Boston Jerk Centre

Boston Bay, Jamaica

Boston Bay in Portland Parish is ground zero for jerk in Jamaica, and the cluster of pit stalls along this beach road is what people mean when they say the Boston Jerk Centre. No single operator owns the name; it refers to the row of open-air pits that have cooked pork, chicken, and sausage over pimento wood fires here for decades. Vendors arrive before dawn to load the pits, slow-cook the meat for hours, then open to whoever pulls off the road. The sausage comes out black on the outside, red within, drenched in pan juices, and sold by weight wrapped in foil with a piece of hard dough bread. It is coarser and smokier than jerk sausage from any inland centre because the pimento wood grows on the hillsides directly above the bay. The drive from Port Antonio takes twenty minutes and passes through some of the greenest road in the island.