Home Cooking at CiboneyJamaican resort celebrates native cuisineBy Angela Wibking
One of the keys to Ciboney’s award-winning style is its cuisine, which celebrates the native foods and traditional preparations of the island. Here, instead of boring buffets suitable to a cruise ship or humdrum versions of New American cuisine, guests enjoy dishes that combine authentic Jamaican ingredients and cooking techniques with modern culinary trends. At the resort’s beach-side restaurant Alfresco Casa Nina, for example, my husband and I dined on fresh yellow snapper on a bed of savory local cabbage and seafood pasta spiced with scotch bonnet peppers. Desserts were a zuppa inglese with coconut and other tropical fruits and a luscious tira misu accented with crisp, thin triangles of almond brittle. Earlier at breakfast we had sampled ackee, a yellow tree vegetable that, when scrambled, looks and tastes remarkably like eggs. The traditional Jamaican way to eat ackee is cooked with salted cod, which we also tried and found to be quite tasty. Ackee is something you’ll only enjoy on the island, however. Since it is poisonous if harvested at the wrong time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration bans its entrance in any form into American ports. Another Jamaican staple that American Southerners, especially, may cotton to is callaloo, a leafy green vegetable that tastes just like turnip greens. At Ciboney you can sample it as a simple side dish or as part of a delicate soup served at Orchids, the resort’s most upscale and health-conscious restaurant. In all there are four restaurants on the 45-acre resort and each puts its own spin on native cuisine by using as many fresh, local ingredients as possible. Other native dishes we tried during our visit included curried goat stew, the famous and fiery hot jerk pork and chicken, earthy beans and rice and a concoction called “rundown” that’s made with mackerel, coconut milk and those red-hot scotch bonnet peppers. There’s more to Ciboney than food, of course. The accommodations are delightful, ranging from guestrooms in the Great House to villas and ultra-private honeymoon hideaways. Our own one-bedroom villa was spacious and comfortable, with a semi-private pool (shared with three other units) right outside our patio door. Other villa perks include a personal attendant who, besides providing daily maid service, will prepare meals for you with advance notice right in your villa kitchen. They’ll also take care of special requests – like ours for diet soft drinks – and restock the refrigerator and pantry, which are amply filled upon your arrival with wine, beer, soft drinks, juices, coffee, milk, eggs, cheese, cereals, fruit and crackers. While at the resort, enjoy golf, scuba diving, sailing, tennis, snorkeling and even lectures on speaking the Jamaican dialect. The Ciboney staff can also help you arrange excursions to nearby sights and shopping. Ciboney is about an hour and 45 minutes by car or van from the Montego Bay airport. For more information or rates and reservations Photo by Madelyn Miller |
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Ciboney Ocho Rios is one of Jamaica’s most honored all-inclusive resorts, winning nods from the American Association of Travel Writers as one of the world’s top ten hotels and scooping up the AAA Four Diamond Award.