St. Maarten

Hubby and I are going to St. Maarten end of February and wondered if anyone had any good restaurant recommendations.

I can't remember the name, but we had a great lunch right on the dock in Marigot (never ate on the Dutch side) There were a whole bunch of places there, sit out side, have fish stew, wine - relax

And at least last year they had great deals on jewelry - they were giving 1-to-1 on Dollars-to-Euros.

I had a superb rijsttafel at the Wajang Doll on the Dutch side. The restaurant is in a wonderful building, very open and light.

In Marigot, at the Marina la Royale there are three places which have very good food: La Brasserie de la Gare, Le Chanteclair, and Le Galion. Plus they're right on the dock--lunch is the most fun (Le Chanteclair isn't open for lunch, or at least it wasn't when I was there a couple of years ago.)

BTW, the cultural shock one undergoes when driving from Phillipsburg to Marigot is extreme: you're driving along, in the midst of, like, totally suburban/malled contemporary Euro-Caribbean when, just as you pass this little white monument on the side of the road, you suddenly, and without any warning, are plunged through a wormhole in space, only to emerge in metropolitan France. Even the telephone poles and the camber of the roads is mainland France. Most of the waitstaff, clerking folks, etc. are young kids out from France for adventure. White. Strange feeling.

Good eats, tho'.

Geo




Wajang Doll,
167 Front Street,
Philipsburg, St. Martin

Was in St. Martin last March and had several excellent meals. But from your post, I suspect that you might be looking only for restaurants on the Dutch side (St. Maarten). I only ate on the French side (St. Martin)

If you're interested in St. Martin choices, let me know and I'll post my recommendations. I guess it all depends on where you are staying and how willing you are to travel.

Brad

We're staying on the Dutch side but plan to rent a car and explore the entire island....we're quite the adventurous type!

I'd love to hear your recommendations for St. Martin.

Thank you!
Colleen

BR wrote:Was in St. Martin last March and had several excellent meals. But from your post, I suspect that you might be looking only for restaurants on the Dutch side (St. Maarten). I only ate on the French side (St. Martin)

If you're interested in St. Martin choices, let me know and I'll post my recommendations. I guess it all depends on where you are staying and how willing you are to travel.

Brad

clb929 wrote:We're staying on the Dutch side but plan to rent a car and explore the entire island....we're quite the adventurous type!

I'd love to hear your recommendations for St. Martin.

Thank you!
Colleen

Colleen,

You will find no shortage of excellent food on the French side. Grand Case is the premier location, essentially a restaurant row with one great restaurant after the next. I was led to believe that you need to reserve tables well in advance and that shorts are unacceptable, but everywhere we ate there were open tables and people in shorts (nice shorts of course). That being said, if there is a restaurant you really want to try, you should reserve in advance.

Grand Case

If you would like to dine at one of the restaurants in Grand Case, you can just drive there and walk up and down the street looking at the menus posted outside the restaurants. My favorite meal was at Le Pressoir where the highlight of my meal was lobster ravioli in a passionfruit cream sauce.

Le Rainbow offered the best view. Ask for a waterside table and enjoy the views of neighboring Anguilla. The food was very good, but not great.

We also thoroughly enjoyed meals at L'Alabama and Spiga (Italian). Other restaurants in Grand Case that are supposed to be excellent are Le Tastevin and Le Cottage, but I did not get a chance to try either one.

There was also a fun street fair on the main street in Grand Case (might only be on weekends) so you might want to arrive early.

Marigot

A great spot in Marigot was Bistro Nu, a tiny traditional French bistro where the food was great and I felt like I was in France. It's a little hard to find so make sure to get directions in advance. Another place that I heard is fantastic but didn't get to try is Le Vie en Rose, and it is open for lunch. There are several decent lunch spots at the marina in Marigot and it's a very nice spot to sit outside and dine, expensively or inexpensively. Whatever you do, stay away from Claude Mini-Club where they offer lots of food, none of which is good. It has a buffet that I thought would be similar to a place I love on St. Kitts, but I was very, very wrong.

