The Pelican Grill - Montego Bay

June 12, 2024

Starting the Jamaican series today is the Pelican Grill that is located right on the Hip Strip of Montego Bay, overlooking the sea. It’s a family owned restaurant that’s been in business since 1964, serving up authentic Jamaican food. We came here for dinner on a Saturday night and didn’t find it too packed, which is nice. The decor feels very classic diner like, nice cosy booths with lots of room for big or small groups.

The menu has a lot of variety with classic JA dishes such as ackee and saltfish and oxtail. For starters we got the pineapple jerk shrimp ($15) and the ackee and saltfish and bammy ($8). For mains we had the jerk chicken with either rice & peas or fries ($14), and the jerk pork chops with a side of plantains ($17).

The Pineapple Jerk Shrimp was so delicious! It was nice and spicy, just the way I like it and the addition of pineapples to the skewer was the perfect touch of sweetness to balance the spice.

The Ackee & Saltfish was an acquired taste, the bammy particularly. Ackee is a type of fruit (kind of like lychee) and it’s cooked together with the saltfish so that it absorbs some of the salt thus not making it too sweet. The saltfish was very tasty and the bammy (a cassava flatbread) provided a nice base to the combo👌🏾

The star of the show was the jerk chicken and rice and peas - so so good! (Please note that rice & peas in JA usually means rice and beans, not actual peas) so you know I was very happy to have ‘rice & peas’ everywhere during this trip😄 The chicken portions were nice and big, it was so perfectly spiced, fall off the bone soft and the jerk sauce it was marinated in did its job well. The jerk pork chops were also made the same way so zero complaints there too, such big portions we were struggling to finish the food!

Of course we had no room for dessert and we had to gather up energy to roll out of the booth and into the club to dance off all the calories we just ate😅

We had good service here, the wait staff were attentive and would check in from time to time. I like that it’s on the Hip Strip making it walking distance from wherever you want to go next if going out on the town. If you sit by the windows you get to watch a beautiful sunset as you have dinner - all in all, it was a nice first dinner spot for us in Montego Bay.