My Bajan friend, William, and I hope that what we think is a good idea can see the light of day. We love food and the fun we have had recently has been to sample a few of the local eateries. I'm reminding you that I boycotted the fancy restaurants some two years ago. I can have good food cooked at home every day and what I like about a fancy restaurant is to feel that I'm being offered something that we cannot do as well at home or something quite different from what we have at home, and not have to pay an arm and a leg to get it. Keep the false fanciness and serve me a good meal with a bit of real style and I am happy as a pig is mud. Given that our household is multinational and multicultural that makes it interesting for a restaurant to offer something different and really good. If pushed, we just invite friends to eat on our deck and let the fancy restaurants 'tek weh demselves'.We thought it would be a good idea to have some idea of where some of the better eateries are in the island. I made the suggestion in a letter to the papers, which I see was published in today's Advocate. It was prompted by the London Times food critic Michael Winner's biting assault of some of the well-known restaurants in Barbados. I am not going to do battle with Mr. Winner, who has eaten at more top restaurants than I have had fish and chips in a bag. But, I have eaten at a good few top restaurants, and my current barometer would be The Inn at Little Washington, in rural Virginia, where a five-course dinner is a transport of delight and has to be started in mid-afternoon to be fully enjoyed.
My wife and I have a few favourite restaurants in Barbados and funnily enough a few of them are also on Michael Winner's list, such as Fish Pot near Six Men's. One other, especially for lunch, is Apsara (which does a set price, B$50 three course lunch, and is now in the Re-Discover Barbados promotion, offering a three-course dinner at B$99/person plus a bottle of wine per couple). I have never eaten at the Cliff, but I do have some very discerning Caribbean friends who tried to go there and were not at all impressed with their 'encounter' (see Falling Off The Cliff Is Easy). Tides stands out for being all the right things and at the right price.
We have our favourite 'little corner' places such as Kingston 10 (at Bayside Plaza; though I have yet to check the Sheraton location), where they now ask where we were if we do not appear weekly. Their fare is Jamaican and steamed snapper and ground provisions are hard to resist, though the stew peas and brown stew pork are wicked. We like to go to Grant's in Britton's Hill for straight Bajan food, especially for the chicken (foot) soup or the banana cou-cou and fried snapper (which comes with a little salt fish and stewed pigtail as a surprise). We've also been checking out Muster's in Bridgetown, which gives the range of Bajan favourites, but my favourite is the braised pork chop and rice with field peas. My wife loves Pug's, just by the airport, where you can get the meanest fried chicken livers, gizzards, or necks, with what are possibly the best fries on the island. For pudding and souse, I'll enter the fray by saying that Village Bar at Lemon Arbour is very good, but offers also excellent pickled sea cat and ribs to die for.
I would like to think that one of the papers will run with the idea of a column for people to add their favourites. If not, a blog on the subject is easy enough to create.
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