Montego Bay for first-time visitors

Best restaurants

Montego Bay's restaurant map is thinner than the resort brochures suggest, and that is its own kind of honesty. The mapped kitchens cluster along Howard Cooke Boulevard and the streets climbing off the harbour, with a small run of addresses out on the Northern Coastal Highway where the coast opens up toward Falmouth. Skip the all-inclusive buffet circuit; the rooms below are where a visitor eats what people who live in this city eat, from a Caribbean caterer at 9 Ramparts Close to a seafood counter mapped at latitude 18.5134. The list runs from the pizza counter on the boulevard, through a downtown cafe at 17 Union Street and a waterfront room at Pier 1, to a kosher kitchen at 1-3 Gloucester Avenue and a seafood grill up the highway. Seven addresses, each earning its slot on the strength of where it stands and what it feeds the city.