Orient Beach

I cannot remember any particular dining spots at Orient Beach although there was a very good restaurant right near our hotel (Alamanda). The beach is fantastic and there are plenty of dining options if you choose to spend the day there. If by any chance to want to snorkel, I highly recommend taking the 5 minute ferry from Cul De Sac (near Orient Bay) to Pinel Island.

Hope this helps. Have a great trip and let me know if you have any other St. Martin questions,

Brad

We took a cruise some years back that stopped in St. Maarten. Tired of ship food, we hired a driver at the dock and asked him to recommend a really good restaurant on the French side for lunch. A few minutes later, we pulled up at La Samanna Hotel in Marigot.

He couldn't have been more right. The thatch-roofed open-air dining room, overlooking a crystal bay, was as beautiful as the food was spectacular. Brilliant tropical birds flitted through the flowering bushes that ringed the room. We ate the most decadent lobster salads and quaffed Chablis from crystal goblets. The bill was in Francs, so at the time I had no idea what we spent, but it was worth every centime.

Apparently, the name of the hotel is a combination of the names of the late owner's two daughters. Just recalling it makes me long to go back.

http://www.lasamanna.com/web/omar/omar_ ... aurant.jsp

The French side has fantastic food. There is a great brakery on the ocean side of Marigot across from the farmers markets. The NEW harbor in Marigot has a fantastic selection of restaurants where we had a great appetizer of foie gras prepared four ways. Mario's in Marigot is fantastic, and probably our favorite over all. One thing to not miss is lunch in Grand Case at California - I'd order a thin crust pizza and a bottle of champange - the view is staggering.We went back three times. Lunch on Isle Pinel is also a great experience.

Our favorite restaurant on Orient Beach at the north end of the French side is Boo Boo Jam. Inside dining requires a bathing suit. Outside dining, your birthday suit. The food is wonderful; lobster and seafood highly recommended. Great for late night partying and nude swims.
http://www.mrstm.com/tour/tour18.html

CSD

Hi

This month's "Hemispheres" magazine (United Airlines) has an article "3 perfect days in St. Maarten" - go to
http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/home.htm
and on the menu at the bottom, click 3 perfect days

Lee

leek wrote:Hi

This month's "Hemispheres" magazine (United Airlines) has an article "3 perfect days in St. Maarten" - go to
http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/home.htm
and on the menu at the bottom, click 3 perfect days

Lee

This is great! Thank you so much for the link. We are actually staying at the Sonesta resort that this article mentions. Also, thank you to all of you have replied so far. It looks like our trip will be a gastronomic success!

Colleen

My family used to go to St. Martin and stay in the Orient Bay area every year at Xmas time. It's been a few years, so may not have the most current recommendations.

Our favorite spot was a colorful little house by the side of the road called Piccolo Cafe or Cafe Piccolo. Wonderful, gracious French hosts and fabulous local seafood. We would eat there more than once on a week-long trip. Vaut le voyage, as Michelin says.

Someone mentioned the Mini-Club. We actually loved their twice-weekly buffet, but the scene is half the fun. The restaurant has a tree growing through the middle of the second story patio! And there was a guitar player who would occasionally sing a song about the buffet line along the lines of "Move the line/Move the line/People in the front, make up your mind/ People in the back HUNGRY." I am cracking up just thinking about it. We liked the food too, especially that spiny lobster tail!

We were unimpressed with La Vie en Rose. Piccolo Cafe kicks its derriere.

There are beachside restaurants all along the beach at Orient Bay, some quite good for lunch. One supposedly has the best fried calamari on the island. NO idea what the name is, but I could pick it out for you. Ask around.

We really loved the island. Have a great trip. Don't miss the butterfly farm!

Oh! Make sure to do the America's Cup race. Huge fun.

