Travel and Street Food

The Best Thing About Living in Jamaica, Part 9

Street Food. One example, maybe two.

Travel magazines, websites and blogs are really pushing the “authentic experience” these days, especially when it comes to using food as a gateway to get into a culture. I can’t argue, though to me, the food is only a part of the magic of places like this — it’s everything else that comes along with it that plays a role in making you feel like you are in the midst of something special.

But you have to have some guts. Do you like to explore? Happy to get a bit out of your comfort zone? Get away from the cruise ship / all inclusive resort crowd? Maybe be ok with being the only one of “your kind” in a place?

Great. So am I. Come along then, and let’s go to the part of town where Uptown Kingston and Downtown Kingston seem to overlap. At the southern end of National Heroes Park is a cluster of vendors known collectively as Crab Circle at Heroes Circle.

I’ll come back to that.

I have been living in Kingston, Jamaica for exactly a year now. Before this, I spent three years in a large, teeming, chaotic and always hot city in a developing country on the coast of East Africa, and at times it has felt like a relief to be here. Kingston, however, is all of those things too, oftentimes — excluding the East Africa part — but definitely including the traffic part.

I really love living here and have been writing about it a bit, as a non-Jamaican who has barely scratched the surface of this great and vibrant country.

This is the ninth article in this series, and if you are interested in reading the first eight, I’ll link the previous one (#8) at the bottom and the ones previous to that are linked within it.

I believe it to be a lucky thing, in my circumstance as a foreigner, to be able to experience this place less as a tourist or a traveller, but more as someone who gets to live here for an as yet undetermined length of time and soak up the energy of it as much as possible. The place is intriguing to me because I have realised that it doesn’t throw its arms around you on first arrival and welcome you right in, as friendly as the Jamaican people are known to be. There is a necessary waiting game first, a period in which we are getting to know each other, we have to dance first.

It says, “I’ll wait a minute for you to show me that you are serious and only then, when you are ready, will I show myself to you.”

You may want things to happen more quickly. Your time may be short, but too bad. The place just will not be rushed.

You’ll have to go and find it yourself, both in terms of the country and the hidden highlights of it. The best parts are found on the small roads that pass through out of the way towns and villages. The first thing you have to do is wonder first about getting to a certain place — whether it’s even possible. Before you head out, ask a few questions of people who might know, maybe consult a map — a fold out map. Googlemaps very often has no idea what it’s talking about, but as you get close to your destination, you will find that the people you roll down your window to ask directions from will happily furnish you with everything there is to know. Since you’ll be off the main roads, maybe make your peace with getting lost periodically before you leave home.

It is not the biggest island in the world (third in largest in the Caribbean, you’ll be reminded), but it seems like there are endless road trips to do.

You can drive a series of backwoods dirt tracks to a jungle waterfall in St Thomas Parish. You can plan your Sunday lunchtime at your favourite jerk chicken stand, on the side of the road in the hills above Kingston. Or spend a day hiking in the Blue Mountains through coffee farms in the clouds. Or an afternoon on a sugar estate, learning history from people who are passionate about the rum you are sipping. Or take a boat out to a makeshift bar on stilts out on a sandbar in the middle of the Caribbean, off the south coast of Treasure Beach. Or find beaches close to the city that you share with no one else.

They are all moments of greatness. Here’s the latest one….

Street Food at Crab Circle at Heroes Circle in Central Kingston

Back in January, I wrote the first article in this series about a jerk stand called Chateau 7 that we tracked down in the hills above the city and as great as the food was, it was the warm energy and the chit chat provided by the staff and other customers that made us go back several times. It has since closed down in that location and is poised to open in another location in New Kingston. In other words, it will come out of the hills and into the city. As a result, I know it won’t be the same, which is too bad.

Here it is:

Meanwhile, the search for good food on the side of the road continued and it was a Youtube video that caused me to look into Crab Circle.

I can take or leave crab, to be honest. I’ve always found it far too much effort and work for little result. I just don’t have the patience required. My partner, on the other hand, takes a different approach to life and crab eating. And really, as I said above just like the country itself, crab eating requires you to change your attitude, sit a while, have a chat and just forget about rushing.

As it turned out, people had been selling crabs, soup and corn on the cob in the location for some time. It was a ramshackle collection of tin roofs and corrugated metal, with open flames, no running water, light or electricity, no shade and no protection from the rain, when it came. Nevermind that it often flew away during hurricane season.

It can’t have been an easy life for anyone. So, in its community minded spirit and magnanimity, local rum company J. Wray and Nephew decided to rebuild and upgrade the facilities and now 15 or so vendors each have their own spaces with their names on top of their stalls and the ones I talked to seem very happy with the upgrade.

Not knowing any of them from Adam, we chose the friendliest looking one, a woman named Nadine and she did not disappoint. Presiding over a mountain of crabs, she explained the prices while clearing a space for us on top of her freezer, and hollered down the line for some cold beer. Nadine put out 4 spicy crabs for us to dig into. And by spicy, I mean spicy. Another Red Stripe wouldn’t help put out the fire on my tongue.

But neither would it hurt.

Next door, at Alice’s stall, there looked to be some good smelling soup going. I went over and got a cupful of what I thought was some kind of seafood chowder. As I ate, I pulled out a big piece of what I thought was conch.

I asked Nadine if I was right and she said, “No, cow skin”.

“Ah ok”, I said

“Make you stay longer”, continued Nadine.

“Stay longer?” I wondered.

“Stay longer”, explained Nadine, helpfully clenching her fist and raising her forearm

“Right”, I said…and the assembled punters and I had a good laugh about that.

That is the sort of banter that goes on in places like this. Warm, friendly, full of life and humour. In the hour that we were there, people were coming and going and Nadine did a brisk trade. A few stopped and ate with us, chatting. Most got theirs to go.

The thing is that Kingston is a very expensive place to eat in restaurants and at times, the meals and service can be disappointing. But street food here never seems to be a let down. People know where good food at a fair price can be had. And if it’s made by someone genuine who puts love and care into it, but also doesn’t mess around with fancy, they will always have customers.

To me, that’s the sweet spot of Jamaican culture, at least as it appears to a foreigner. We’ll be back to see Nadine again soon.

If want to get into the previous eight articles in this series of the best parts of living in Jamaica, I am linking #8 here. The previous 7 are linked within: