Fried Chicken at Red October

Fried Chicken at Red October

It seems I either ate a lot of food on my last trip or I just took way more pictures of food than usual, but here’s another food post! Before I went on this past trip I kept joking about the fried chicken parade I wanted to do…basically eat as much fried chicken as possible and rate the best one of the trip. So I did eat a lot of fried chicken and compared to this one, the others don’t even get a mention.

The day I found Red October jerk centre, we were driving from Negril to Ochi the loooong way, and looking to drive through Bamboo Avenue in St Elizabeth. At some point in the road trip we all got hungry and decided to stop at the first place we see and as soon as one of my friends saw the words “jerk centre” the decision was made. She’s kind of a jerk freak.

We pulled over to this place literally in the middle of nowhere. It was located at a crossroads and there wasn’t even a town here – just the cookshop, a couple small stores and “De Bar”. There were also very few people here….at first. Only a couple guys sitting outside the shop and the two chefs inside. The place was so isolated that I had to ask one of the guys where we even were! I had no idea but like to get the details so I can blog about it. He said we were in Speculation, St Elizabeth also know known as Brompton. I guess the two are close enough together that we could be in both places at once.

There were four of us girls on this road trip and we all decided to have the same thing…fried chicken. As we watched the chef chop up our meat with a cleaver we noticed that slowly more people were showing up at this deserted place. It was almost like one guy phoned all his friends and told them a carload of white girls just showed up! It was literally within minutes that about 8 other people showed up and all of them just hung around watching us. A few of them scrambled to arrange some tables and chairs for us to sit at even though we just ended up sitting on the curb and the car hood. But we appreciated their efforts to be hospitable anyway.

I got my fried chicken in the styro box and was very pleased that this entire meal that I couldn’t even finish only cost me $300 jmd (maybe $4) – a nice change from the price of food in tourist towns. This what I LOVE about eating local, the food is a hundred times better and half the price. Well this box of fried chicken breast, rice and peas, and salad was the best thing I’d eaten next to the home cooked meals I get from friends. WOW this was some amazing chicken!

As we sat outside and ate with the locals watching us and smiling, all four of us were absolutely loving the flavor of this chicken! I ate til I couldn’t stuff anymore down, then I went inside the little shop and bought myself a frozen cranberry wata…I’m also addicted to that stuff.

After our food settled for a bit it was time to hit the road again and say goodbye to our roadside friends. They all seemed sorry to see us leave but we had a long drive ahead of us. They watched us pile into the car and as we drove out we gave them the customary “honk honk” of the car horn and waved out the windows. I will definitely stop here again next time I drive through the south coast.