I would take a day trip to St. Bart. The flight there is a fun 10 minute ride and St. Bart has some amazing food. The easy choice would be Maya's, but there are some great places in Gustavia also.

I just got back from St Martin, and wanted to make a pitch for a really wonderful restaurant, Ti Bouchon. It's in the space once occupied by Piccolo Cafe, on the road to Cul de Sac, and is as good as that restaurant used to be, at least. It's certainly as good as any of the Grand Case restaurants, considerably cheaper, and its somewhat out-of-the-wayness has a real appeal, to me at least.

The restaurant is run by Momo (Meme? Mama?-- his accent was thick and my hearing is capricious), a talkative French native. He told us that most restaurants pay a "listing fee" to the resorts, so the resort staff will recommend their restaurant. He did not participate in this scheme, and seemed resigned to the difficult work of building his business through exceptional food, and the word-of-mouth fallout from it.

Here is picture of a trio of tartares-- salmon, tuna and crab-- which was one of the meal's highlights:



There was also a dessert-- a kind of deflated apple pie-- that was outstanding.

We also ate at Bistro Nu, which was very good-- the kangaroo steak stood out-- though the meal was not as super duper as Ti Bouchon.

One more note: Wajang Doll has moved, from Philipsburg to Simpson Bay. The rijsttafel, as mentioned in other posts, was wonderful; another food highlight of the trip:






Ti Bouchon
110 Route de Cul de Sac
Tel: 06 90 64 84 64


Wajang Doll
Welfare Rd. #58
Tel: 599 544 2255
map here: http://www.sxm-restaurants.com/simpsonbay_east/

Thanks for the great update, but I must confess to being heartbroken about the demise of Piccolo Cafe. My family ate there several times each trip we took to St. Martin and I have some wonderful memories of delicious meals served out on the porch on beautiful tropical evenings.

Tnx for the rijsttafel pix, brings back wonderful memories!

Wonder why they moved? That building in St. P. was just perfect for them. What's the new place like?

Geo

Geo wrote:Wonder why they moved? That building in St. P. was just perfect for them. What's the new place like?Geo

My memory of the old site is fond too-- it seemed like a once-elegant bungalow that had fallen sadly and inexorably into neglect. I ate there a while ago, but what I remember is a large, open space, and exactly two occupied tables, including ours. Later, I had the thought: this is it-- the perfect venue to eat rijsttafel, the cuisine of colonialism.

The new place is smaller, and surprisingly elegant for a spot that is in essentially a St Martin strip mall. It is right on the water; the ceilings are high, and supported by thick wooden beams. There is Indonesian art on the walls (one wall features the eponymous Wajang doll collection), which is mutedly exotic. The color scheme is: white. We had a discussion about whether the building was old, or just built to look that way; there was no clear consensus.

Because the space is small, and the kitchen is essentially carved out of the rest of the restaurant, the swinging kitchen door often afforded views of the cooking team: a lone Indonesian (I presume), with a samurai-style headband, working solo and heatedly to prepare the 19 dishes per-table, for 5 tables. (The place was about half-filled.) He came out at the end of the evening and apologized for the long wait for our meal, but after eating it, no one was in any mood to complain about anything.

The same older Dutch gentleman was running the place as before: elegant and aloof and, it seemed, undergoing a perpetual process of sad dissipation: colonial. Perfect.

daveco_hen wrote:One more note: Wajang Doll has moved, from Philipsburg to Simpson Bay. The rijsttafel, as mentioned in other posts, was wonderful; another food highlight of the trip:

Wajang Doll
Welfare Rd. #58
Tel: 599 544 2255
map here: http://www.sxm-restaurants.com/simpsonbay_east/

Mrs Willie & I honeymooned on Sint Maarten a long time ago. Stayed at the Dawn Beach hotel which is now a Westin IIRC.

Wajang Doll was terrific, very glad to hear it is still going strong.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned getting grilled chicken & other goodies from the roadside 55gallon drum grills that get set up along different roads. These were always delicious lunches or snacks.