and home-based food culture, and visitors from the U.S.—where dining out is the norm—can be taken aback by the lack of sit-down restaurants outside the resorts, even though incredible food is everywhere.

“The one thing that visitors to Jamaica need to understand is Jamaica does not have a restaurant culture focused on places with seating and menus and websites,” says Michelle Rousseau, a Jamaican cookbook author. Instead, she says, the authentic Jamaican food scene, especially outside resort areas catering to tourists, is one that’s spread out in family kitchens and dining rooms, in street-food stalls, and in the everyday interactions of Jamaicans going about their day-to-day lives.

White tablecloths or not, Jamaica and its capital have become exciting centers of the culinary world, especially within the Caribbean, with laid-back island families “liming” in beachside shacks over cold lagers and freshly caught, freshly fried snapper fragrant with Scotch bonnet peppers and thyme; older men laughing it up late at night over white rums and stamp and go fritters at patio tables in the city; beloved street vendors who’ve been selling spicy pan chicken out of oil-drum grills for decades; and simmering pots of red bean stews in the home kitchens of Kingstonian families as they welcome neighbors in for a little gossip and a traditional Saturday soup.

For our second round of Global Eats—a food lover's guide to the culinary capitals of the world—our guides to the Kingstonian (and Jamaican) food scene are local acclaimed cookbook authors, caterers, and food TV personalities, Michelle and her sister Suzanne. (You'll find the first Global Eats series here.)

A Day in Food in Kingston

For Jamaicans, food is a simple, practical, and fuss-free affair. Breakfast still reflects the island's history of slavery, when morning meals were meant to be easy and caloric enough for a long day out in the fields. Today, that often means a porridge made at home or picked up at a porridge shop or from a street vendor on the way to work; a bowl of ackee and saltfish; or some sort of fritter with a bammy (cassava bread) or something similar. Breakfast usually comes with “tea,” which isn’t necessarily the hot beverage made with tea leaves, but can also include coffee, hot chocolate, or malted-powder drinks like Horlicks or Milo.

Either lunch or dinner can be the big meal of the day, and can be taken away from a cookshop—a blanket term for an informal order-and-go establishment—or made at home. It might be a hearty chicken- or pork-based soup, pan chicken, fried escovitch fish, goat curry, or other meals with sides such as yams, spinach dumplings, or plantains, along with bammy or hardo bread, a dense, moist bread made with lard. Traditionally, the island was a heavily pork-based food culture, not uncommon among Caribbean islands, but the 20th and 21st centuries have seen the rise in popularity of different proteins.

“It’s evolved to become a more chicken-focused culture,” Michelle says. “And in the 1930s and 1950s you started seeing more fresh fish, more fresh eggs. The diet of today is different from its original form, but the old ways are still beloved.”

In fact, Jamaicans have developed a longstanding fascination with the U.S.'s KFC, which they’ve come to regard as an almost local institution. “I think it’s better-cooked here,” Suzanne says. “More seasoned and tastier. There’s no time of day or night where you go into KFC and there isn’t a line of sometimes two hours.”

On weekends, it’s a big tradition to have “Saturday soup,” where you put on a big pot of soup and essentially have an open house where friends, family, and neighbors drop in and out all throughout the day to catch up, chat, and hang out. The soup might be a stew of red beans or gungo beans (pigeon peas), pumpkin soup, or a callaloo-based pepperpot style of meal, typically served with hardo bread.

Where to Eat

Juici Patties

Multiple locations

The king of comfort food in Jamaica is the beef patty, seasoned ground beef in an unmistakably yellow, flaky suet crust. “The filling isn’t dense or thick; it has to be perfectly liquidy, a little bit stew-y with enough viscosity,” Michelle says.

“There’s an element of Scotch bonnet and thyme and scallion in there, a classic flavor profile,” Suzanne adds.

“For me, it’s the crust, which should be crunchy and flaky, to the point that you’re dusting the flakes off your clothes,” Michelle says. “That’s got to be the marker: If you’re eating a patty and nothing is flaking off all over your clothes, it’s not a good crust. And, for my sister, it has to be burn-the-roof-of-your-mouth hot.”

“Piping hot!” Suzanne exclaims, laughing.

In Jamaica, beef patties make their way into every peckish moment of your life. “You’d get them for the breaks at school instead of pizza. You get mini ones as hors d’ouevres at cocktail parties. You get them when you need something quick to eat and don’t have time to make something for the kids,” Michelle says.

And, surprisingly, perhaps the best place to get a proper Jamaican beef patty, the sisters agree, is actually a fast-food chain called Juici Patties, where you walk into the clean, almost antiseptic, and brightly lit store, order at the counter, pick up your order, and take it away to munch on.

Though the patty is the star, there’s a key supporting character, a semicircular, once-folded sweet bread made with coconut and butter.

