Little Ochie Seafood – Manchester, Jamaica

It’s been a long time that I’ve wanted to try out what people say Little Ochie is famous for – its seafood.  Last year when I found and wrote about a place called “The River” I really had no idea how near to Little Ochie I actually was back then.  So on this trip the mission was obviously to go back to the amazing river, but then to walk up the beach and find Little Ochie.

These few pictures show how long the beach is in either direction and just how far we walked to get to our destination.

So if you’ve never been to the river but end up finding it one day you can absolutely walk to Little Ochie from there.  All you do is hit the beach and walk for around 30 minutes of completely deserted, sandy beach and eventually you’ll come upon a little piece of civilization.  You’re there and you can’t miss it.  Now I should mention that pretty much everyone who goes there takes the proper road and drives in from the other side.  There will definitely be signage from the road access but I didn’t even leave the beach side to see what the road side looks like.  We arrived on foot in our swimsuits lol.

After arriving we situated ourselves under one of the many thatch-covered sitting areas, each with tables and benches.  The seating areas were kind of cute, some designed to look like you’re sitting in little fishing boats.  And the entire place is beachfront with spectacular views of the rough south coast sea waves in front of you, and nothing but deserted beach on either side of you.  Little Ochie is literally the only signs of human life on this beach for miles.

Even though our surroundings were pretty cool I’m not going to say that the experience here was super awesome.  Inside the restaurant part where you go to place your order is a little chaotic and it was unclear what I was supposed to do first.  There were too many counters that looked like where one would place an order but at each of the counters I went to I was sent on to a next counter and not really accomplishing anything.  Finally, once I figured out how to order my food they didn’t tell me that they were out of one particular thing we ordered….but we still paid for it.  When our food arrived and we didn’t have the fritters we paid for it was only then that they advised me they were out of fritters.  But we paid for them.  So they offered to replace the fritters with festival.  No harm done.

The fish and chips were amazing though.  The flavor and meatiness of the fish we chose was awesome – the only fish I can remember as tasty was some Lion Fish in Duncans and the fish at Hellshire Beach in Portmore.  I could have eaten like five of these fish in one sitting.  The one in the picture is only the front half of the fish….we split one because we thought it would be too big for us each to have our own but in hindsight I could have polished a whole one off myself.

In total, we hung out for probably a couple hours with our fish and rum flasks before we started the half hour trek back up the beach to where my car was parked.  Our bellies were satisfied and our mission was accomplished.

Selfie-stick shot just for kicks.

Would I return to Little Ochie?  Absolutely!  Because I’ll most definitely return to The River  and there’s nowhere to purchase food there.  The walk up the long, empty beach alone is worth the trek for some fried fish.  My apologies that I can’t tell you how to get there by car but from Junction the route is clearly indicated by signs from what I’ve seen.  I’ve just never followed the crowd.