Jamaican Street Food, Ranked by What It Really Costs You

Jamaican street food is not a novelty category. For a large share of the working population it is lunch, most days, and the economics of it are the economics of eating on this island. So this is a ranking by what things actually cost you - in money, in calories, and in the odds of the food being any good on the day you buy it.

1. Jerk pan chicken

The one everyone names, and it earns it. A converted drum, pimento wood if the vendor is doing it properly, chicken that has been marinating since yesterday, chopped with a cleaver into a foil tray with bread or festival.

Money: mid-range, and it feeds you properly. Calories: a quarter chicken is 350 to 450 before the sides, which is reasonable. The bread and festival are where it climbs. Risk: low at a busy pan, higher at a quiet one where the chicken has been sitting.

2. Box food

The workhorse. Stew chicken, curry chicken, curry goat or fry chicken, with rice, a small salad and sometimes a piece of plantain.

Money: the best value per calorie of anything on this list. Calories: 700 to 1,100 depending on the meat, and the rice is doing most of it - a cookshop portion is two to three cups. Risk: low. High turnover, cooked that morning.

The single most useful thing you can do here is ask for less rice and more vegetables. Every cookshop in Jamaica will do it, almost nobody asks, and it removes several hundred calories at no cost.

3. Pan chicken bread

Chicken, bread, ketchup, and whatever hot sauce is on the counter. The late-night default.

Money: cheap. Calories: 500 to 700, most of it bread and sauce. Risk: moderate, and rises with the hour. Late-night chicken has usually been on the pan a while.

4. Pepper shrimp

Middle Quarters is the reference point, but they are sold across the south coast. Small shrimp, boiled hard in salt and enormous quantities of scotch bonnet, sold by the bag.

Money: reasonable for what it is. Calories: 150 to 250 a bag, which is remarkably low for how satisfying it is - the heat slows you down and the protein is high. Risk: low if freshly boiled and bought where there is turnover. High salt is the real consideration, particularly for anyone managing blood pressure.

Nutritionally the best item on this list, which is not the reputation street food usually carries.

5. Roast yam and saltfish

Faith's Pen and every roadside fire between Kingston and Ocho Rios. Yam roasted over coals, split, with a piece of saltfish.

Money: good value. Calories: 400 to 600, and it holds you for hours because yam is high in fibre and slow to digest. Risk: low. Both components are cooked and the yam is roasted through.

The caveat is sodium. Saltfish that has not been properly soaked is a very large salt load in one sitting.

6. Saturday soup

Red peas, chicken foot, cow foot, or fish, with provisions, dumplings and pumpkin. Sold from a pot from mid-morning.

Money: the cheapest hot meal available on this island. Calories: 400 to 600 for a large bowl, most of it provisions and dumpling. Risk: low. Soup that has been at a rolling simmer all morning is one of the safer things you can buy.

7. Patty and coco bread

The national fallback, available everywhere, eaten walking.

Money: cheap per item, expensive per gram of protein. Calories: patty alone 350 to 400, with coco bread 600 to 700. Risk: low, and lower still where they sell fast.

Worth understanding that patty and coco bread is a meal, not a snack. Eaten instead of lunch it is fine. Eaten in addition to lunch, at four o'clock, it is the item most likely to be quietly wrecking a calorie target.

8. Roast corn

Roasted over coals at the roadside, sold on the cob.

Money: cheap. Calories: 100 to 150 for a cob, which makes it one of the best-value snacks by a distance. Risk: very low.

9. Fried fish and festival

Hellshire, Old Harbour Bay, Port Royal. Whole fish fried hard, with festival or bammy.

Money: the most expensive item on this list, and rising with fish prices. Calories: 700 to 1,000 with sides. Risk: low where the turnover is high, and freshness at a fishing beach is generally excellent.

10. Jerk sausage

Sold alongside pan chicken, usually as a stopgap while waiting.

Money: cheap. Calories: 250 to 400. Risk: low, though it is a processed meat and the sodium is high.

The ranking, summarised

Buying well

• Follow the queue. Turnover is the best food safety indicator there is. A busy stall is selling food that was cooked recently.
• Prefer cooked to order. Anything going onto the fire while you wait beats anything that has been held warm.
• Ask for the change you want. Less rice, more vegetables, no skin, sauce on the side. Vendors accommodate this constantly and almost nobody asks.
• Be careful with anything mayonnaise-based in the heat. Potato salad and coleslaw sitting uncovered are the highest-risk items in this entire category.
• Go late for the discount. Vendors would rather sell the last of it cheap than carry it home. That is the same logic Last Bite is built on, operating informally on every corner in Jamaica already.

Frequently asked questions