When planning a trip to Jamaica, especially for food lovers, it’s not always easy to find out what to eat. Particularly if staying in a resort, it’s hard to find the most traditional Jamaican food. This food guide offers recommendations for what to eat in Jamaica and how to do it.
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Traveling And Eating In Jamaica
During our first trip to Jamaica, in 2001, we stayed at an all-inclusive resort and didn’t really focus on what to eat in Jamaica. We ate what the resort fed us.
This often meant curly fries on the beach and Italian night, in addition to frozen rum drinks at the pool bar.
We visited Jamaica on our honeymoon. Had a wonderful time. Back then, though, we didn’t even think about researching what to eat and how to find those dishes in a destination. A lot has changed since then.
During our latest trip, though, we wanted to try as much traditional Jamaican food as we could.
In our Jamaican food guide, I wanted to share our tips on the must-eat Jamaican dishes and a few recommendations on where to eat these dishes. We also cover what to drink in Jamaica.
Traditional Jamaican Food Guide – What To Eat In Jamaica
Many people who travel to Jamaica and other Caribbean destinations like the Dominican Republic, book all-inclusive resorts, which is fine.
But, then they never leave the resort nor find out what to eat in Jamaica. They don’t seek out a great Jamaican restaurant to try some traditional dishes, off the resort property.
It’s important to know that Jamaica is a melting pot. Settlers from Europe, India, and Africa influenced the cuisine. This is why Caribbean cuisine, in general, is not homogenous.
Different people settled on each island at different times and each cuisine represents those differences. It’s important to understand this as Caribbean cuisine differs greatly from the cuisine of Central America.
We researched what to eat in Jamaica. Of course, we knew about jerk chicken, but we also knew there had to be more.
I offer a few recommendations for some Jamaican restaurants. But, first I want to answer the frequently asked question: What is Jamaica known for when it comes to food? What is typical Jamaican food? Because food in Jamaica is more than just jerk chicken.
Learn more about what to eat and drink in Jamaica:
Must-Try Jamaican Drinks To Taste In Jamaica
Jamaican Fruits To Try When Traveling To Jamaica
Jamaican Breakfast Dishes You Must Try
What is Jamaican Cuisine
If I had one word to describe the Jamaican diet, it would be hot! Traditional Jamaican cuisine caters to the local palate, and that means Jamaica food carries some heat!
Jamaica’s traditional food is not quite as spicy as Szechuan cuisine in China, but it could be up there in the consistency of the heat. It’s slow and steady. But, there is more to the most famous Jamaican dishes than spice and heat.
History Of Jamaica And Its Cuisine
Authentic Jamaican cuisine is a result of the melting pot that is Jamaica. The earliest settlers were Spanish. The British controlled the island up until about six decades ago. But, Jamaica is also home to Chinese and Indian settlers.
Some of the dishes that could top a list of Jamaican national foods are meat. There’s no shortage of island influence, though, as many of the dishes include fresh and fried fish as well as tropical fruits. There is also a great deal of heat to the dishes, which might be due to the influence of Africa and Asia.
The 20+ Must Eat Jamaican Dishes
Here’s our list of must-eat dishes when traveling to Jamaica. Some of these are pretty obvious but others are foods or dishes you’ve probably never heard of before.
Jerk Chicken – Is this Jamaica’s National Dish?
When people think about traditional Caribbean food and traditional Jamaican cuisine, many people think of authentic jerk chicken. This is regardless of whether they are thinking about Jamaica or one of its neighbors! Jerk is the most popular dish in Jamaica.
We ate some amazing authentic Jamaican jerk chicken while in Jamaica. We also ate jerk pork. And, jerk fish, and jerk short ribs…you get the picture. It seems that many dishes involve some kind of jerk.
Whatever the main protein (pork, chicken, or fish) it is marinated with a mix of seasonings, including Scotch bonnet pepper, pimento, allspice, and other spices.
And, the best jerk is cooked slowly over an open flame, outside. Eaten any day of the week, jerk chicken is a mainstay of any Jamaican Sunday dinner.
