Why You Should Eat More Jamaican Food

Why don't food critics ever geek out over Jamaican food? I will never understand. There are more paeans to Singaporean street vendors than I'll ever care to read. I could compile a very long (and dull) anthology of all the articles devoted to New England clam shacks and their singular ability to help aging wasps relive their childhoods. But, no one ever talks about beef patties.

This is a great injustice. I live in a neighborhood with a waning West Indian community and, although children stores and bakeries continue to creep in from Park Slope, there are still a few mind-blowing eateries to get an aluminum takeout container of goat curry. I try to avoid these places because I could eat beef patties the way the Japanese eat Nathan's hot dogs. If you've never had one, my description will do nothing to help you understand the primal joy of eating them. But, for clarification's sake, they're savory pastries with a golden crust (there's actually a NYC chain of patty places called The Golden Krust (which has always struck me as a really gross name) and a messy filling of spiced, ground beef. As an undiscerning beef patty enthusiast, I eat them from the pizzeria (who knows why New York pizzerias sell beef patties, but they do). When you get a good one, though, they are indescribably good.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that I attended a reggae festival recently where I did not eat beef patties. But, I did eat tons of Jamaican food, which is what I meant to discuss in this post before the beef patties distracted me. It is also (partially) why I attended the reggae festival.

There were, of course, complications. Some of us were issued the wrong tickets and had to plead at the feet of concert coordinators for admission. Others only narrowly made it past the security outfit without a strip search. Once we finally got in the gates, we realized that none of the headliners would come on until after the festival was scheduled to end. We were expecting Bounty Killer. We saw the Jew-maican Situation.

While I have no complaints about the music, it was the food that left an impression. Carts peddling jerk chicken, whole roasted fish, roots drinks, curry and any other island dish you could possibly imagine, stretched for the length of two football fields.

We chose a stand that boasted the best jerk chicken in the universe. And, while I normally do not think it's advisable to trust superlatives, we got lucky. The vendor brusquely asked us if we wanted the leg, then hacked off a quarter of a whole chicken that he pulled from his barbecue pit and tossed it in a styrofoam takeout container with a freshly baked roll. We also picked a plastic Tupperware of fiery red shrimp, heads on and still in their shells.

We ate the shrimp with the kind of animal satisfaction that can only come from popping the head off something and swallowing it whole. The meat was sweet, cold and spicy enough to make my nose run. Within minutes, the Tupperware was reduced to pile of shells, antennae and other shrimp detritus.

The chicken was a work of art. Like all good barbecue its skin was a crisp, glossy black concealing the buttery leg meat underneath. Like all good jerk, allspice smoke infused it with a heady, mysterious aroma. Before tucking it in a little foil package, the vendor doused it with a vinegar-y sauce, which my friend later got in her eye confirming that it was also really, really spicy. We picked the bones clean then mopped up every remaining iota of sauce with the roll.

This all brings me back to the question at hand: Why aren't foodies inclined to get all teary-eyed and poetic about Jamaican food? Then again, maybe it's better this way. Who wants to read some food blogger write about chicken in nearly pornographic detail when there are beef patties to be eaten?

— Written by Cecilia Estreich

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