St Maarten/St Martin
29 January 2005 Newsletter

 

A shopping expedition to US Import last Saturday turned up some lieu noir, despite the name, a white-fleshed fish, essentially a pollack. It's about the cheapest fish in the case and pretty good in spicy tomato sauce. We finally stopped at the Boucherie in Concordia and were thrilled with what we found. It's not cheap, but we got some wonderful pate de lapin (rabbit) and saw some beautiful meat. They had nems (that's the Vietnamese word for eggroll, and as that was a French colony, at least until 7 Feb 1954, they use that word). We got a free sample and thought it was quite good. They also had a scaled down version of one of our favorite dishes at Montmartre Restaurant: the stuffed capon leg (stuffed with foie gras and more). The butcher version had the nems stuffing (generally veg and pork) stuffed into a chicken wing. The end bone is left as a handle, the next bone is removed, and the space is filled with nem stuffing. We took a couple home for lunch and thought they were great.

 

 

On 22 Jan the euro was at 1.305 and today it is at 1.305. honest, I checked, no change. French side restaurants with many costs in dollars and many American (or Canadian) clients have been offering more favorable exchange rates. Some restaurants offer a 1 to 1 exchange. We got that at Restaurant du Soliel, California, Auberge Gourmande, and La Marine. We noticed Rainbow Cafe, Escapade, Balaou, and Marlin's Cafe were offering the same. Note that some only offer this rate for cash. We will let you know about other places as we find them. As always, know what the euro is worth, what the restaurateur is offering for an exchange, and what the costs are on the menu. Finally, you are here to have fun and fine food, not to do complex financial calculations, so don't worry about it too much.

 

The Daily Herald's Best of: This is a mail-in poll of the readers. Highly unscientific, and liable to ballot-stuffing. Possibly that's why Domino's wins the pizza contest. In any event, Temptation won the best high end restaurant award and Sol é Luna won most romantic, yet again. Best happy hour and best place to play pool went to Greenhouse. Best Chinese went to White Swan in Simpson Bay, a stunning upset of Old Captain, the long time winner.

 

Dining: On 22 Jan we went to Orient and had a tasty lunch at Baywatch. The ribs are steamed and then cooked to fall-off-the-bone tenderness and served with crispy fries. I had a sausage and peppers sub with Andy's marinara sauce, also good. With three beers and the added 15% service charge plus a poir boire it came to $35. They are doing 1 to 1, but as far as I can recall the prices have been in dollars.

 

On Sunday we watched the games at the Horny Toad Guesthouse and ordered pizza from Philly Joe's. They have a sign up at the moment offering three medium pizzas for $15. Their medium pizzas are about 13 inches in diameter and come with tomato sauce and mozzarella. Extra toppings are mostly $2 each. We ordered six with various toppings for nine of us and paid $44. I'm currently putting Bello hot sauce on one of the leftover slices for an excellent breakfast. They claim to deliver and have no website, so here's the phone number: 545 2297.

 

On Monday night we strolled Grand Case from Ti Coin Créole to La Marine (closed on Monday, so don't walk that far unless you are going to Rainbow Café). Eventually, we made it back to Il Nettuno Restaurant for Italian with an accent on seafood. The room is large, two normal size lots were used to make Nettuno and most of the back of the building along the water is dining room. It has three rows of tables with the inside row raised up a few steps so that even the worst tables have a pretty good view, but make a reservation and get a table on the open windows. The menu is almost as large as the room and there were about four special aps and four special main courses. Four small bruschetta topped with tomatoes and onions arrived with our water as we pondered our choices. A bottle of Chianti Ruffino Ducale (37 euros) proved to be quite good and not overly powerful as we started with a delicate dish of scallops cut into quarter inch slices and lightly sauteed in olive oil, white wine, onions, tomatoes, and garlic (12 euros). We moved on to two veal dishes: the scugnizzo (23 euros, it means street urchin, in Italian) and the Milanese (20 euros). The scugnizzo had tomatoes, mozzarella, and eggplant wrapped around the tenderest veal and the Milanese was simpler having just arugula and fresh diced tomatoes on several tender slices of veal. We ended with coffees and grappa as we gazed out at all the boats in the bay and Anguilla. The total dinner came to 120 euros and a rate of 1.25 turned that into $150. Certainly, it's not the best rate on the street, but there are not too many 20 euro main courses of this quality on the waterfront. As I said earlier, check out the prices on the menu and the rate.

 

On Tuesday I was still depressed about the laptop and struggling with the other two computers, so I needed cheering up. Few things in life can cheer me up more than having Karen lead me to a corner table in Montmartre Restaurant, perhaps leading me to an outside table on the beautifully-landscaped terrace would be better, but the weather was not cooperating. Another thing that cheers me up is having Olivier, one of the best waiters on the island, deftly open a bottle of Beaune Champs Pimont Premier Cru. We started with French onion soup, the French equivalent of chicken soup, and it worked, although I'm sure the wine was helping. I had the special capon breast with a foie gras topping and morel mushrooms (again) and Martha had the tuna steak with a sesame crust in a tomato and caper sauce. By now I was positively cheered up. Coffees and Laubade Armagnac made us euphoric.