One might argue that jerk chicken is the national dish of Jamaica, but there are so many classic foods served up on the island that it’s hard to say just what is the national dish of Jamaica.
What we can say is that it is one of the most typical Jamaican dishes, and definitely the most well-known.
Where To Eat Jamaican Chicken
Scotchies in Montego Bay is often credited as being the best jerk chicken in Jamaica.
We also ate some of the best jerk chicken during our tour of Croydon Plantation in the Jamaican mountains. We even ate some beachside from a shack while staying at the luxury Half Moon Resort.
Jamaican Meat Pie
Wondering what is the most popular food in Jamaica? Could the best Jamaican restaurant be a fast food joint?
The Jamaican meat pie is a popular Jamaican food, most similar to an empanada. It’s a pastry filled with spicy meat and lots of yum. Probably the most famous Jamaican takeaway, we scoured Montego Bay looking for the best patties.
Not only are Jamaican patties some of the best Jamaican food you can eat, but they are also an integral part of the Jamaican food culture. And, grabbing a Jamaican beef patty is similar to grabbing a burger for an American – part of the national identity!
Where To Eat Jamaican Patties In Jamaica
The two most well-known places for patties are Juici and Tastee. And there is a bit of a rivalry (think McDonald’s versus Burger King). The beef pie is the most traditional, but beef and cheese, and chicken curry are also popular.
Coco Bread
Coco bread goes hand-in-hand with Jamaican meat pies. It’s a flour and yeast bread that is flavored with coconut milk. Although typically used for sandwiches, it is most famously known to be served with Jamaican meat patties.
It comes in a brown paper bag, along with the patty. It’s popped open and the patty is placed inside. It’s a heavy Jamaican snack and meant to satisfy someone for a good portion of the day.
Jamaican Curry Goat
I love how much of the Jamaican cuisine we tried was made with humble meats, or parts of the animal that are not all that common elsewhere. That included goat! That said, we had a hard time tracking down curry goat during our trip to Jamaica.
Many hotels don’t offer goat regularly because Americans don’t eat goat and don’t order it (Hey, America, eat goat!). And, our meals during our excursions were pretty set. But, we managed to secure a last-minute chow down of Jamaican curry goat while staying at Half Moon.
Yes, it was a little gamier than beef curry, but the meat was fairly tender, and the curry flavor was amazing! It’s more likely to find curry goat at festivals and parties more than at Jamaican restaurants. It could be one of the best Jamaican food dishes you eat – if you can track it down.
I would also recommend travelers eat at Sugar Mill, one of the best places in Jamaica for contemporary Jamaican cuisine, and a prime example of modern Jamaican cooking. They occasionally offer a curry goat ravioli as a special. If they have it, order it!
Where To Eat Jamaican Curry Goat
I was told the Chill Out Hut in Montego Bay has great curry goat, but we didn’t get a chance to try it ourselves. The versions at Seagrape Terrace and Sugar Mill at Half Moon, though, were spectacular! This might not be a popular food in Jamaica for tourists, but try it if you find it.
Brown Stew Chicken
As advertised, Brown Stew Chicken is exactly that. Cooked for hours in a blend of classic Jamaican spices, Brown Stew Chicken is comfort food at its best. Popular throughout the Caribbean, Brown Stew Chicken is super tender and moist. The Jamaican version does have the added heat that Jamaican cuisine is known for.
Scotch Bonnet Peppers – What Makes the Traditional Food of Jamaica So Spicy
Remember the heat that the Jamaican people love in their cuisine? A lot of it comes from Scotch Bonnet Peppers.
The peppers take their name from the Scottish-style hats some of the British military wear. They come in green, yellow, and red colors. They may be small, but they pack a punch of heat.
It seems all of the popular foods in Jamaica are spiced with the Scotch Bonnet, and I am okay with that.
And, how spicy are the Scotch bonnets? They are significantly more spicy than jalapeños and are more like habanero peppers. So, yeah, that’s hot.
But, they are not generally eaten fresh. Instead, they are made into hot pepper sauce to go with jerk chicken and other Jamaican dishes.
