The Real Foodie

Driving back from Goldeneye through the beautiful village of Oracabessa, I stopped at two fruit stalls to buy some local fruit. They each stood out above the rest with their charming handmade construction and colourful displays of fruit. These types of roadside fruit stalls are typical of Jamaica and you can find them all over the island. It is the best way to find real, fresh, local organic fruit, picked straight from the owners’ back garden. You won’t find this high quality produce at the hotels, which rely heavily on imported food, with the exception of a few cutting edge resorts that are leading the organic and sustainable movement in Jamaica such as Goldeneye, Pantrepant Farm and Jakes hotel.

The first stall belonged to a Rastafarian named Winston, a delightful character who welcomed us into his shack, cooked for us and posed for my photos. There is a general fear amongst tourists of Jamaicans due to the country’s reputation for being dangerous with its extreme poverty, violence and high crime rates. However, the Rastafarians are peaceful and spiritual people, who live a natural life and eat an Ital (derived from the word vital) diet consisting of pure, natural, living foods from the earth that have no additives, preservatives, chemicals, alcohol, salt or spices and is mostly vegan with the exception of small fish. Winston sold bananas, coconuts, ackee, breadfruit, custard apples, soursop and avocadoes. He had a breadfruit roasting on a wood fire which he opened and served my husband and me on green leaves while telling stories describing the Rastafarian way of life. I had never eaten breadfruit plain before; usually after it is roasted, it is fried in butter with salt (which is more nutritious because fat is necessary for the assimilation of vitamins and minerals), however, it was interesting to taste nothing but the soft, fluffy, starchy breadfruit with the smokey flavour of wood fire. He cut open a young coconut for each of us to drink the water and then scrape the jelly (coconut meat) and he de-seeded a bag of ackee fruit, the national fruit of Jamaica, ready for us to cook at home with saltfish.

Winston’s stall

Winston showing me the inside of his stall where he is roasting a breadfruit

roasting breadfruit

colourful fruit display

scraping the burnt breadfruit

cutting open the breadfruit

taking a slice out of the breadfruit

the inside of the breadfruit

breadfruit served on green leaves

cutting open a young coconut

coconut jelly

de-seeding ackee

Our second stop was Michael’s stall, beautifully set against green rolling hills and in-between two tall trees. He sliced open and gave us a star apple: a purple fruit with a white star shape in the middle, which I had never tried before, as well as a taste of his soursop. He also had jackfruit, ackee, ugli, pineapples, passion fruit, coconuts, bananas and a few crabs in a trap dangling from the roof. He sang a song for us and went into great detail about the Jamaican drink, roots tonic: a concoction of mountain herbs which gives strength and virility.

star apple

Michael showing us the star apple

passion fruit tree at the base of the stall

lush green trees and hills

Michael’s stall

ackee

star apple, soursop, ugli and coconuts

bananas and jack fruit

Michael opening a soursop

crabs

We had a healthy snack for our long drive back to Montego Bay and went back with enough fruit to last us the rest of our trip. I highly recommend to anyone who visits Jamaica to explore the island, get to know the people and buy from these typical roadside stalls where you will be supporting the local community as well as experiencing true Jamaican culture.