portland

If you haven't eaten jerk in Portland, you haven't eaten jerk. That's not gatekeeping. It's geography. Boston Bay is where the Maroons — escaped enslaved Africans who fought the British to a standstill — developed the technique of smoking meat over pimento wood in earthen pits. That tradition is not a tourist attraction. It is alive and unchanged. The smoke hits you before you see the pits. At Boston Bay, men tend to jerk pans that have been in the same spot for decades. The chicken is rubbed with a paste of scotch bonnet, allspice, thyme, and things nobody's sharing with you. It smokes low and slow over green pimento wood until the outside is charred and the inside falls apart. Portland is blessed beyond jerk. The Rio Grande runs through it. The Blue Lagoon sits in it. The seafood comes straight off the boats in Port Antonio. But you came here for the smoke, and the smoke will not disappoint you.