29 JAN 2018: During our visit to Jamaica this January their government announced a state of emergency in St. James Parish where tourist hotspot Montego Bay is located, and recommended guests stay in their resorts. This posed no concern to us in Port Antonio, about 200 km away by coastal road. In Portland Parish where this town lies on Jamaica’s wild northeast coast, all was peaceful, quiet and safe. The history of the place however is full of colourful stories with whiffs of scandal and danger.

Its location is remote – the closest international airport is Kingston – about two and half hours away over narrow, twisting, pot-holed roads on the foothills drive. (It was the only option as the Blue Mountain and the coastal roads were washed out in places by heavy rains.) The scene that greets you once you arrive is chaotic traffic, ramshackle buildings, colourful waterfront shacks offering fresh catch, jerk take-out stalls and a jumble of scruffy looking shops.

It doesn’t look like paradise on earth but it is: though not for those who desire a mega all-inclusive resort packed with activities. There are no golf courses in the vicinity, boat clubs or string of Tiki bars. There is however an authenticity, a sense that everyone is welcoming you like a friend rather than a tourist, and for the foodie an abundance of fresh fruits, vegetables, seafoods and jerk.

For this verdant, lush, rainy part of the island is where jerk style cooking originated on the steep slopes of the Blue Mountains, which tower over the area. In the 18th century Jamaican Maroons (descendants of escaped slaves), fought two wars against British rule. By adapting native Taino/Arawak techniques of preserving and cooking meat – cooked in pits in the ground with a slow long burning fire – their wrapped and buried meal could be cooked undetected by authorities.

Once the need to hide from the English was gone, jerk found its way out of the mountains and down to the beach town of Boston around 1870. Still today the most authentic jerk is found here. In Boston Beach pork (and other meats such as chicken) are always slow cooked over wood embers in jerk pits. People travel from all parts of Jamaica to eat jerk here and it’s easy to see why.

At Goldteeth Jerk Centre in Boston Beach, I learned from JJ how they prepared our meal. He said every Thursday they kill five to six pigs (there was a tiny slaughter house on the property) and then marinate the meat in jerk sauce consisting of scotch bonnet peppers, pimento (both berry and leaves), garlic, onion, scallions, thyme and secret ingredients he wouldn’t divulge.

The pimento tree is indigenous to the Caribbean Islands and the essential ingredient in jerk. We call the pimento berry “allspice” as it contains the flavour and aroma of cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper, all combined in one berry. It’s the major spice of the island and used extensively in Jamaican cooking.

Pimento sticks are the main wood burned to create the smouldering embers used in jerk cooking along with perhaps some wild cherry and maiden plum. The fires are lit at 5AM every morning and soon the cooking begins. It takes about six hours before the meat is ready to eat. At Goldteeth we had jerk chicken, pork and lobster with festival (a local bread), fried plantain and breadfruit. Jerk sauce was on the side so we could make the meal as hot as we could handle.

Portland is likely the most rural parish in Jamaica and Boston Beach was pretty rustic. However just a ten-minute drive away is Frenchman’s Cove. In 1960 Canadian businessman and cookie magnate Garfield Weston opened an exclusive resort there on a 45-acre property set around one of Jamaica’s most beautiful beaches. At the time it was super posh appealing to royalty, Hollywood movie stars and tycoons. Guests included Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Jackie Gleason, Dean Martin, and Queen Elizabeth. My husband was not in that league but he did stay there 50 years ago on someone else’s dime and tells me it was spectacular.

Today it’s still owned by the Weston family but locals say it’s not kept up its standards and needs refurbishment. We stayed instead at the Trident Hotel, ten minutes further along the road towards Port Antonio. This truly ultra-luxurious resort is owned by Port Antonio born, Toronto-based billionaire, Michael Lee-Chin.

It’s an intimate place of just thirteen oceanfront villas. We rarely saw other guests and seemed to mostly have the staff to ourselves. In this privileged position we were able to ask Chef Ricardo Allen, Chef of the Year in Jamaica in 2016, to make us different Jamaican specialty dishes every day.

For breakfast we had the national dish ackee (a fruit that tastes like soft scrambled eggs) and saltfish, mackerel rundown (rundown is a dish cooked with coconut milk), beans and saltfish, escoveitched fish (fried fish in a pickling sauce of vinegar, pepper, onions and pimento) and other specialties served with starches such as plantain, boiled green bananas and breadfruit. Everyday Chef brought us fresh local fruits such as naseberry (the sweet tasty fruit of an evergreen tree, the sapodilla), mango, papaya, jackfruit and otaheiti apple (not at all like a Canadian apple).

At dinner we had such revered (and delicious) dishes as mannish water soup (considered an aphrodisiac) made from goat head, intestines and feet. The goat parts are boiled for two hours to make a stock and then pimento, thyme, garlic, carrots, potatoes and yams are added, boiled another hour and seasoned with scotch bonnets, rum and Grace mannish water mix. The flavours are amazing. As to the alleged effect – perhaps that’s why sex scandals surfaced back in Port Antonio’s heyday.