Eating Our Way Through the Caribbean!

Katie and I were lucky enough to take a ten-day Caribbean cruise recently. As people usually do on cruises, we ate a lot during this trip. I'll talk more about the food on the ship in a later post, but we also tried to eat at some of the restaurants mentioned in our travel books. So, let's see what the Caribbean has to offer.

Our first stop was Samana, Dominican Republic. Honestly, there was not much at this port regarding food (or beaches). We stumbled upon Santa Bahia Kitchen and Bar and decided to try it. Their menu was pretty basic, with not too many exotic foods. We started with the Presidente beer. This is the local beer of the D.R. It has a good light taste and reminds me of regular Budweiser. The Hawaiian Pizza we had above was one of the worst pizzas I have ever had. It tasted like tomato paste spread on a paper-thin crust with awful-tasting cheese. The ham and pineapple were the only decent things about this pizza. They would have been better serving frozen pizzas.

Also, at Santa Bahia, we had the Chicken Croquettes. I think they forgot to add the chicken to these because, as you can see, it was all breading. I had one and a half of these and was done. The service was good, but if you are headed to Samana, eat on the ship and then head out to explore.

Our next stop was Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. Here we ate at a beach restaurant called the  Banana Restaurant. No, they did not have bananas on the menu, but they did have these Conch Fritters. All trip long it was Katie's goal to eat conch fritters. I am still unsure that she knows that conch are sea snails, but I will let her read that here. I thought these tasted okay. They were heavily breaded, and the conch meat was almost unrecognizable. The sweet sauce served in the middle made these taste a lot better.

For lunch, we got the above items. Katie had the Snapper Burger. This fish sandwich was fair. She seemed to like it more than I did. The size of the sandwich was more than what I expected. I would have liked this much better with tarter sauce instead of ketchup. I ordered the MOM Burger. This burger consisted of mushrooms, onions, and mozzarella, with two one-quarter-pound patties. They were a little stingy with the toppings on this burger, and the hamburger was your basic meat and not seasoned very much at all. I did like the mozzarella on the burger, though. It was a little different and something to experiment with at home.

Now, on to Antigua. Katie ordered another fish sandwich. This one was not breaded as much and really had a great taste. She ordered a side of tarter sauce, which made this sandwich complete. Even the fries tasted good. I am the worst food blogger ever because I do not remember the name of this place, and I forgot to take a picture (too much sun), but they were located at Dickenson Bay, and they were the first restaurant as you entered the beach.

The best place we ate during our Caribbean adventure was in St. Kitts, Frigate Bay, at Cathy's Ocean View. Katie had the Shrimp, which was served in a sweet sauce. I had the Jerk Ribs, which were very tender, and I was surprised to find out they had a good amount of meat on them. Our plates came with a pasta salad, corn, green salad, fried plantain, and Caribbean rice. It was a lot of food for the money. We did not leave hungry.

Here is a quick shot of Katie and Cathy. Katie called Cathy, "her Caribbean mother", because she made us feel so welcome. So, if you are ever in St. Kitts, Cathy's Ocean View is a must-try. I would have liked to have tried more places, but we were only off of the ship for up to eight hours. But this gives us a reason to go back and explore more exotic food.