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Jamaica: Essential Destination Advice

What’s the food and drink like?

Jamaican food has been described as Caribbean’s most creative cuisine, and this is in part due to its rich cultural history, many of the dishes having originated with the Taino and Arawak indians, African slaves, Indian and Chinese plantation labourers, as well as the English – the meat patties often sold by roadside vendors descend from our own meat pastie! Jamaica’s markets are piled high with a staggering array of fruits and vegetables: cho-cho (which tastes a little like squash), callaloo (similar to spinach), breadfruit (originally brought over by Captain Bligh on H.M.S. Bounty), bananas, coconuts, pineapples, pawpaws, sweetsops, star apple – the list goes on. The most famous method of cooking in Jamaica is called ‘jerking’, a technique thought to have originated with the Maroons, descendants of slaves who escaped into the remote mountain areas. The meat is marinated for hours in a hot mixture of peppers, pimento seeds, scallion, thyme and nutmeg and then cooked over an outdoor pit lined with pimento wood, ensuring a tender feast retaining all the natural juices and infused with the flavour of the wood.

Blue Mountain coffee is of course world famous. You can tour a coffee plantation in the Blue Mountains where it is grown between 2,500 and 6,000 feet above sea level and get a chance to sample it at its source! You can also tour the Appleton estate in the Nassau valley to see where Jamaica’s most famous rum is blended, from those flavoured with island spices to the dark, rich ‘Navy’ rum – not for the faint hearted! And of course there is Tia Maria, Jamaica’s home-grown liqueur, a rich coffee-flavoured concoction known and enjoyed by millions worldwide.

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