The Houseboat Grill is a genuine houseboat, moored in the Bogue Lagoon inside the Montego Bay Marine Park fish sanctuary, and you reach it by being pulled across about ten feet of water on a small raft. It is Jamaica's only floating restaurant. The boat was built as a nightclub in the late 1970s and only became a restaurant in 2001, so the vessel is older than the business by roughly a quarter century.
History
Built as a nightclub, moved by weather
The boat was built in the late 1970s at Whitehouse in St James by Winston Reynolds, and it operated as a bar and nightclub. In the mid 1980s it was towed into the Bogue Lagoon to ride out bad weather in sheltered water. It never went back. Everything since is a consequence of that one decision, which is also why it does not pitch while you eat.
The Bond man and the fondue years
In its later floating life the boat ran as The HouseBoat Fondue Restaurant under Tim Moxon. The restaurant's own history describes Moxon as 006 from the first Bond film, which is not quite right and is worth correcting, because the truth is better. Moxon played Commander John Strangways in Dr. No (1962), the MI6 station chief in Jamaica. Strangways speaks the first line of dialogue in the entire James Bond film series and is the first character in it to be killed, which is what sends Bond to Jamaica in the first place. Moxon was English born, lived most of his life on the island and died in Montego Bay on 5 December 2006.
The green room for a very strange weekend
The boat's own account says it served as a green room and lounge for artists playing the Jamaica World Music Festival. That festival is thoroughly documented: it ran over the American Thanksgiving weekend of 25 to 27 November 1982 at the Bob Marley Performing Arts Centre in Montego Bay, and the bill included the Grateful Dead, Aretha Franklin, The Clash, The Beach Boys, The B-52's, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, Toots and the Maytals, Black Uhuru, Squeeze, Joe Jackson and Yellowman. Crowds reached close to fifty thousand for some sets. Whether every act named ever set foot on this boat we cannot verify, but the weekend itself happened and it remains one of the odder things Montego Bay has ever hosted.
One story that does not add up
The restaurant also says Steve McQueen stayed aboard while filming Papillon. The dates fight each other. Papillon shot its penal colony scenes at Falmouth with production based in Montego Bay, and McQueen was photographed on location in Montego Bay on 15 April 1973, several years before the same official history says the boat was built. We like the story and we are not going to repeat it as fact.
2001, and the road outside
Scott Stanley and Richard Nurse bought the boat in 2001, refitted it, and opened The HouseBoat Grill on 5 October 2001, with Nurse cooking. It has run as a fine dining restaurant ever since. Its address is Tony Hart Boulevard, which is fitting: Tony Hart (1932 to 2020) was the Montego Bay businessman behind the development of the Bogue lands and the dredging of the Freeport harbour, the works that shaped the very lagoon the boat floats in.
What it costs and when it opens
Open daily, with lunch from noon to 3pm, dinner from 3pm to 11pm and the bar running noon to 11pm. Reservations are strongly advised, because the boat is small and turns over slowly. This is the upper end of Montego Bay dining and prices sit accordingly, so budget for a proper dinner rather than a casual one. Live lobster is available July through March. That is not a whim: Jamaica's spiny lobster close season runs 1 April to 30 June by law, so anywhere selling you fresh local lobster in May is worth a second look.
What it is actually like
Small, quiet and dark in the good way. There is a cosy dining room below deck, an open upper deck under the sky, and tables at the waterside. Because you are moored in a fish sanctuary with lights over the water, snook and tarpon patrol under the boat all evening. The menu changes constantly, built around fish, with a live lobster tank below deck in season. It suits two people and a long evening rather than a large loud group.
You board by raft, over water, in the dark on the way out. There are handrails and staff who do this all night, but if anyone in your party is unsteady on their feet, or has had a full evening of drinks, take the crossing slowly and accept a hand. Do not carry anything you cannot afford to drop in the lagoon.
How it fits a day
We put the Houseboat in at about 7pm as the close of a day, and nothing after it. Book it, do not turn up. It is at the Freeport end of the bay rather than on the Hip Strip, roughly ten to fifteen minutes by car from Doctor's Cave, so it pairs cleanly with a beach morning and an afternoon at leisure. It does not pair with a Friday night at Pier 1, which is the opposite kind of evening. Choose one.
