Monday, March 04, 2013

St. Maarten trip report part 6 - the food!


St. Maarten doesn't just have some of the best beaches I've seen, it's also got some of the best food! And it's really got a little bit of everything, from beach bars to fine dining. In fact, we didn't realize it in advance but most people seem to think that St. Maarten's the go-to island for good eats in the Caribbean.

One thing we learned on St. Maarten is that you've got to get used to "Caribbean time" - a 15 minute wait before a server even takes your drink order is pretty normal. The service is almost universally sloooooooooow, unless you find a restaurant staffed by Europeans. Just sit back and relax and enjoy the beautiful weather.

We realized after leaving that the only meal on the entire trip that we ate indoors was at McDonald's. Literally every half-decent restaurant in St. Maarten is outdoors. There's no reason not to be - it's 80 degrees and clear about 95% of the time, including at night. Most restaurants do have roofs in case it rains, but no walls. Some don't even have roofs - if it does rain, you're gonna get wet!

Here's a rundown of some of the more memorable meals we had, organized by location:

Oyster Pond
Since our hotel was in this area, we did a lot of eating there. Our first meal on the island came courtesy of Big Fish, which lives up to its name - my mahi mahi was so big, I could barely finish it. (And yes, that's a lobster tail on top.)


Mahi mahi's local to St. Maarten and fresh caught. We asked the waitress where the other fish comes from, and she simply waved and said "someplace else".

We also met this little guy there (but did not eat him):


Since most restaurants don't have walls, you're liable to see all manner of wildlife in the restaurant itself.

In the same general area as Big Fish is Mr. Busby's Beach Bar/Daniel's by the Sea, where we fittingly ate our last meal on the island.


My wife and I shared our food - I had a crab baguette (which was probably "krab" with a "k", but it tasted fresh), and my wife ordered a jerk chicken sandwich. Probably the best jerk chicken I've personally eaten (though I can't say I have a huge sample size for comparison), and of course the view is tremendous.


A lot of restaurants are peppered around the sprawling town of Oyster Pond too - we also randomly ate at L'Oasis one night, which turned out to be a nice southern French place (where we maybe stupidly ordered Italian, because the pasta was cheaper than their French items).


Still, my wife's tagliatelle carbonara was probably the best carbonara I've ever tasted. HUGE pieces of panchetta, and tons of them.

Notice the bottle on the table - one thing about St. Maarten is that we were told repeatedly that you really don't want to drink the tap water. Restaurants don't serve water unless you ask, and then they give you a bottle (and charge you for it).

Grand Case
This is a tiny little densely packed beach town on the French side that's just wall to wall restaurants, and most of them (obviously) French.  Walk around a little early and most of the restaurant owners will be outside trying to convince you to come in - it's a really competitive area.  (That said, these are *not* cheap places to eat.)  Our first night there - well, the first night we managed to find a place to park - we decided on Le Tastevin because we saw empty tables at beachside from the open doors in front.



It was a great experience - I had a delicious onion soup (you know you're at a real French place when they just call it "onion soup"), grilled mahi mahi with a lemongrass sauce, and of course the creme brule.


Yes, that's a picture of me taking a picture of my creme brulee.


Amazing view from here as well, and the service was the best we had on the island - constant attention by the all-French wait staff!

On our second visit to the town, we wanted to try some real west Indian creole food at a "LOLO", which stands for "locally owned, locally operated".  St. Maarten is really two islands, and I don't mean the Dutch/French divide - I mean tourists see one side, locals quite another.  Most tourists never eat at real local places in the interior towns where most locals live, but there are two LOLOs in Grand Case that happen to be right next to each other, and both serve creole food.


We basically chose between them randomly.  The one we picked was Talk of the Town, though I later found out the place next door (called "Sky's the Limit" - who's coming up with these names?) is rated marginally higher on TripAdvisor.


I was happy to be able to try the lambi, which is a traditional Caribbean conch stew that I don't think I can get in New York.  Otherwise, though, the food here was just okay and the service was super, super-slow. (My food's actually in the background above - I had the lambi, grilled snapper and mac & cheese.)

On our way out we stopped and got some crepes from La Crepe en Rose, which is a guy running a street stand (I think his wife or possibly girlfriend or sister also runs it sometimes):


Kinda like Japan! Although the crepes themselves are very different - these are French-style crepes where the crepe is really the star, and you have to eat them with a knife and fork unless you want to get very, very messy.


We got Nutella crepes, because all the people ahead of us in line did. (Peer pressure!) My first time having Nutella crepes and holy crap, were they good.  Pardon my French.


Marigot
This is kind of a weird marina city that's jam-packed full of cars but also strangely empty. The streets and shops have the feel of a "dead mall" but then you look out, and it's just wall to wall cars as far as the eye can see. It must be that all those people take boats to other places from the city, leaving their cars there and making it hard for people who actually want to use the city itself to park. (We had to park on the edge of town and walk back.)

Still, the one place we ate there (again randomly) was *really* good - a really authentic French bakery called Sarafina's.


I had one of their pre-made baguette sandwiches - prosciutto and mozzarella - but it was still one of the best sandwiches I've ever had. While we were there, we saw at least one woman come in and walk out with a person-sized paper sack full of baguettes - obviously this is where restaurateurs get their bread, and that's always a good sign.



Palm trees actually grow through the restaurant, right in front of the bakery case.


After the sandwich I got a couple of macarons - because I have to get French macarons any time I see them - and they were also delicious. Like a little meringue hamburger.

Other areas
I gotta mention the Sunset Bar and Grill again, which was our home base on Maho Beach and which probably anyone stumbling onto this post through Google as they plan a trip is going to want to visit. Their food is actually really not bad, although the portions are a little small:


That's a teriyaki chicken sandwich (minus one chicken strip that's sitting on the plate waiting for me to eat it) and in the background is my Dutch croquette sandwich. That croquette is literally the only Dutch food we found on the island. The French side really does have mostly French food; the Dutch side, on the other hand, has a mix of American, Italian, Chinese, some French, etc. Basically it's like being in a mid-size American city, as far as the choices go. But no Dutch!

Well, that about wraps it up - for this post and the trip report. We might go back next year around the same time - it was a nice break in our endless northeastern winter.

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This is increasingly not a blog about Alphabet City, New York. I used to live in the East Village and work on Avenue B, but I no longer do. Why don't I change the name if I'm writing about Japan and video games and guitars? Because New Yorkers are well-rounded people with varied interests, and mine have gone increasingly off the rails over the years. And I don't feel like changing the name. I do still write about New York City sometimes.

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