“A typical way to eat them is inside coco bread, a piping-hot patty in coco bread right out of its paper bag with any kind of ginger beer—it’s literally the best, the most iconic Jamaican food.”

“Brushing them with melted butter and folding them into quarters makes a sort of pocket that, when baked, is a perfect vessel for stuffing or making sandwiches,” the sisters write in their own coco bread recipe.

Northside Pan Chicken

11 Northside Dr., Kingston

No website

Though the world has inextricably tied Jamaican food culture to jerk, the Rousseaus say Jamaicans are far more likely to pick up pan chicken for a weeknight meal, typically sold by street-side vendors who use grills cut out of oil drums in every corner of the island.

“Typically, a pan chicken vendor comes out at about 7 or 8 p.m. and then works through the night,” Michelle says. “You go after a party, they grill the chicken and give it to you in foil with a slice of hardo bread and sauce and ketchup, which you sprinkle over the top. And you eat it straight out of the foil like that on the side of the road.”

For their pan chicken recipe for Serious Eats, the Rousseaus were inspired by the Northside Pan Chicken man, who’s set up shop in a shack across from the U.S. embassy for three decades. He presides over an always-smoking oil-drum grill blanketed with seasoned chicken parts gradually turning from pink to reddish-white, brown, and black, and a crude, unfinished counter made of plywood boards across which is scrawled in red paint, “North Side Pan Chicken.” His pan chicken comes out hot and spiced, but not as hot as jerk chicken—he brushes the chicken with a dressing of scallion, thyme, and ginger instead of soaking the meat in it, meaning that you get more juicy chicken flavor with pan chicken than with a typical jerk.

“Pan is far less intense, less smoky than jerk, and doesn’t have the pimento wood they use for jerk,” Suzanne says of the traditional smoking with allspice (pimento) wood that is a defining characteristic of true jerk.

PeppaThyme

152 Constant Spring Road
Kingston

Of course, if you’re just visiting Jamaica, you probably will want to have a jerk experience at least once. Though chicken is the popular meat for jerk in the U.S., in Jamaica, “real” jerk is jerk pork and has grown from something you'd likely get from small, independent roadside vendors dotted around the country to more built-up cookshops that have managed to stay true to traditional methods of jerk.

One of the Rousseaus’ favorite jerk places is PeppaThyme, near a golf course in Kingston. “It’s a cool, interesting place and is a proper, modern, built-out restaurant where you go up to the counter, order, and pick up and go out to sit under thatched huts to eat,” Michelle says.

A key differentiator between jerk and pan chicken is that jerk always has allspice berries (“pimento” to Jamaicans) in its marinade. It adds a rich panoply of spice flavors spanning cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper, and packs an extra punch in addition to the fiery Scotch bonnets and fragrant thyme. Finally, jerk pros often burn pimento wood for the grill, adding that extra smokiness to the pork from the oils in the wood. And, as with many meats barbecued using a low-and-slow method, you will often see a smoke ring inside the pork.

“The pork should have some heat like they do [at PeppaThyme], with crusty edges with a lot of the flavorings on it,” Suzanne says. “I want it smoky, I don’t want any white pieces of pork that haven’t been seasoned long enough.”

Porridge Shoppe

114-116 Constant Spring Rd Shop 11 Oaklands Commercial Centre

Humble but filling, porridge is a staple of Jamaican breakfasts, the descendant of the African fufu made from cassava or green plantain that was pounded into a paste, and a common food among enslaved Africans on the island. Today, a Jamaican cornmeal porridge like the kind the Rousseaus grew up on is creamy, steaming hot, and always—always—stirred aggressively until it’s free of lumps, then drizzled with as much condensed milk as you need to make it as sweet as you like.

“Our grandmother made this every day of our life, and we typically had it every morning before school,” Suzanne says. “Today, you’re hard-pressed to find a bad porridge shop in Jamaica.”

The one the Rousseaus recommend is called, fittingly enough, Porridge Shoppe, on the second floor of a commercial center at the end of a dead-end street in a mostly residential neighborhood in the north of Kingston. It’s a small, clean, brightly lit place that doles out the kind of sweet cornmeal porridge that they still associate with the Jamaican mornings of their childhood.

Crystal Edge Restaurant

Main Rd Irish Town, Kingston

According to the Rousseaus, ackee is one of those dishes that everyone on the island agrees is a universally beloved Jamaican dish but that everyone also makes slightly differently. Flavored with saltfish and onion, bell peppers and Scotch bonnets, fresh thyme and a hint tomato, the result has something of the consistency of scrambled eggs with ackee’s mild, nutty flavor, but a lot more punch from everything else.

“I think of my maternal grandmother, Mawmaw: Whenever we would come home from school or university, she would make a big lunch for us, and ackee was always mixed in, whatever else she did,” Suzanne says. “Today, we still have it with my kids for the big Easter Sunday brunch.

