Negril
DC's Legendary Jamaican Institution Since 1979
Some places sell Jamaican food. Negril sells the island itself, and has since 1979. It started when founder Earl Chinn, born in May Pen, Jamaica, came to visit his sister in DC and couldn't find a single patty worth eating. So he opened his own shop in Adams Morgan and built the kind of place a city lines up for. Four locations later, across DC and Maryland, the Silver Spring flagship still draws the same crowd: students, lawyers, line cooks, everybody, all there for the same thing.
That thing is the patty, flaky and golden and tucked into warm, house-baked coco bread. It's jerk chicken with bite, oxtail that falls off the bone, curried goat, escoveitch fish, every protein marinated overnight until the flavor goes all the way through. Earl's sons Kevin and Brian run it now on their father's recipes, true to the motto stamped on Jamaica itself: Out of Many, One People. The patties that built a DC institution now ship nationwide on Goldbelly. No passport, no plane ticket, just the island in a box.