Or, they are baked or cooked into other dishes, including shrimp fritters. I tried to eat as many Jamaican dishes with them in it because I just fell in love with the flavor!
Where To Eat Scotch Bonnet Peppers
If looking for a nicer evening out, the Houseboat Grill in Montego Bay offers a few dishes, including peel-and-eat shrimp and shrimp fritters. They are both served with a spicy hot Scotch Bonnet Pepper beurre blanc.
When wondering what Jamaicans eat, it might not be a fancy French beurre blanc sauce, but this was pretty tasty nonetheless. I don’t recommend eating the peppers on their own, instead, watch for them cooked into all sorts of typical Jamaican food.
Jamaican Side Dishes
Whether it’s curry goat, curry chicken, jerk chicken, or fried fish, most meals offer tasty Jamaican side dishes, many of which I had never tried before.
Sometimes they can be listed separately on a Jamaican restaurant menu, other times, they just come with the ordered protein.
Rice and Peas
If someone were to ask me “What do Jamaicans eat” I would skip over jerk chicken and say rice and peas. Nearly every Jamaican food menu includes rice and peas. They seemed to be everywhere and are one of the most typical foods in Jamaica.
But, this is not a dish with “peas” as Americans and Brits tend to think of them. Instead, this is more like rice and beans, with red beans that are similar to kidney beans.
They are found on almost every Jamaican lunch or dinner plate on the island. Definitely, the typical food of Jamaica, even if it was one I had never heard of before.
In my humble opinion, I did not enjoy rice and peas as much as red beans and rice, a traditional Gulf Coast food. Cajun-style red beans and rice tend to be moister. But, it’s one of the Jamaican staples, so try it!
Bammy
Another dish you’ll find on every Jamaican food menu is Bammy. I ate bammy during our first meal in Jamaica and I fell in love! Bammy is made from cassava or yuca, root vegetables.
Bammy is soaked in coconut milk and then deep-fried. But, they can carry a bit of spice. They often are flavored with black pepper, or, of course, Scotch Bonnet peppers.
It’s another example of how traditional Jamaican foods use very humble ingredients. Bammy quickly became one of my favorite and best Jamaican food dishes during our trip.
And it has one of the best traditional Jamaican food names (although some of the next few Jamaican dishes do too!).
Festival
In a similar category to bammy is festival, a deep-fried cornmeal fritter. It is similar to a cruller in the US but less sweet. It’s often served with jerk chicken and other main dishes often during a typical Jamaican dinner.
One of the best we had was at Scotchies along with our jerk chicken and jerk pork.
Dumplings – Fried and Steamed
I love any cuisine that focuses on dumplings and other bread and dough-like products. It’s why I love Italian food so much, and constantly crave dim sum in Hong Kong.
It’s also why I love Czech food – loads of dumplings! Traditional food in Jamaica includes a lot of dumplings, again made with humble ingredients.
It seemed like a lot of Jamaican food dishes included dumplings. One of my favorites was a steamed dumpling served with stewed chicken our first breakfast in Jamaica.
But, fried dumplings are popular too, and often served alongside ackee and saltfish (see below). This steamed dumpling above included stewed chicken, fried plantains, and callaloo (see below).
Jamaican Corn Soup
A Rastafarian-inspired dish, Jamaican Corn Soup is ideal for vegetarian and non-vegetarian visitors to the island. Packed full of flavors and spice, the soup is not only delicious but healthy.
The list of ingredients for Jamaican Corn Soup is rather extensive, incorporating coconut milk, pumpkin, potatoes, and the all-important Scotch bonnet pepper.
Callaloo
After all of this protein and starch, how about a Jamaican dish that includes a vegetable? Callaloo is a green leafy vegetable, similar to kale, that is popular across the Caribbean.
No meal, including a Jamaican Sunday dinner, is complete without callaloo.
It’s usually served steamed or sautéed with peppers and onions and ends up alongside dumplings, steamed or fried plantains, or other typical Jamaican dishes.
