Hellshire Beach

South Coast · St. Catherine

Rating: 4.4 / 5

Hellshire is the Kingston Sunday afternoon tradition. A strip of beach in Portmore, St. Catherine, lined with painted wooden shacks serving fresh fried fish, festival (sweet fried dumplings), bammy and escoveitch — almost always eaten on plastic chairs with a Red Stripe or a sky juice in the other hand. Sound systems play at each shack, families spill onto the sand, and the whole thing has the energy of a weekly block party. Pricing is by the pound of fish you pick from the morning's catch. The beach itself has lost sand in recent years to erosion, but the food and the atmosphere remain unmatched.