Above: St Kitts (CJ Photo)
By Alexander Britell
ST KITTS – It’s almost 1,000 miles from Jamaica, but at an indoor-outdoor beach eatery on Frigate Bay in St Kitts, chef Michael Clarke brings his guests to the heart of Kingston.
Clarke, a native of Jamaica, has been coming to St Kitts off and on since 1986, making the official move in 2007 and a few years afterward launching Jam Rock Real Jerk on what’s known as the “Strip” between the Shipwreck Beach Bar and Carambola, a string of bars and restaurants on the bay.
After years of work across the Western Hemisphere, including in St Kitts, Clarke decided it was “time to try something on my own.”
And what he’s created, in a fiery, open-air workshop sometimes accompanied by a bonfire, is authentic, delicious Jamaican jerk (and a host of other Caribbean dishes).
“I am actually a fine-dining chef, but when I came here, everybody was in to fine dining,” he said. “So I decided to give it a little twist — so what I have here is fine dining with a Caribbean accent. But my signature is jerk.”
And Clarke, whose culinary resume includes stints at the Grand Hotel in Mackinac Island, Mich., the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel (along with work at luxury villas for Jamaica’s Matalon family), has brought that high-end flair, and a taste of Jamaica, to the casual “Strip.”
“Any part of the world you go now, you can get food coming out of Jamaica,” he says. “But we’re very authentic in terms of spices. A lot of places try to do what we do but never get it, because you need the spices, which are very unique. But being a chef, you know how to make do with whatever you can find.”
Clarke, who trained at the Professional Culinary Institute in California, says his food has been well-received in St Kitts, as Jamaican cuisine has increasingly achieved global acceptance and understanding.
“Everybody comes here, they like the jerk, and they ask for it,” he says. “When you eat jerk, even though it’s spicy, there’s a burst of flavour coming out at you — and people love that.”
Jam Rock Real Jerk is located at Breeze’s at Frigate Bay on the Strip in St Kitts.
Tel: 869-662-5150