Escovitch
Escovitch is a style of cooking, more than a specific Jamaican dish. It uses vinegar, onions, and spices brought to Jamaica by early immigrants. We had an escovitch fish.
We also had a sauce that included spicy, pickled, shredded carrots to spread onto festival at Sugar Mill Restaurant. It was spicy and cool, and quite refreshing on the festival. Although not technically one of the Jamaican side dishes, I didn’t know where else to put it.
Where to Eat These Jamaican Side Dishes
I would recommend Peppa’s Cool Spot, a Jamaican food restaurant set a little inside the hills over the Montego Bay beaches. They offered each of these side dishes (and more) on their Jamaican menu.
Ackee and Saltfish
When asked what food is Jamaican known for, this one probably doesn’t come to mind for culinary travelers. This is saltfish and ackee.
Saving this one for (almost) last, a traditional Jamaican dish found on a Jamaican breakfast menu. Saltfish is just what it sounds like, salted fish.
It’s along the lines of a Spanish or Portuguese salted cod. It’s a fish that is salted and dried and then reconstituted later, to help it last longer. I ate a good amount of saltfish while in Jamaica, and I found it a little more salty and a little more dry than its European counterparts.
And, yes, I was eating it as one of the top Jamaican breakfast foods, where it is served with ackee, something I had never heard of before landing in Jamaica.
Ackee is a fruit that looks a little like jackfruit, native to Western Africa. When cooked it looks a little like scrambled eggs. I didn’t find the ackee to have its own unique flavor. It takes on the flavor of the dish it is cooked into, much like tofu.
You’ll also find a saltfish and butter bean dish throughout Jamacia. Unfortunately, we ran out of time before having a chance to sample this dish.
Where To Eat Ackee And Saltfish In Jamaica
It’s pretty common to find ackee and saltfish on hotel buffets. However, some hotels will use canned instead of fresh ackee. You’ll also find ackee and saltfish at nearly all the local restaurants across Jamacia. It’s worth it to try this at least once during a trip to Jamaica.
Jamaican Rum Cake
I’m not a big one for desserts, and we didn’t eat a lot on our Jamaican holiday. But, we tried a Jamaican rum cake just before we left.
Rum cake is also known as a fruitcake, or even Christmas cake, in Jamaica. Essentially fruit is soaked in wine and white rum overnight and then baked into the cake.
Just a note, when I opened this package, the rum smell was pungent. I felt like I got a little buzz off of just the smell. But, it’s totally moist and juicy too.
Other Jamaican Dishes
What do Jamaican people eat? There were some other good Jamaican foods that we ate during our trip to Montego Bay.
Try to track down some of these Jamaican dishes. These might be a little harder to track down, or might not be as appetizing to an American palate.
We ate most of these dishes at Peppas’s, which I would wholeheartedly recommend for good Jamaican food. They had a nice outdoor garden, cold beer, and some of the best selection of traditional foods in Jamaica that we saw.
Oxtail
We love oxtail, and I tend to associate it more with Italian cuisine. In Jamaica, stewed oxtail is braised in a spicy sauce until the meat is tender.
With larger pieces of oxtail, try to dig out some of the juicy bone marrow. For some reason, many Americans are hesitant to eat oxtail. If it helps, if you’ve ever eaten osso bucco in an Italian restaurant, you’ve eaten oxtail.
Run Down
Run Down, or Run-Dun, is a traditional fish stew made with garlic, onions, tomatoes, peppers, and fish. It’s all slow-cooked in coconut milk.
This fish stew is often served with dumplings. It’s called run down because it is slow-cooked for so long that the fish breaks apart and starts to look almost runny.
Mutton Curry
Another dish that many Americans might be hesitant to try is mutton, which is an older lamb. In Jamaica, they slow cook the mutton, which can be a less than tender cut of meat, in a curry sauce until it is tender. Eric is a big fan of curry mutton and finds it a nice change of pace from curry chicken.
