If I had to summarize the culinary reality of Jamaica in a single sentence, or indeed any of the Caribbean islands, I’d say this: It’s a kaleidoscopic synthesis of colonial, enslaved, native, and diasporic culinary traditions as bold and eclectic as anything from Singapore or Sicily.
We have a staggering variety of starches; we have street food that demands deep inquiry into proper crumb-to-meat-to-sauce-to-spice ratios; and we have an entire under-the-radar vegan diet called “ital,” courtesy of the Rastafari Movement.
And yet, minus a few breakout stars, such as Christmas black cake and jerk chicken, Caribbean cuisine has remained largely sidelined, even as Mexican, Indian, Chinese, and other cuisines have shouldered aside French dominance to assert themselves upon the North American food imagination. Well, this Jamaican thinks it’s high time the overlooked cuisines of the Western hemisphere start doing some shouldering and asserting of our own. (In Patois: A fi we turn now!)
