Just got back from a week in Negril, our first time in Jamaica. After asking a couple locals for recommendations on good jerk chicken spots, we checked out Best in the West and they did not disappoint. We fell in love with it, and now I'm doing my damndest to replicate it stateside. After looking up countless recipes, I think I've got the chicken as close as it can be without ordering pimento wood (that's next on the to-do list). But where I'm confused, is the sauce. None of the recipes I've found for jerk sauce contain tomato, but I SWEAR all three places we had jerk chicken, including Best in the West, the sauce seemed to have a tomato & vinegar base, almost similar to an American BBQ sauce.

The sauce I made from recipes I found online was thicker/chunkier, and more brown colored from the allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, and soy sauce (among all the other ingredients of course). It was REALLY good, just not what we had in Negril. The stuff in Negril was red, sweet, and tangy up front, with the herbal aerobatics and spiciness bringing up the rear. The sauce I made is primarily herbal, aromatic, and spicy, but not sweet or tangy, or red.

So what am I missing here? Is the sauce at Best in the West not truly authentic? Or are there different styles that do incorporate tomato? Or maybe they're straining solids out, or some other steps I don't know about?