Jamaican food is the most exported cuisine in the Caribbean and the version at home is better than the version abroad, mostly because of the fire.
Jerk is the national method: pork or chicken rubbed with a paste of scotch bonnet, pimento (allspice), thyme and scallion, then cooked slowly over pimento wood. The proper version happens in a drum or a pit by the roadside rather than in a restaurant, and Boston Bay near Port Antonio is where it is said to have started. Order it by weight, eat it with festival — a slightly sweet fried dumpling — and hardo bread.
Ackee and saltfish is the national dish and the thing visitors are most wary of. Ackee is a fruit that cooks up looking and tasting something like scrambled egg, sautéed with salt cod, onion and peppers, and eaten at breakfast with green banana and fried dumpling. It is also poisonous if picked before it opens on the tree, which is why it is exported tinned.
Beyond those: curry goat, slow-cooked and served at every function; brown stew chicken or fish; run down, mackerel simmered in coconut milk until it breaks apart; pepper pot soup; and escovitch fish, fried whole and topped with pickled peppers and onion, which is the standard on the south coast.
The patty is the everyday food — a turmeric-yellow pastry around spiced beef, chicken or vegetables, eaten from a paper bag, and at its best from the Jamaican chains rather than anywhere smart.
To drink: Red Stripe, obviously, but also sorrel at Christmas, sky juice from a cart, and the rums — Appleton from the Black River valley, and the overproof white rum that Jamaicans drink and visitors should treat with respect. Blue Mountain coffee is grown above Kingston and most of it goes to Japan.