Where to Find Authentic Jamaican Food in Toronto and the GTA

Ask anyone from the islands and they will tell you the same thing. Most Jamaican food you find outside a home kitchen is a shadow of the thing itself. The spice is dialled down. The oxtail is rushed. The rice and peas taste like rice with beans in it.

If you live in Toronto or anywhere in the GTA and you want the proper version, here is what to look for.

Who is actually cooking it

This is the first question and most places will not answer it clearly.

Caribbean cooking is not something you learn from a recipe card. The timing, the seasoning, the way a curry is built up in layers, that comes from watching someone do it for years.

Chef Leonora is Jamaican-born and learned island cooking in her mother Lily's kitchen, alongside her aunt Sharon. Twenty years of restaurant cooking after that. She has made these dishes thousands of times and knows exactly what each one should taste like. You can read her story on the about page.

Check the spice options

A kitchen that only does one heat level is cooking for the middle. Nobody gets what they want.

Proper Caribbean food should let you choose. At Blessed Foods every plan lets you pick No Spice, Regular, Medium, Very Spicy or Spice on the Side.

Look at the sides

This is where corners get cut fastest. Rice and peas cooked with coconut milk and thyme takes time. Boiling rice and stirring in a tin of beans does not.

Same with provisions, callaloo, festival and coleslaw. If the sides look like an afterthought, the main probably is too.

The dishes worth trying first

If you are new to it, start here:

Oxtail with rice and peas. Slow cooked until it falls apart. The test dish for any Caribbean kitchen.

Curry goat. Deeper and richer than curry chicken. If they do this one well, they do everything well.

Jerk chicken with rice and peas and coleslaw. The one everyone knows, and the one most places get wrong by treating jerk as a sauce instead of a seasoning.

Ackee and saltfish with provisions and steamed callaloo. Jamaica's national dish. Nobody makes it who is not serious about the food.

Escoveitch fish. Fried and topped with pickled peppers and onions. Sharp, hot and completely different from anything else on the menu.

You can see the current dishes on the 5 meal plan or build a plate yourself from the build your own plate menu.

Fresh, not frozen

A lot of Caribbean food delivery in the GTA ships frozen. It is cheaper to make and cheaper to store.

Freezing changes things. Rice goes soft. Stews separate. The spice flattens out.

Blessed Foods meals are cooked fresh for that week and delivered Sunday and Wednesday between 1pm and 7pm, so they arrive the day they were made. No preservatives, no additives.

Getting it across the GTA

Plenty of places say Toronto and mean downtown only.

Blessed Foods delivers across Toronto, Scarborough, North York, Etobicoke, East York and York, plus Mississauga, Brampton, Caledon, Oakville, Burlington, Milton, Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill, Newmarket, Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa, Hamilton, Guelph, Orangeville and more.

Prefer to grab it yourself? Pickup is at 7070 Saint Barbara Boulevard, Mississauga, on delivery days between 1pm and 7pm.

Start small

You do not have to commit to a big order to find out if a kitchen is the real thing. Try the 3 meal trial plan first, or read how it works before you order.