U.S. Virgin Island: St. John

I guess I could have added on to this thread... but I don't know... this just doesn't feel like a Shopping and Cooking post to me. I hope I'm not contributing to the general disorder by starting a new one. (Anyway, if you're going to St. John, that thread is completely helpful, and a good place to start.)

So. You don't go to St John for the food, but there's some very good food to be had if you're willing to drive a bit and/or pay way too much for it. I spent my honeymoon there, and can report on some favorites:

The consensus favorite-- among my wife and me-- was Miss Lucy's. They have Sunday brunches that are well regarded, and a pig roast on the night of the full moon, neither of which I attended-- I didn't hear about the pig roast until the night after the full moon-- blarm it all. Miss Lucy's is an unpretty building with an expansive, improvised patio that sits on a beautiful bay. (That's pretty much all they've got there-- beautiful bays.) This pic only kind of hints at its beautiful pleasantness:



The conch roti was not very authentic, but very good, and loaded with conch; and the "crunchy" fish sandwich was very good, too. Our dining companions were:





Vie's Snack Shack is on the eastern tip of the island, and you have to travel a good while from most everything to get there. What you get is probably the Platonic ideal of what a "Vie's Snack Shack" should look like**-- it's an adorable place, and Vie is pleasant, and her "garlic chicken" (which looked and tasted like regular pan-fried chicken to me)-- was very good. Conch fritters-- B/B+.

The best food we had was at Chateau Bordeaux, an old and charming wooden building perched on a mountaintop-- really a wonderful place to enjoy your dinner. The food was well executed, very very tasty, and comically expensive. We had:

-- Pan roasted lobster tail, red thai curry peanut sauce, lobster mashed potato and banana brulee. ($58)
-- Pan roasted mahi-mahi, jalapeño-coconut rum reduction, pineapple relish, peruvian purple mash & garlic vegetable stir fry. ($38)

The lobster tail was furnished by an atlantic lobster, so don't expect fresh-from-the-sea stuff here. And though the dishes sound kind of cloying (banana brulee?) or clumsily overreaching, they weren't. They were delicious. Here's what the lobster looked like:



The freshest seafood came from The Fish Trap Restaurant, which has an adjoining fish market. The atmosphere of the place lies somewhere between mini-mall sports-bar and a Chili's. Not my thing, though the food was solid-- the best conch fritters we had on the island. The staff was severely overtaxed the night we went.

We even had a pretty solid burger at Skinny Legs, in Coral Bay. There's something magical about this place-- not the food-- that's hard to put your finger on. It's somehow... unspoiled.



These will have to pass for addresses:
Fish Trap: Cruz Bay
Chateau Bordeaux: 5 miles east of Cruz Bay on Centerline Rd (10)
Miss Lucy's: halfway to Salt Pond Bay on Salt Pond Bay Rd (107)
Vie's Snack Shack: East End
Skinny Legs: Coral Bay

** Here is a link to someone else's picture of it, Vie included.

Very nice pictures. I've never been to St. John, but I've been to Jamaica, the Domincan Republic, and Eleuthra in the Bahamas, and I have to say I love the Carribean. Not JUST for the obviously spectacular beaches and weather, but mainly the people, atmosphere, slower pace, barnyard animals walking around, etc. ESPECIALLY the barnyard animals. (Did I type that out loud? Ahem.) I don't think the street food compares with, say, Bangkok's, but it can be damn good.

Thanks for the photos, I haven't been able to make it to my usual winter vacation (blue mountains in Jamaica - my favorite, so far), but your pics are welcome to look at after shoveling my driveway for the nth time this winter.

LOL . I ate there at Saint Johns with my wife in our honeymoon. We had a rooster hanging around our table as well. I threw it bits of chicken which it greedily ate. Cannibal, heh