Murray's started in 1998 as a tilapia farm at Toll Gate in Clarendon and only put out tables because people kept asking to eat the fish there. The Kingston branch opened in March 2025 inside Di Lot on Constant Spring Road, and the meat is still seasoned in Clarendon and brought up. That is the honest pitch: a country jerk business with a town address, not a Kingston restaurant with a country story.
History
Jerk is older than Jamaica's independence by about three hundred years
The word comes from charqui, a Spanish term of Quechua origin for dried meat, which also gave English the word jerky. The method is Taíno first: season the meat, dry and smoke it slowly over low heat, use the local pimento, which is allspice, and the Scotch bonnet pepper that grew here already. The Spanish chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo recorded Taíno meat preparation in 1516.
What made it Jamaican was the Maroons. When England took Jamaica from Spain in 1655 the retreating Spanish colonists freed the Africans they had enslaved, who went into the interior, met the surviving Taíno and learned their methods. Here is the part worth knowing: the Maroons cooked in pits dug into the ground partly because it hid the smoke. They were being hunted by British troops, and a visible cooking fire gave away a settlement. The technique that produces the flavour was also a way of not being found. In September 2015 Jamaica registered "Jamaica Jerk" as a protected geographical indication.
The fish half is a Clarendon story
Tilapia is not native either. It was introduced to Jamaica in the early 1950s, but there was almost no controlled pond culture until a USAID and Government of Jamaica project pushed commercial aquaculture from 1976. Production went from a few hundred kilograms in 1977 to thousands of tonnes by 2000. It concentrated in the south central plains, in Clarendon and St Catherine, where the soil and water suit ponds. If you have eaten farmed fish in Jamaica, it very probably came from those two parishes.
The Murrays
Murray's was founded in 1998 by Keith Murray, now deceased, and his wife Joan, who ran a farm directly behind what is now the Toll Gate restaurant. They sold what they raised: jerked chicken and pork, and tilapia out of their own ponds. Seats and tables came later, because demand for the fish made them necessary. Their son Courtney Murray is a director and runs the business with his wife Nicole. The family was nominated in the Jamaica Observer Business Leader awards in 2009.
Expansion has been slow and local. Mandeville in Manchester came in 2022. The Kingston branch opened in March 2025, run by Tiffany Murray, Courtney's daughter, with her fiancé Brett Phang Sang. All three branches share one menu, and the seasoning is done in Clarendon and transported.
Di Lot
The Kingston site is not a standalone building. Di Lot at 33 Constant Spring Road is an open air food and art yard created by the photographer and artist Craig Phang Sang, announced in August 2021 after about seven months of development, with a soft opening planned for that September. The idea was to give muralists and performers a permanent commercial space alongside several kitchens, extending what Kingston Creative and Paint Jamaica had been doing downtown. Murray's is one of the kitchens in it.
What it costs and when it opens
Murray's Kingston is at Di Lot, 33 Constant Spring Road, on 876 906 4787 or 876 594 2888. The chain lists 10am to 11pm daily across its branches, and Di Lot itself generally runs from around 11am to 11pm, later at weekends when there is music.
Jerk is sold by weight in quarter, half and whole pound portions: chicken, pork, sausage and rabbit. Fish comes escoveitch, steamed, brown stewed or roasted jerk. There is curried goat, a curried coconut chickpea plate for vegetarians, and sides of rice and peas, festival, bammy, breadfruit, roti and fry bake. A jerk plate with a side is the normal order and lands well under US$20 a head for most people. Murray's publishes one menu for all branches but does not label its currency clearly online and notes that Kingston prices can differ, so confirm at the counter before ordering for a group.
What it is actually like
Outdoor, casual and loud in a good way. You order at the counter, they weigh and chop the meat, and you eat at shared tables in the yard with other Di Lot vendors around you. It is not a sit down restaurant with service, and treating it like one will disappoint you.
The jerk rabbit is the item people travel for and it does sell out. Fish takes longer than jerk because it is cooked to order, so if you are in a hurry order jerk. Weekend evenings get busy and the music comes on, which is the point of Di Lot rather than a problem with it.
How it fits a day
This is a lunch or early evening stop on the uptown side of Kingston. Constant Spring Road runs north out of Half Way Tree, so YaadBinge slots Murray's around 1pm after a morning at Devon House and Half Way Tree, or from about 6pm as the food part of a night that carries on at Di Lot or in New Kingston.
Allow 45 minutes to an hour if you are only eating, longer if there is live music and you want to stay for it. It pairs badly with a tight schedule, because jerk is cut and weighed to order and the queue moves at its own pace.