Grilled Fish With Curry
I often don’t end up ordering grilled fish when traveling, mostly because I don’t like having to fight with bones. But, the grilled fish with curry in Jamaica had such a lovely sauce, it was worth the work and the mess.
Shrimp Fritters
This is probably a little less traditional of a dish but was made truly Jamaican with the addition of the scotch pepper sauce that came with the fritters. If you see this on a menu, order it!
What To Drink In Jamaica
Blue Mountain Coffee
When talking about popular Jamaican drinks two things come to mind – rum and coffee. And, we took advantage of both of them on our visit to Montego Bay. But, the coffee was particularly interesting.
We learned all about coffee production in Jamaica during our visit to Croydon Plantation. And, we drank a good amount of it too! Best of all, we brought back some delicious Blue Mountain coffee beans to enjoy at home.
Red Stripe Beer
I feel like this is almost all I drank during our first trip to Jamaica. This time we knocked back a few. Red Stripe is certainly a must-drink beer in Jamaica. It’s easy to drink, and when served cold on a warm day, it’s the perfect match to spicy Jamaican dishes.
Rum
Where there is Red Stripe, there is also rum. Again, it’s not hard to find rum in Jamaica, particularly when staying at an all-inclusive resort. Of course, the most famous rum is from Appleton Estates.
But try to track down some of the more high-quality rums, including Blackwell and Wray & Nephew.
Some of their aged rums can be pretty pricey, but tasty and totally different than the rum used in a typical rum punch. And, speaking of, don’t limit yourself to a rum punch or rum and coke.
Ask the bartender or mixologist at your hotel what their specialty drink is. Chances are it will be bright, tasty, and perfect for Instagram! As an alternative, try Sangster’s Rum Cream too!
FAQs – Traditional Jamaican Food Guide
For true food travelers, there’s no better place to learn about local food than at a grocery store. It’s possible to purchase all sorts of jerk seasoning and jerk sauces at the airport, and most duty-free shops across the Jamaica island. But, a real Jamaican food store offers the brands the locals use at the prices the locals pay!
It’s true that certain types of Jamaican food can be a little heavy. I mean, even the bammy is soaked in coconut milk, which is probably why I loved it so much. Try some of the seafood restaurants in Jamaica to keep things lighter.
I am admittedly not the best source for Jamaican food facts, as I am still (happily) learning. Check out how to make your own Jamaican food recipes from a Jamaican cookbook, available on Amazon.
For the most part, yes. Like most cuisines, authentic Jamaican cuisine is diverse, featuring different ingredients and cooking methods. It’s difficult to characterize all of Jamaican cuisine as healthy or unhealthy.
Fresh fruits, vegetables, and proteins like meat and fish are widely used in Jamaican cuisine. All of these are rich in vitamins and minerals. However, many dishes are cooked in oil or coconut milk. Rastafarians follow a strict vegan diet, making eating in Jamaican more accessible for vegans and vegetarians.
Great run down (pun intended) of Jamaica’s foods. My wife and I will be traveling there next week for a 10 day stay the Excellence in Oyster Bay. We are huge fans of the Excellence resorts and have stayed at all of their locations at least once except for Oyster Bay due to the fact that it is their newest property and has only been open for a few years now. But as always, we do not intend to spend all of our time on the resort. We are very anxious to get to experience some of the local pleasures off of the resort. As much as COVID restrictions will allow anyway. It will also be our first trip to Jamaica, so finding your food guide online has given me great insight into what we want to seek out on the food and drink scene. So thanks so much!
Jason
Thanks for the kind words Jason. We hope you have a great time in Jamaica and would love to hear back from you. We are looking at booking a trip someplace warm and would love to learn what it was like in Jamacia with restrictions etc.
I have been going to Jamaica more than 40 years…will add that i have found that the best place to get any food and spices is to go to the Friday and Saturday open air markets… they are so much fun … but you will pay more than the locals do …. thats just the way it is… they know you have money, more than them … my friends know what jamaican foods i like so they tell me to wonder around if im with them they they will charge them more…I have eaten most everything you mentioned but i really eat a lot of curried chicken … hope to go back once this covid slowes down…