Snuggled in a lay-by near the Jamaican resort of Ochos Rios, more than 30 barbecues spit and sizzle in simultaneous celebration of the form of marinated slow cooking known as “jerk”.

This community of tin-roofed stalls and shanties, about 100km (60 miles) east of Montego Bay, lures drivers with billows of pungent aromatic smoke that float across the A1 and A3 trunk roads.

“This is Faith’s Pen,” said the cook JJ, stabbing at the slow-roasting rump end of a pig that had been butchered with its tail intact. “It’s where you get the best food in the world, man. The real thing.”

Tradition has it that jerk was perfected by runaway West African slaves who hunted wild boar. They preserved the slaughtered meat by stuffing it with peppers and herbs, wrapping it in pimento leaves – and cooking it in a pit of hot stones and slow-burning wood from pimento trees.

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“Pork, chicken, mutton, sausage, white fish, shrimp and lobster... Jamaicans will jerk it,” JJ said.

Among this exultant melee of grills, firepits and propane stoves, plump Jamaican mamas prodded purposefully at steaming vessels of rice and peas.

Others shimmered in the heat haze of a mass fry-up. Slivers of the banana-like plantain seethed and bubbled alongside golden wads of “escoveitched” (pickled) fish, breadfruit, sausage-shaped “festival” dumplings and cassava, mashed, flattened and sizzled into “bammy”. About 1,000 Jamaican dollars (£7) bought me a teetering trayload of tastes and textures, with enough change for a couple of Red Stripe beers to douse the incendiary after-effects of Scotch bonnet chillies. From roadside stops to upmarket dining, traditional Jamaican food is biting back against the 21st-century curse of internationalised eating.

In a restaurant in Kingston, for example, I found callaloo leaves encased in choux pastry lying in a shallow lagoon of cheesy sauce. At a rain-lashed parkland vegan café near by, I dived into five-bean soup and sipped June Plum – a green fruit smoothie that tasted of pea pods.

From the capital, the road rises and twists past ravines and waterfalls to more than 920m (3,000ft) above sea level – to the “coffee heaven” of Jamaica’s Blue Mountains. Here the Craighton Estate has grown the world’s smoothest coffee for more than 200 years.

“You might find your coffee’s got a bitter aftertaste,” said Craighton’s guide, Junior, from among bushes laden with the precious red berries. “If it does, then it ain’t Blue Mountain.”

On Craighton’s balcony, above a flower and forest-framed panorama of Kingston harbour, wafted the aroma of coffee, freshly grown and freshly brewed.

“In Japan, one cup of this will cost you $25,” Junior said.

“And you don’t even get this view.”

Need to know
Virgin Atlantic (0870 5747747, www.virginatlantic.co.uk) has flights from Heathrow to Kingston and Heathrow to Montego Bay. Fares start at £722.10 return. The Hilton Kingston Jamaica (001 876 926 5430, www.hilton caribbean.com/kingston) has doubles from about £150.
Further information: Jamaica Tourist Board (020-7225 9090, www.visitjamaica.com).

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