Down South Restaurant – Falmouth, Jamaica

This post is near and dear to my heart considering how it all came about.  I have to give you a little bit of background so you’ll understand how it happened and why its such a great memory, and why Down South will always be a place I stop when I hit the island!

History – Myself and a handful of women have been members of a couple Jamaican chat forums for the last 5 years, most recently my own forum, JAMAICA OUR WAY.  We have been online friends and avid Jamaica travelers for years but had never met.  Through my forum we also became friends with Lula Carter who operates CARTER ELITE TRAVEL and co-owns RELIABLE TOURS OF JAMAICA.  Incidentally her family owns Down South restaurant.  When I was planning my trip to Jamaica last month it turned out all of us long-time friends were all going at the same time!!  We were FINALLY going to all meet after 5 years of chatting online!  It was Lula’s grand idea to create our Diva’s Dinner at Down South, hosted by her family!  I have to say the most unfortunate part was that Lula herself couldn’t be there because she will be in Jamaica this month.

The four of us piled in our car and headed for Down South which is conveniently located right off the main highway from Montego Bay heading east towards Falmouth.  When we arrived we truly felt like guests of honor!  The family was waiting on us and the meal was already prepared, all we had to do was sit down and enjoy ourselves!  The thing I noticed the most about Down South was the location…RIGHT on the water…amazing scenery to dine by, especially at dinner hour when the sun is setting.

We took our seats right beside the water and right away I start taking pictures for this blog post.  I was so excited to be there and told Lula I’d be doing a GREAT post for them because of their wonderful hospitality.  Here are some shots of the property.

Pretty much immediately our waitress came out with the first portion of our great meal….fish tea.  Never heard of it nor eaten it before but I’ll try almost anything in Jamaica, as long as there’s no foot in it LOL.  The fish tea was actually pretty nice, like broth.  Good and salty the way I like it.

Right after we finished our tea the whole platter that was our awesome meal arrived!  The food looked amazing!!  Just like the menu said, we had curry chicken, salad, rice and peas and they added a bonus of fried chicken too.  There’s no chicken on earth like Jamaican fried chicken!  This family really knew how to make us feel like Divas!  Word of warning – the Down South rum punch…let me put it this way, I know what the word PUNCH stood for!  That was some goooood stuff!

While we ate we got the great pleasure of meeting Lula’s family – Craig (Reliable Tours co-owner), the mom and dad who’ve been operating this place for a number of years, and Craig’s younger sister (who was sweet as pie!).  Fabulous family and even though it was our pleasure to be their guests they treated us the opposite as though it was their pleasure to have us.  Craig sat with us visiting while we ate and he called Lula so we could talk to her and tell her what a wonderful time we were having.

Sadly our Divas Dinner wrapped up after a couple hours.  We would have liked to stay longer but we were also hosting a private party later that night that we had to get back to prepare for.  We said our goodbyes for that evening with a promise that two of us would be back the following Tuesday after dropping the other two at the airport for their trips home.  And we did go back to Down South that Tuesday and just sat at a table under a tree out in the sunshine sipping on some juice.  We had another chance to see Craig’s mother that afternoon and she talked with us a good while about their history with the restaurant over the years.

I, along with the other three of us, would like to extend my sincere thanks to Lula, Craig and family from Down South for arranging such a fabulous evening for us!  And like I said, it will always be a place I’ll stop at to say hi and enjoy the atmosphere.

I highly recommend stopping in for a drink and some chicken!

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