St. Kitts (Leeward Islands - Caribbean) - with many pictures

I love the Caribbean and St. Kitts is one of my very few favorite islands in the Caribbean - unspoiled and uncrowded beaches, very friendly people, a lack of crowds, spectacular natural scenery including an active (albeit dormant) volcano, monkeys . . . and some very good food. And it's easy to drive around . . . 68 square miles.

St. Kitts was controlled at different times by the French and by the English, and was also a major location involved in slave trade. Not coincidentally, the food on St. Kitts often reflects this mix - some French, English, Creole and African flavors, often overlapping. You won't find true jerk here, as you would in Jamaica (the couple times I've tried jerk chicken or pork on St. Kitts, it's been awful), but there is a lot of very good food . . . particularly fresh seafood.

Some typical local dishes include pepperpot and goat water (soups/stews), johnny cakes, ribs, roti filled with chicken curry, saltfish (salted, dried cod), conch, other fresh seafood (including snapper, mahi mahi, shrimp and spiny lobster) and dumplings (also called dumplins), often made of cornmeal and typically served with stews. There's a wonderful produce market on Sundays in the capital city of Basseterre, and if you see chicken being grilled over charcoal out of a drum, don't miss it.

One of my very favorite restaurants is at Rawlins Plantation, a guest house featuring individual cottages on the grounds of a former sugar plantation. Sugar used to be the primary industry on St. Kitts, but now sugar cane is no longer processed on the island, even though the cane still grows. The restaurant at Rawlins features a phenomenal lunch buffet for $30 which cannot be missed.

The road leading to Rawlins Plantation is a bumpy dirt road, winding through fields of sugar cane, at the base of the Mt. Liamuiga volcano:




Here's a view of one of the guest cottages, obviously a part of the former sugar operation:





Once you've arrived, don't expect to eat immediately. You're now on island time, so you're seated on the restaurant's porch and served cocktails and given time to take in the magnificent surroundings. Not a bad view of neighboring St. Eustatius, huh?




After cocktails, you're ushered into the main dining room:





But the star of the show here is the lunch buffet, this day featuring a salad with a mint dressing, pasta salad, beef croquettes, rice and beans (peas), chicken curry, saltfish stew with cornmeal dumplings, saltfish fritters with hot, hot sauce, mango and tomato chutneys, and the best johnny cakes I have ever tasted:





The saltfish stew with cornmeal dumplings, which was outstanding and featured salted cod in a stew of tomatoes, onions and peppers:





And the beautiful johnny cakes (I should note that I tasted multiple johnny cakes on St. Kitts, and they often differed substantially in type . . . some more like an Indian fry bread, and others more akin to doughnuts - these were more like fry bread):





Curried chicken is very popular on St. Kitts, and this was an outstanding version:





The hot, crispy and delicious saltfish fritters, perfect with the chutneys and hot sauce:





The buffet menu at Rawlins changes constantly, but never disappoints. The ownership of the plantation changed a few years ago, but it appears that the kitchen is running as smoothly as ever. If you visit St. Kitts, it would be a crime to not visit Rawlins Plantation. I've eaten here several times, and each time the food, atmosphere and service have been perfect. I would probably select Rawlins Plantation for my last meal.

After lunch at Rawlins, it makes sense to visit Brimstone Hill Fortress, a UNESCO world heritage site, built more than a few hundred years ago and used by the British and French to defend the island. The view from the top (by the canons) is spectacular. On a clear day, you can see Saba, St. Eustatius and Montserrat. Here's the view of St. Eustatius:




Be careful driving to and from Brimstone Hill, as you're likely to come across some of the tens of thousands of monkeys which roam the island:





Another wonderful plantation to visit is Ottley's Plantation, another former sugar plantation featuring the outstanding Royal Palm restaurant and its excellent dinner and Sunday brunch. On a previous visit, I enjoyed an amazing almond-crusted parrotfish which I'll never forget.

For more casual dining on St. Kitts, two of my favorite spots are the Reggae Beach Bar & Grill and the Sprat Net. The Reggae Beach Bar and Grill is a casual beach hut restaurant which offers very good roti, banana bread pudding with a mango-rum sauce, a shrimp salad with a passionfruit dressing, and a lot more . . . not cheap by any means (especially for a cheap beach bar), but very good nonetheless.

The Sprat Net is not on the beach, but it's just as casual as you can see from the main dining room:




The Sprat Net's menu is also quite complicated:




The seafood is whatever seafood they caught that day, typically mahi mahi but often snapper too. And it's good to arrive early, because they only serve as many spiny lobsters as they caught earlier in the day. Pizza is a recent addition which I have not tried, but the ribs slowly cooked over charcoal are as good as I've ever had . . . not smoky, but a real nice bite, meaty and outstanding.

