Plantation Smokehouse opened on Valentine's Day, 14 February 2020, at Richmond in St Ann, about twenty minutes west of Ocho Rios on the highway beside Grizzly's Plantation Cove. It is a Jamaican owned barbecue restaurant billed as St Ann's first smokehouse, with a live band every Friday and mains running roughly US$7 to US$30. Note the address before you plan: this is out of town, and you need a vehicle.
History
The worst possible opening date
Consider the timing. The restaurant launched on 14 February 2020 with a party for more than 1,500 people, with the reggae veteran Freddie McGregor and the Big Ship Band playing, along with Ikaya and Prohgres. Five weeks later Jamaica closed its borders to incoming passengers and the tourism economy that a highway restaurant in St Ann depends on stopped dead.
It survived. By 2021 it was picking up Tripadvisor Travellers' Choice recognition, and by 2022 the owner was opening a second branch in Kingston, at 33 Constant Spring Road. Very few restaurants opened in that fortnight anywhere in the world and are still trading.
Alwyn Brown
The owner is Alwyn Brown, known as Brown Speed, and his route in is worth knowing because it is not the usual one. He worked at the St Ann Parish Council for eleven years. When Sharkies Seafood, a well established seafood restaurant in the parish, came up for sale, he bought it, and eventually left the council to run restaurants full time. Sharkies took a 2020 Travellers' Choice award as best in St Ann. Plantation Smokehouse was built as its sister property on two and a half acres, seating around 135 at a time and able to hold considerably more for an event.
Both businesses are locally owned and staffed from the surrounding communities, and buy Jamaican. On a coast where a great deal of the money leaves the island, that is a substantive difference rather than a marketing line.
The name, and the ground it is on
Be clear about this, because the name invites a misunderstanding. Plantation Smokehouse takes its name from Plantation Village, the modern residential development at Richmond in which it sits. It is not a preserved great house and it does not present itself as one. The developers of that community describe the land as having been a sugar plantation, later a citrus farm, later a cattle ranch. In St Ann in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sugar meant enslaved labour, without exception. That is the history of the ground. The restaurant on top of it is five years old.
New in Jamaica, old in Jamaica
Brown's stated reason for building it was that the American smokehouse format was not established here, which is true of the format. It is not true of the technique. Jamaicans have cooked meat slowly over wood smoke for centuries, and the jerk pit is exactly that. What was genuinely new was the American low and slow menu, brisket and ribs alongside oxtail and curried goat, on the same board.
What it costs and when it opens
Prices are quoted in Jamaican dollars and sit in a mid range rather than a resort range. Recent menu figures include a half rack of barbecue ribs around J$4,300, grilled lobster tails around J$5,000, grilled salmon around J$4,000, a stuffed chicken breast around J$3,700 and surf and turf around J$7,000. That is roughly US$23 to US$45 for the upper end, with plenty on the menu below it, and listings put the overall range at about US$7 to US$30 a dish.
It opens seven days a week. The current published hours are 10am to 11pm, though the restaurant ran from 8.30am in its early years, so if you want breakfast, ring first on (876) 794-8764 or (876) 488-6404. Friday is the live band night and the busiest by a distance. Book ahead for a Friday, and for any group of six or more on any night.
What it is actually like
Rustic and open sided, built for volume without feeling like a canteen, with a view and a lot of wood. It reads as a Jamaican family and celebration venue first and a tourist restaurant second, which is the right way round and is why the food is not toned down.
The menu is deliberately mixed: Jamaican staples, American barbecue, and some Asian dishes. That breadth is the honest weakness as well as the appeal. If you want the thing they built the place for, order what has been in the smoker, the ribs and the smoked meats, rather than treating it as a general restaurant.
Friday nights with the band are loud, full and good. If you want a quiet dinner, come any other night. Service is generally well reviewed but slows considerably when a coach or a large party lands, which is worth knowing if you are working to a schedule.
How it fits a day
YaadBinge uses Plantation Smokehouse as the meal that anchors a day spent west of Ocho Rios rather than in it: Green Grotto Caves, Chukka or Runaway Bay in the morning, and lunch here from about 1pm on the way back.
As an evening it works best on a Friday, arriving around 7pm for the band and staying late, and it pairs well with a beach afternoon at Runaway Bay beforehand. If your day has been east of town, at Dunn's River or the White River, this is the wrong direction and the jerk centres in Ocho Rios will serve you better.
