Portland Parish, Jamaica

Jamaica

Portland is Jamaica's northeastern parish, a narrow strip of land between the Blue Mountains and the Caribbean Sea. Rio Grande cuts through its interior; the coast is wet, green, and wild. The parish is less touristed than Montego Bay or Negril, and locals intend to keep it that way. Boston Bay, a small fishing beach on the parish's eastern edge, is where jerk cooking took its modern form. The Maroon communities who settled the Blue Mountains after the British abolished direct slavery in the region built pit fires of pimento wood and used the aromatic smoke to cook wild boar seasoned with scotch bonnet and allspice. That technique traveled down to the coast and became the roadside institution known today as jerk. Every jerk centre in Jamaica, and every diaspora kitchen in London or Brooklyn, traces its lineage back to Boston Bay.