Scale: 1=Poor 2=Fair 3=Average 4=Good 5=Excellent
Food Quality- 4
Portion Size- Large
Service- 3
Atmosphere- 4
Comment- One of the best salads I’ve had in a long time and a very large for a dinner salad. I really enjoyed the sauce that complemented the snapper (Nate had this as well). The presentation was very pretty and side dishes were excellent. The dessert menu was a disappointment, so much so that we didn’t even order dessert. I’d rank this meal 3rd out of all dinners.
Le California
Food Quality- 4
Portion Size- Standard to small (main course) Dessert- Large
Service-3.5
Atmosphere- 3.5
Comment
We wanted to save room for dessert so we just had the main course. Nate had mahi mahi and I had stuffed grouper, which I liked. Nate thought the grouper was better than his mahi mahi and better than the snapper the night before, I preferred the snapper from the C Le. The side dishes were average. I loved the dessert menu here, so many choices of ice cream combinations. Very yummy.
Straw Hat @ Fangipani
Food Quality- 4.5
Portion Size- Standard
Service- 3
Atmosphere- 4.5
Comment: The setting is right off of beach and they light the beach up so you can actually see it. Tables are set casual. There are many tables so you can hear other conversations, etc. therefore this keeps it from getting rated a 5 for the atmosphere. I had a seafood pasta with a pink sauce. The sauce made the dish. Very good. I tried a couple of bites of Nate’s tuna and wished so much that I could eat rare tuna, it was tasty! We had the flourless chocolate cake for dessert with ice cream and enjoyed it very much. My 2nd most favorite meal of the trip.
Straw Hat
Food Quality- 5+
Portion Size- Standard
Service- 3.5
Atmosphere- 4
Comment: My favorite meal that we ate on the trip, everything was excellent. The gnocchi appetizer literally melted in your mouth. The bread and complimentary bruchetta were so tasty and my crab pasta was excellent. The pasta sauces used in this restaurant were the best I’ve ever tasted. This must be how food tastes in Italy! I don’t normally like tiramisu but Nate loves it, so we ordered it. It wasn’t traditional tiramisu it was more of a whip cream texture and it didn’t taste like coffee, I loved this kind of tiramisu:) The atmosphere for this restaurant would have rated higher but the tables were very close together, therefore you could hear all conversations around you. It was located in along the water and architecture was quite pretty.
Food Quality- 3.5
Portion Size- Standard to small
Service- 4
Atmosphere- 4
Comment: A real disappointment for me after all the hype. Maybe it was the menu, when I read it nothing really appealed to me it had some very odd combinations of food which I’m sure some people like but I prefer to understand what I’m eating and like more simply prepared dishes. I will say that the complimentary soup and bread they brought out were excellent. I didn’t like our appetizer but Nate did, it was a layered salad with corn, black beans, shrimp, avocado, etc. We both had the snapper for our entrée, Nate had his served whole while I had mine filleted. The food was fine but nothing to get too excited about, the sauce was a little odd, Nate took his sauce off and really enjoyed the whole fish. The side dishes were OK. Nothing on the dessert menu sounded good to us so we went back to Strawhat and had the caramelized bananas with ice cream which was very tasty. Veya is a nice setting, it feels like you are dining in the trees. Our waitress was very nice, prompt for island time too. Some of the other diners were raving about the food, so I think this is either a place you really love or just aren’t impressed with, no in between.
Food Quality- 4
Portion Size- Large
Service- 4.5
Atmosphere- 3
Comment: We were the only diners at Olivers so that seemed odd. The building is a little old and if you get set directly near the window you might see a few critters crawling in, thus the 3 for atmosphere. As you can imagine, service was good because it’s not too hard to take care of one table. This would have been a great setting if you could have seen the beach but it wasn’t lit. I think this would be a nice place to watch the sunset as it’s right on Long Bay. All of the food we had was very tasty. Our appetizer, the portbella and shrimp, had great flavor. Nate ordered the grouper and I had chicken stuffed with spinach, mushrooms, and crayfish. I didn’t try Nate’s but he said it was probably the best fish he had the entire trip. Mine was good, the sauce complemented the chicken well and sides were of good portion. There was not a lot of crayfish in the stuffing part, which was fine with me because the baby had probably ate enough seafood for one week. For dessert we had profiteroles, which was the best dessert of the week! These were stuffed with ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce, yum!
Lunches and Breakfast: We ate lunch at the following restaurants: Coco (St. Martin Orient Beach), Straw Hat, Dune Preserve, Davida, Gwen's, CuisinArt. With the exception of Coco, I would recommend all of the lunch places as we had great food from each. Coco wasn’t bad it was just really pricey. All lunches were expensive, as compared to a lunch in the area I live in. Dune Preserve is a definite must if you are in Anguilla, you just have to check out this very unique place. Bankie Banx plays live music there as well, we didn’t get to hear him but would have liked to. Gwen's is in a beautiful location, so I would reccommend at least going for a drink just to check out the beach in this area. There is also live music at Gwen's, again we didn’t get to hear it. CuisinArt uses hydroponic ingredients for all salads, which is unique, this restaurant is at the resort so it obviously doesn’t have the island charm of Gwen's and Dune Preserve. Straw Hat is located on beautiful Mead’s Bay, we stayed at Frangipani so I’m not positive but I assume if you eat at Straw Hat you can enjoy the beach chairs and umbrellas for free. This is a great beach to spend a day or even just several hours. Same goes for Davida, although the beach here isn’t as spacious as Meads Bay. I’ll also mention Un Amore in Anguilla here as well. We had pizza one night for dinner at Un Amore, baby loves pizza, and it was very good the most reasonably priced meal of our trip as well. All items on Un Amore’s menu were reasonably priced. It would be a good place for a quick lunch or to grab sandwiches to go and take them to the beach. We got breakfast one morning at Garrods, which had similitude prices to Straw Hat where we ate all other mornings. Garrods menu showed inexpensive lunches, as well and would be a good place to grab sandwiches to go. It would be my suggestion to buy some bottled waters, sodas, and juices at the grocery store and have lunches at the beach some days since going to restaurants for lunch really adds up. The same goes for breakfast, if it weren’t included in part of the Frangipani package, we would have definitely bought some things at the grocery store and ate in our room or on the balcony.
Overall, the food in Anguilla and St. Martin was very enjoyable, although definitely expensive. If you are going to dine out, be prepared to spend money! I wasn't quite as impressed by the restaurants in Anguilla as I was by the dining options in Turks and Caicos. Most of the settings weren't quite as remarkable and I don't feel like I was "wowed" as much by my entrees. I did have very high expectations regarding the food in Anguilla so that may have affected my opinion. Regardless you'll find many dining options worth checking out in Anguilla as well lots of fun beach bars and local hang outs.
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