Here's my dinner selection: 1/2 lobster, 1/2 slab ribs, corn, roll, baked potato and plastic cutlery and paper plates (Carib beer not shown; sorry it's a bit blurry):




There's much more very good dining on St. Kitts, including some upscale choices and some very inexpensive options. Almost every beach features multiple beach bars serving up ribs, chicken and cold beer. But change is coming to St. Kitts in the form of a fancy new marina, a Ritz Carlton and a Mandarin Oriental hotel. There's a Marriott, but the dining at the Marriott leaves much to be desired: pricey and it does not show off any of the real flavors of the island. Pricier dining options are sure to follow the new development however, including the soon to open Spice Mill Restaurant featuring a chef who most recently led the kitchen at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills, and the Carambola Beach Club.

Already open is what appears to be the main fine dining option at the future Mandarin Oriental, The Beach House restaurant. The Beach House offers wonderful views of the Caribbean Sea and neighboring Nevis from the dining room:




And the food is nothing to laugh at either. I particularly enjoyed my pan seared Chilean Sea Bass, atop Peruvian potato, haricots vert, tomatoes and a lemon pan sauce:




Almost as enjoyable as the food at the Beach House is the drive there along the ever developing southeastern peninsula of St. Kitts, where you can see the Atlantic Ocean on one side of the road, and the Caribbean Sea on the other side:




I suppose I've seen more natural beauty in St. Lucia, but St. Kitts is nothing to sneeze at. And St. Kitts also satisfies my desire to find a beach vacation where I can explore different and very good restaurants, casual and less casual, every day.

Nice write-up and pics, thanks for sharing!

Thank you for sharing; Now I'm off to Wikipedia St. Kitts and learn more about this island.

The buffet shots and spiny lobster looked great.

Thanks for the pics. I am dying now. I was penciling out a trip to St. John a few weeks ago. Maybe next year. (moaning in sorrow).

nice pics & report.

We normally dine at Otley's Plantation Inn http://www.ottleys.com/royal.php which has the same kind of bumpy road to get to it. It has been years though since we've been, too many places in this world to keep seeing.

A plus is they have hammocks lying about to lounge in after the meal.

fully agree about visiting Brimstone Hill Fortress http://www.brimstonehillfortress.org/ I'm amazed at the number of people I've met who have been to St Kits (or elsewhere) and never made it out the resort.

The Other Dr. Gale travels to St. Kitts two or three times a year to work with the public health people, staying in a tiny hotel in downtown BasseTerre. I went with her once, stayed for six weeks. The experience, under those conditions, is... let me say, quite different from going as a tourist. Wonderful, wonderful people, still suffering the horrible effects of slavery and working the sugar cane plantations until they died.

But the Friday afternoon/evening party around the bus station is not to be missed. As already noted, the ribs from street vendors are excellent.

You can buy the locally made hot sauce in the grocery store in downtown BasseTerre. It's simply terrific. And very very dangerous.

Geo

Thanks for all of the compliments - except the pictures really do not do St. Kitts, its people or food justice.

Sweet Willie - I briefly mentioned Ottley's in my post. Always a fine meal and the American owners the most gracious hosts, always there, always sitting down with the dinner guests. I recall an outstanding Christmas dinner at Ottley's a few years ago where they had a local church choir singing carols while I dined on a most memorable goose. I ate dinner at Ottley's this trip (but didn't like my pictures) and very much enjoyed my pepperpot soup and lobster with a passionfruit butter sauce. Had I visited during the day, I could have also photographed the spectacular grounds.

Geo - yes, effects of slavery no question. And the economy is certainly in transition, from sugar to tourism, and more tourism and some manufacturing. And although poverty is obvious, the Kititians are very generous and friendly and proud of their island. St. Kitts remains a largely unknown and ignored (by tourists at least) island in the Caribbean and it will be interesting to see how the residents react to the increasing flow of tourists. Interestingly, when the Marriott opened several years ago, I understand that it more than doubled the number of hotel rooms on the island. To me though, the island remains very uncrowded and the people remain very friendly, making it the perfect spot to escape for a bit.

Great write up and photos. I have been going to St. Kitts for years (my father is Kittitian) and I recently moved here.

For more information on this lovely unspoilt island visit http://www.myislands.myeyez.net

BTW, BR, my wife looked at your pix--which she enjoyed--and commented that she suspects that it's St-Eustatius in the picture, not Saba, since Saba is the second island, and would be further north than St. Eustatius.

Just a quibble...

Geo

Geo wrote:BTW, BR, my wife looked at your pix--which she enjoyed--and commented that she suspects that it's St-Eustatius in the picture, not Saba, since Saba is the second island, and would be further north than St. Eustatius.

Just a quibble...

Geo

I just looked at my Caribbean map . . . and you are correct. I had them backwards so I'm now editing my post above.