St Croix Food

I just got back from a trip to St Croix for work - we had a trial there this week, so I was there Monday-Wednesday. Even though there was a lot of work involved, the judge is really great about making sure I get to see a bit of the island when we're over there for trials. This time we ate dinner at the Buccaneer's restaurant on Monday - some fabulous food, including a crispy eggplant dish with ricotta cheese that I'm hoping Dave will try to make some time. We actually drove around to check out quite a few places to eat but they were all packed, so we ended up back at the hotel. Last night we went to the Galleon for dinner. It's a nice place on the waterfront, actually by the same pier near Green Cay where Dave and I got on the boat to Buck Island for the swim a few weeks ago. Some of the yachts on the pier are pretty cool looking. If I had won the lottery this week, I think I might have been tempted to get a boat. I had a really tasty piece of duck with an orange glaze. Both dinners were great. I'd recommend either place for food if you're ever on St Croix!

For lunch both days we went to local places. I can't remember the name of the place we ate at Monday, mostly because it was something starting with a B that I could not pronounce. I got my standard local food dish - saltfish. Most lunches here come with rice, beans, and plantain (locally pronounced "plan-tin"). I like the saltfish because it's always pretty much the same and it's not quite as heavy as the chicken can be since some chicken ends up with a heavy sauce it seems. Yesterday we went to Zeny's - a well known old place on the island run by a woman named Zeny. Her daughter opened Zeny's II right around the corner, and I've been told Zeny's II has a better atmosphere but the food isn't nearly as good. At Zeny's I had the chicken and we also got some tostones - my first time trying them.

Tostones are made from green plantains. I was told that they get all mashed up and then split into small round bits and fried. To me it just looked like the regular plantain side dish, but they were cut in rounds rather than just chunks. So they look kind of like banana chips but thicker, and they are soft. Compared to regular fried plantains, tostones are less sweet and more of the consistency of french fries. Some people even eat them with ketchup. They're good and it's nice to try new food, but I'm not convinced they are as fabulous as people made them sound. I'd eat them again for sure though.

Since this post seems to be all about food, I figure I should mention our Saturday night dinner at Cuzzins. Cuzzins is a restaurant down town that serves local food, but the restaurant itself is somewhat Americanized. They've got lots of expensive alcoholic frozen drinks and air conditioning. I love it because it's non-smoking. Actually, a decent number of restaurants here are non-smoking. It seems like the only ones that permit smoking are geared towards tourists. Anyways, I got lobster for the first time. It was pretty tasty. We also had conch fritters. Fritters remind me of doughnut holes, but fritters are a little bigger and aren't always sweet. I tasted banana fritters a few weeks ago and they like a sweet banana cake, fried just enough to give it some crisp. Yum. Sure sounds like we eat a lot of fried food here, doesn't it? Don't worry. We don't eat local food every day!

Well, hopefully Dave will be done with his tour soon so he can pick me up and we can have some unhealthy non-local food. A coworker was in DC over the weekend and brought back a Cinnabon for everyone!