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The Acquired Taste And Most Jamaican Foods   |
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Cow head soup anyone? Most traditional Jamaican food wouldn't get touched by anyone with a concern about heart disease with a ten foot fork. Rural Jamaicans have a taste for pork oil. I mean putting the oil runoff in the pot on other foods. The taste for "drippings" are not confined to this island, I know, but we're talking about oil here. OIL.
"Stew Peas" for instance, is achieved largely the fattiest parts of (salted) pork with some red kidney beans ("red peas" here), just like they used to serve in the days of imported, unpaid African plantation labor. Mmm-mm.
Beef soup needs no explanation, except that it is served usually with big hunks of gristle and fat. Not to mention floating pools of fat.
There is no respite for Atkins' Diet lovers either. Our yam is a root tuber that is, I've heard, (I acquired it shortly after infancy) definitely an acquired taste, much like roasted breadfruit and green bananas. The penchant for boiled dumplings with every meal might also be off-putting, a four-inch wide "cartwheel" of steaming boiled flour-water dough could easily unsettle, not to mention choke to death, an European or American visitor. The Jamaica Tourist Board should look into it.
Chefs have been brought in from Europe to try to mold local ingredients for the tourist taste-buds. They produce dishes with names and concepts like plantain soufflé, Jerked scallops, Yellow yam croquettes, all unnatural bastard children that most of us, the natives, would never even think of ordering could we afford the posh resorts that can afford European chefs.
Should you decide to try some authentic local things out for yourself, stick with the more foreigner friendly dishes, fried fishes with festival (sort of deep fried breadstick things). For deep fried though they be, they are a favorite with pretty much every tourist. Curried goat if you want something more substantial and the idea of eating goat doesn't freak you out. If all else fails there are Kentucky Fried Chickens, Burger Kings, Pizza Huts, Wendy's Restaurants, and Popeye's in almost every town that a tourist might be even slightly interested in. You will have to line up behind us locals though.
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More articles:
 Dining
Jeremy Tavares
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