So I'm not the biggest jerk in Jamaica? No, Scotchies is

Come for the jerk, don't mind the sweat.

I'm at Scotchies in Ocho Rios on Jamaica's northern shores,quite near a huge number of all-inclusive resorts, watching unsmiling, soaked-with-sweat cooks labor over giant, smoking slabs of giant, smoking slabs of jerk pork and crispy mounds of jerk chicken. It is brutally humid, typical of Jamaica in July, and I'm drenched. But that doesn't bother me as much as the guys preparing our food, dripping lord-knows-where as they labor to create what some claim - myself included - is the best jerk food on the island.

I'm a huge fan of Jamaican jerk, particularly at non-descript roadside joints like this one, the original; others are in Montego Bay and Kingston. This is a classic country eatery serving typical, genuine and drop-dead delicious jerk chicken and pork as its chief offerings.

Whole chickens and giant slabs of freshly butchered pork, all heavily doused with jerk sauce and spices, and OK, maybe a little sweat, are heaped on pimento or dogwood logs and smoked over the fire below, all of it topped with giant, well-used panels of corrugated metal to keep the smoky flavor in.

That magical jerk smell fills the dark, dingy smoking room which is open for public gawking, particularly from Americans not used to the sight. Locals abound and make up the bulk of the clientele, the surest testimony of how good any Caribbean restaurant is.

There are long lines at busy times; we caught a Saturday afternoon lull and were seated and served swiftly. There's a great open-air bar here to pass the time as well, where you can sit and sip with the locals, watching sports and trying to decipher their lilting patois.

In the smoking area, cooks bathed in smoke and sweat watch the meat crisp up dark and moist, pressed into the logs by the heavy-metal atop it. When done, they yank it off the fire and pull it apart, apportioning various quantities of the steaming, aromatic meat to plates and platters and giant aluminum pans.

You eat here in one of several huts on the heavily flowered grounds, occasionally pestered by a feral cat or stray dog, sitting on heavy, handmade stools of sturdy local wood (if you make the mistake of tugging one thinking it moves easy, it won't, and your back muscles may react accordingly). This is wonderfully spicy food and you're welcome to add fuel to your culinary fire with scotch bonnet sauce that accompanies it in a cup, but beware: This cousin of the habanero is one of the hottest peppers on the planet, and the most popular in Jamaica, a little goes a long, burning way. Try a small dose at first and wait for it to infuse your lips and face with its spreading warmth before loading up on more. My advice: A Red Stripe beer or two or three or more is a nice counter to the pepper's mounting heat.

Our group had giant portions of pork and chicken and wolfed it down to the bone in no time, gorging on the succulent, moist, flavorful meat that was accompanied by generous baskets of Jamaican festival bread, braided tubes of corn meal batter deep fried to a golden brown. We also had roasted breadfruit, a Jamaican staple, slathering it with fresh butter, and roasted sweet potato, different from our American counterpart in that it's harder, chewier, stringier and incredibly good.

And you get all this on the cheap: A full pound of pulled pork is a mere $14 American, and a whole pulled chicken about $12. The sweat of its preparers? No extra charge.

Scotchies Information

Scotchies

Drax Hall

Ocho Rios, Jamaica

Phone: 876-794-9457

Hours: Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.