St. John

J and I headed out to St. John the second week of June for a college friend's wedding. Here is a mostly picturesque account of our 6-day stay.

The first night we were there, we headed out to the Dolphin Market near the popular landmark Texaco station to stock up on some basics like breakfast foods, water, and beer. We had a kitchen in our condo and next time, I'll plan to do more cooking. I'm astonished at how expensive even a simple lunch is. I'd rather save the cash for satisfyingly good dinners.

We found this packet of cookies while we were there. I just had to take a picture.

The first night, J and I wandered around at the insane early hour of like 4.30pm in search of dinner. I think The Fish Trap was probably the only thing open at that hour. In fact, we had to mill about waiting for them to actually open. We sat at the bar and pored over St. John tourist guides.

I started off with a seafood chowder. It was rich and chock full of chunks of seafood. J had the conch fritters which I really did not like. Mostly corn meal with little rubbery pieces of conch. I tried conch fritters a couple times on the island, and I think I just do not like them.

For dinner, I had a mahi sammich. Quite tasty. But what really blew me away were the beans. The black beans were topped with a lightly sauteed chopped tomato/garlic/basil topping. Wow, it was so good.

Our first full day there, we went on a boat trip with a bunch of the wedding crew. Our first stop was to the British Virgin Island, Jost Van Dyke, to check in with customs. I suppose once you've checked in for the day there, you are free to bounce around the different BVIs. Here is J next to the Jost Van Dyke sign and also a picture of what the shoreline at Jost looked like on the slightly overcast morning.

After checking in on Jost, we headed over to the aptly named "Sandy Spit." It's a small little island that takes about three minutes to walk around completely. Almost the entire width of the island is visible in this picture. We hung out here on the beach snorkeling and soaking in sun. J did the snorkeling; I did the sun soaking.

After soaking in the sun, we headed over to Foxy's Taboo for lunch where I had what our boat operator said was the tastiest burger around, even better than Skinny Legs'. The burger came with the sweet mango chutney on it, and it was quite good. Although we did go to Skinny Legs later in our trip, I didn't actually eat there so I can't compare. Here is a picture of the side of Foxy's Taboo as well as the view if you turn around from that point and look to the side of the island.

After lunch, we trekked out to the Bubbling Pools to have a look. That's the pools bubbling a bit and the view from the top of the rocks on the right. What I learned about this trek out to the bubbling pools is that I really really hated my sandals as I got three big blisters from them and was practically hobbling.


After lunch and the bubbling pools, our last stop was to White Bay which is home to the Soggy Dollar. It's called the Soggy Dollar because you can swim up to the dock and hand them soggy money for drinks, I believe. Anyway, I didn't actually make it to the Soggy Dollar because I was too busy soaking in more sun.

One night, we headed over to The Lime Inn for dinner. The owner, we were told, is a real "character" and adds spice to the restaurant. For a starter, J and I shared Mussels Meunier. Muenier in this case was a lemon white wine garlic cream sauce. The traditional French Meuniere -- which means "the miller's wife" as Julia Child tells us -- is browned butter, chopped parsley, and lemon with the most famous meuniere dish, Trout Meuniere. Nevertheless, Mussels Meunier was delicious and I sopped up a lot of the sauce with bread.

For dinner, I had the shrimp and scallop scampi. While they were cooked well, what can you say about something in a whole lot of butter and garlic? I ate a ton of garlic. The scampi also came with some farfalle which was okay. I never thought I would say this, but there was just too much parmesan on it.

Our service at The Lime Inn was superb. It was so good that I stopped to tell the owner. Turns out that it was his daughter who was waiting on our table.



The wedding was on Oppenheimer beach which is connected to Gibney Beach. The beach, I'm told, was a gift to Oppenheimer from ... some US president and when he died, it went to the government so it's rentable for public functions.

Hors D'oeuvres were circulated by servers. There was one bruschetta with some chopped tomato mixture on top of toasted bread, but I nearly choked on my first one and remained strangled for some time after that, so I passed on it the rest of the times it came by. There were some dill-mixture-filled, caviar-topped cucumber rounds that were pretty tasty. But the absolute best were these Caribbean lobster spring rolls, with a light sweet sauce. The spring rolls were rolled in Vietnamese spring roll wrappers and were light and wonderful. I probably ate like ten of them. I would kill for this recipe.

Dinner was catered by a local lady that my friend knows. I wish I could remember if this is West or East Indian cuisine. I want to say West. Here is my plate. As best I can remember, starting around 9 o'clock and going clockwise, there is a small salad (you can see I skimped on that) and a potato-like hunk that was a little sweet and very starchy. Next were some curried potatoes and then some rice and beans. Next was some pureed sweet potato which we think was flavored with almond extract. It had a flowery sweet taste to it that I've never had before. Then a boiled plantain and some mac and cheese. The meat at the bottom is a lamb shoulder steak with a piece of braised pork on it. I wasn't planning on getting quite such a big piece of lamb, but the caterer herself plopped it on my plate! It's hard to choose, but the pork was my favorite. It was very tender and juicy.

Here is J's plate. You can see that we both tried almost everything except he also got some chicken! He also went back for seconds!

As you can see, the food was very flavorful and yummy. We both ate until we thought we were going to fall over.

On our last night in St. John, we headed over to La Tapa for dinner. It received a high recommendation from my friend. We started off with mussels again which were pretty tasty. We also got some beef brochettes that were mediocre. We also got the bread with three sauces. I didn't care much for the caribbean salsa, but the other two were very good. In the salsa's defense, J liked it. I just don't like the sharp taste of red onion with mango.

For dinner, I had the rack of lamb. Happily, it was four thick ribs, but the taste was really only okay. I suppose it's hard to compare it to the organic lamb that we get anytime at Star Provisions, but I was disappointed. The lamb was served on a white bean puree that was quite delightful. J and I shared the sorbets for dessert. Key lime and mango.

One other thing that I found I really like on St. John is a lime and coconut. Some places have it listed as a limin' coconut. I found the Beach Bar's recipe online. It takes coconut rum, lime juice, and coco lopez. Yum. I can't wait to make some!

As you can see, we ate well and saw beautiful beaches when we were on St. John. We are definitely going back!