Due to the craziness leading up to our wedding, I really didn’t have the chance to research our honeymoon destination: St. Martin. Little did I know that it not only has some of the nicest beaches I’ve been to but that it is also a culinary heaven. Fact: It has been named the culinary capital of the West Indies due to the large variety of fancy French restaurants and European influences. Where are these restaurants mainly located? In Grand Case.
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| Beach in St. Marteen |
And as is the case in almost all our trips we started the trip driving all across the island in zigzags and several times in circles (of course no trip is complete with the Count getting us lost). After driving around for an hour, we were hungry- really hungry! With no food in sight we kept driving. Miraculously we ended up in Grand Case, which was closer to our hotel than we expected. Grand Case was not what I had expected when I looked on the map- I read that very morning on the plane that it was a small fisherman town with a nice beach and many fancy french restaurants. In my mind (having never been to the Caribbean before) I expected a beach side resort with fancy restaurants and shops sort of similar to the Cote d’Azur. So when we arrived on the main strip of Grand Case we had no idea where we were and that this was where we would spend most of our nights for the next 7 days.
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Buying fresh produce for the kitchen
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We smelled barbecued chicken and ribs and delicious Cajun spices. Mouths watering we immediately parked and said to each other that this shabby local out door diner would do. We parked ourselves at one of the many lolo’s packed in this tiny area: The Talk of the Town.
A lolo is what localers call an open air food stand which you may find alongside the roadside or beach all over the island and I imagine all over the Caribbean. Some are nicer than others but in general most that we visited had picnic style tables, smoke rising from the BBQ pits with the delicious smell of meats and seafood being grilled and a variety of stews and dishes lined up in large metal tins.
There is usually a variety of dishes that changes daily which you can order alongside your grilled meat. I wanted to try it all but contained myself to the red beans and Cajun spiced rice, friend plantains and barbecued chicken washing it down with a bottle of Ting.
The best park of this experience: it was cheap yet the freshest and best meal we had while in St. Martin.