One place to get good ackee and saltfish is by driving up (literally) to the hilltop village of Irish Town. There you will find Crystal Edge, a standalone restaurant up a steep highway that will actually pull out the white tablecloths for special events but also hosts less formal Sunday brunches within its red- and green-painted walls. When they have the windows open, you can even sometimes get warm breezes off the hills, carrying the scent of coffee growing nearby. It’s a bucolic, agricultural setting only about an hour from Kingston but seems like ages away from the city.

Triple Tz

Annette Cres, Kingston

A key Jamaican word to learn and understand is “liming,” which refers to the popular activity of hanging out and doing nothing while enjoying the companionship of friends and family. It’s a simple concept but almost an art form in Jamaica, where certain places are considered perfect liming locations to have a meal, then stay into the wee hours entertaining a constant flow of buddies and cousins over cold beers and hot, fresh appetizers like stamp and go (crispy, savory, battered saltfish fritters).

“My dad had a crew of old guys he would meet every Friday at Triple Tz in the middle of the business district, though it was not fancy and you could go in shorts or business attire,” Suzanne says. “You eat something and then stick around and drink rum, chatting in a leisurely way into the night.”

Stamp and go is a classic Jamaican snack, eaten at breakfast or with drinks, but it started out as a humble “peasant-like concoction of flour batter, fish, and seasoning,” Suzanne says. Now, it fills seemingly every food niche of the day.

“They’re something you could eat at breakfast, something you could serve as hors d’ouevres at a cocktail party, something to pick up at a cookshop on a busy work day. Even though it’s very humble in origin, it cuts across all these social experiences.”

Often served with tartar sauce or simply ketchup and hot sauce, stamp and go must be served fresh from a hot oil fryer to be appreciated properly. “It should be crispy and hot, salty and spicy,” Michelle says.

At places like Triple Tz, which has a large dining room of sturdy-looking, dark-wood tables and chairs and a jungle's worth of potted plants, the business luncheons during the weekdays may give way to groups of people liming over beers, rums, and old stories at night, but the stamp and go will always be a constant, the sisters say.

Aunt Merl Fish and Lobster Restaurant

Hellshire Beach, Jamaica

For generations, it’s been a tradition of Kingstonians to venture the 20 or 30 minutes southwest outside of the city to the little fishing village of Hellshire. It’s got a beach for locals, not tourists, but is now more popular for its food than for its badly eroded surf and sand.

“They’re open, rough-hewn shacks on the beach, lean-tos really, made out of flat pieces of plyboard and facing the water, all crowded up together, some painted with their own little signs. Your table is literally a piece of ply on two stilts,” Suzanne says. “The fish comes in fresh, and you pick your fish out of a cooler, and then they fry it for you on an open wood fire, and they bring out your food on melamine plastic trays like from the ‘60s, piping hot, with a big jar of pickled onions with vinegar and Scotch bonnets.”

“And there’s dancehall music blasting from the sound systems,” Michelle adds.

Every family in Kingston is loyal to their own Hellshire fish shack among the dozen or so there lining the beach, but the Rousseau’s choice is Aunt Merl’s, which sits partially over the water midway on the southern side of the point of Hellshire that juts into the Caribbean—you know you’re there when you spot the bright yellow facade and the oval sign with a picture of a dish and a lobster dancing happily with a bottle of Pepsi. It’s bigger than many of the other shacks, and the red-and-yellow picnic benches inside sit directly on the sand.

A classic meal to have at Aunt Merl’s might be the cassava bread bammy alongside escovitch fish fried directly in a big, rectangular pan propped up by cinderblocks over a hot wood fire. Though Hellshire fish typically don’t come battered, the Rousseaus went with an airy batter for their own escovitch fish recipe for Serious Eats. The escovitch is the briny sauce of cane vinegar, Scotch bonnet pepper, pimento, onion, chayote, and carrot that imparts the distinctive pickle-y flavor of the dish. Both at Hellshire’s fish shacks and in the Rousseau’s recipe, the fish is finished by adding “a tart and aromatic pickle poured over top.”

Finding the Treasures of Jamaica in Kingston

Once you’ve set aside your expectations of a U.S.-style, restaurant-based food culture, Jamaica offers a rich and diverse cuisine that could redefine your sense of what’s possible with food.

“A lot of the places that are the best in Jamaica aren’t going to look pretty or sophisticated or even be sit-down,” Michelle says. “Sometimes you’ll have to walk, and sometimes you’ll have to wait in a long line. Sometimes the service will be slow and not so good. But it’s part of the charm. Let yourself just chill and enjoy the ambience and the food and flavor without worrying about the tables being turned or the waiter explaining what the fried cod’s flavor profile is.”

"You’ll have delicious foods that are the treasures for us in Jamaica,” Suzanne finishes.