CrisCo nailed it. No need to wonder. I had a Dominican girlfriend for awhile years ago who had been to Italy, and hung around Italians. That's where it comes from. It's a Spanish speaker's rendition of the Italian words 'to eat'.
There are other strange words that really grate on the ears floating around in Sosua caused by foreigners who don't speak Spanish trying to communicate, and then the Dominicans pick up on these nonsense words and incorporate them into the local lingo thinking they're real. Things like "drinkie-drinkie", "finito" (actually that's close to the correct word in Latin, but it does not exist in Spanish), "freaky-freaky", and on-and-on.
Tom (aka XR)