 

I had bumped into Bert from Oasis Grill while talking to Marius from St Louis Car Rental at Ocean Club. Bert and his wife, Jill, run Oasis, a bar and grill next to the pool inside the Ocean Club Resort. You can visit Oasis, but parking is limited (and assigned) inside the grounds, so park across the street or in the beach parking lot, next to the five-story tower. It's a great spot to stop after a tough day on Cupecoy, but do remember to put your clothes back on. We went over for the Wednesday night all-you-can-eat barbecue party. The Duke of St Maarten plays any song you can think of, and several that I don't think I ever heard, and you get great ribs and spaghetti with $2 beers. There really is a full bar, so you can have all the tropical drinks that Bert, voted best bartender on the island in one TTOL poll, can mix up. For an even better deal, go to the website, print out the coupon, and have him mix up a FREE one!

 

On Thursday we went to Restaurant du Soliel in Grand Case. It's on the water between Fish Pot and Il Nettuno Restaurant. There were two owners of Domaine de l'Amandier. They originally were going to sell, but in the end, one bought out the other and it is still open. The departing owner took Cedric, the manager, and Frederic, one of the best waiters, and took over Restaurant du Soliel. It's been brightly repainted and fitted out in a blue and yellow scheme. We started with flutes of Champagne to celebrate the return of my laptop and ordered a red 2001 Saint Aubin Premier Cru ($38). It was a bit metallic in the finish, but after breathing and warming up, was quite nice. The food is French and we started with a terrine of rabbit and prunes with a balsamic reduction containing a hint of caramel ($14). The terrine was essentially bits of rabbit and prunes and the balsamic/caramel sauce was quite tasty. Our dinners were a tuna with two sauces (a Creole sauce and a soy and sesame sauce) and a lotte and shrimp dish with a lobster sauce. Coffees and Armagnac finished a very pleasant evening on the water. It is a pleasure to watch such skilled waiters. They are doing 1 to 1 for cash, so our total bill was only about $110.

On Friday we headed over to Pburg again to talk with Alberto at Arthur's Car Rental about a long term rental. He offered some pretty good rates for long term, which in our case was five months. We then had a brief stop at DK Gems to pick up a strand of pearls that Deepti had repaired. That brought us to lunch at Shieka's Bistro. Actually, breakfast was just finishing and we got a plate of salt fish, smoked herring, and three breads: coconut, carrot, and regular. The home-made hot sauce on the table made it an interesting appetizer for our lunches of oxtail stew and steamed fish. All authentic and all good. A cold passion fruit drink hit the spot. Shieka's is on Back Street, one block off Front Street in the Philipsburg Community and Cultural Center, quite near the courthouse.  

 

That evening we went to a wine tasting at Le Ti' Provencal in Grand Case sponsored by Vinissimo featuring the wines of Jean-Jacques Girard who just happened to be in town. He doesn't have too many wines as he concentrates on vineyards near his home. The Rhoin River (really a stream) has carved a major valley east/west through the north/south hills of Burgundy at Beaune, the ancient capital of Burgundy. When the autoroute from Paris to Lyon and the French Riviera was built, it followed this route, bypassing Dijon, the much larger current capital of Burgundy. Savigny-les-Beaune is in this valley and several acres of vineyards were lost to this bit of "progress". This is where Jean-Jacques Girard makes his home and his wines. We started with two whites, a 2002 Savigny-les-Beaune and a Pernand-Vergelesses. The town just north of Beaune is Chorey-les-Beaune and Aloxe-Corton is just north of that. Aloxe-Corton contains one of the most famous vineyards in the world: Corton, gracing the eastern-facing slopes of the hill of Corton. The southern and western sides of this hill are home to Pernand-Vergelesses which borders on Savigny. they both make lovely wine, maybe not as good as their more famous neighbors, Beaune and Aloxe-Corton, but very good wine at pretty good prices. The 2002 vintage was one of the best in the last several years and these wines were quite good. The reds were all from Savigny-les-Beaune, a 2002 La Serpentier, a 2003 La Serpentier, and a 2003 Les Lavieres. the last seemed to be the best, showing some hope for well-made 2003's although the consensus is that 2003 will not be as good as 2002. The restaurant was sending out so many plates of tasty appetizers (a vegetable terrine; pissaladiere, essentially a bruschetta with tomato paste and anchovies; saucisson slices; many cheeses; and crudites with a garlic and cheese sauce) that many people stayed for dinner. We were glad we had made a reservation as it secured a waterfront table.

 

By the time we sat down at our table, we hardly needed any more appetizers, so we just had two fish main courses: dorade (sea bream) Nicoise and a mahi-mahi with Creole sauce. The whole sea bream arrived at the table and required several minutes of deft work by the server to lift out four delicate filets to add to the potatoes, tomatoes, and olives. The mahi is a bit more rugged fish and was quite tasty with its Creole sauce. A bottle of Chinon, a light red from the Loire valley, was fine with Herve Sageot's tasty fish dishes. Herve's wife, Valerie, runs the front of the house, making this another Mom and Pop restaurant, although there is a bit of help in the kitchen and out on the floor.