If your vacation plans start with indulgent fantasies about exotic cuisine, set your nose on an aromatic course southward. You`re dreaming of the French Antilles, ripe with guava, hot with piments and sweet with sugar cane. These West Indian islands are set in the Caribbean Sea. St. Maarten/St. Martin (half Dutch and half French), and St. Barthelemy (St. Barts), lie west of Puerto Rico. Martinique, Guadeloupe and several out islands, 140 miles to the southwest, complete this tropical departement, or state, of France.
However French the islands are, their flavor is a spicy melange of East Indian, African, Creole and French influences. Antillean dishes, like other regional French cuisines, are rich in abundant, local ingredients. Tropical banana and pineapple trees drop ripe fruit in your path. Lush bay trees shade afternoon snoozers with fragrant leaves, and the air around pepper trees is pregnant with sneezes. Cows and pigs graze on the roadside, and little goats forage on rocky beaches.
The aquamarine sea yields white-needled oursins, or sea urchins, and pink-lined conch. In port, women balance thick round baskets of silvery flat fish on their heads.
The best introduction to traditional creole cuisine is Guadeloupe`s annual Fete des Cuisinieres, celebrated in Pointe-a-Pitre in August. (The date this year is Aug. 12.) This colorful ritual, begun in 1916, preserves local recipes and honors women cooks.
They carry festive baskets tinkling with miniature cooking utensils. At the cathedral they present their best dishes for blessing. The food-platters of swordfish en croute, towers of entwined boudin creoles, paella topped with bright red langoustes, crayfish and ouassous, and a glistening roast pig-is then paraded to a school courtyard.
For authentic creole food, try La Creole (Gosier, telephone 84-10-34), owned by the doyenne of Guadeloupean cookery known simply as Violetta. She speaks with a firm patois and cooks with fierce loyalty to creole tradition. Accras, or golden cod fritters, come steaming hot to the table. Colossal native shrimp, gambas, are grilled with tangy cives, or local scallions. Poached fish called blaff-the sound fish makes when it hits boiling water-is infused with lime, bay leaf and hot peppers. Caribbean cloves perfume tender turtle steak. Banana cake and coconut flan honor these native fruits. Dinner for two without wine costs about $56. (Prices include entree, main course, at least one dessert and service.)
If you`re bunked in at Gosier`s beach hotels, dinner at La Mer (84-23-70) is a must. A front window opens the kitchen to curious diners. Francophiles will take comfort in such French touches as crisp muscadet, fish fork and knife, and a la minute preparation. Only the fresh, moist boudin creole or blood sausage comes to table more than two minutes old, with apologies. Caviar of ouassous, or native crawfish, is cradled in a puff pastry gondola with avocado cream. Langouste, or spiny lobster, floats in aromatic, tomato-thyme bouillion. Dinner for two with wine comes to $80; credit cards accepted.
Guadeloupe`s terrain is a jumble of tropic forests, isolated seacoast and breezy mountaintops. A winding dirt road twists up through St. Anne`s cow pastures to the Relais du Moulin, an ancient stone windmill circled by bungalows. The terrace restaurant serves nouvelle interpretations of creole cuisine. Some work, some don`t. Avoid the Knorr-tasting bisque of ouassous and opt instead for paper-thin carpaccios of fish and beef. If you can take the heat, order smoked tazar, or kingfish, salad, a nouvelle riot of tastes overthrown by the fish`s razor-sharp heat. Dinner for two without wine is about $85, credit cards accepted.
Dining in St. Martin is decidedly French, with more ingredients imported from the mainland than from Guadeloupe. It`s easy to find creole cuisine in native neighborhoods, as kitchens are often outdoors-built into back porches, set up behind painted shacks or sheltered under makeshift lean-tos. Cases creoles, or shoebox huts with rusting corrugated roofs, aqua-trimmed porch posts and mismatched tables, dish out hearty, cheap food to natives. From somewhere out back, dishes of lambi, or conch, appear, perhaps in a tomato sauce richly flavored with local cloves and thyme. A shy cook, curious about these tourists gone astray, reappears with black beans, platters of white rice, and golden vegetable bananas. Washed down with thick Tennents Milk Stout from St. Thomas, a full meal comes to about $17 for two.
For informal lunch, it`s best to stock up on picnic supplies before noon store closings. Or stop at roadside beach huts, set on weathered stilts over the sea. At Grand Case beach there are deep black grills, where langoustes ($6 for a 1 1/2 pounder), chickens and barbecued cotes de porc, bronze away in the high noon sun.
The principal town of French St. Martin is Marigot, where a bustling morning market jams the streets. The hot town sleeps during the afternoon, but it revitalizes at sunset. For a spirited meal, try Cas` Annie, a weathered-wood structure sitting over the port. Salt breezes blow off the beach and rhythmic zouk taps out a Caribbean beat. Natives enjoy spicy stuffed crab and colombo de cabri, or goat curry. Dinner for two, including wine, comes to about $80.
Although exorbitantly overpriced, La Rhumerie in Colombier (87-56-98)
sets a good creole table. In the evening, unfastened shutters open to spotlit, jungle-like fauna. Chirping frogs isolate this peaceful spot, decorated simply with rush chairs and brown glazed-tile floors. Appetizers are better, especially tangy stuffed land crabs and salade de poisson coffre, a limey, flaked shellfieh ceviche. Feroce d`avocat is crushed avocado mixed with salt cod with the bite of scallions and hot pepper. Dinner for two with a bottle of house wine costs about $100, not including the taxi you`ll need to find the restaurant.
On the Dutch side-commonly known as St. Maarten-Indonesian accents flavor the cuisine. The West Indian Tavern (22965) in Philipsburg has a bright red exterior, stencilled with typical Dutch patterns. Smoked blue marlin is brilliantly paired with mango sorbet, and coconut-rolled, deep-fried prawns are sweet and tender. Aromatic, fennel-grilled snapper comes with cassava, a tooth-sticking tuber. Sea Symphony in cream sauce misses the beat, and over-orangey chocolate mousse doesn`t do justice to the Dutch`s reputation for chocolate. Expect to pay about $90 for two, including the tip-which the house includes in the bill.
When dizzying punches, zouk beats and hot chili peppers have run their course, head for the French side and Grand Case, a gracious town lined with real French restaurunts. Ocean breezes sweep through open shutters and service takes on a graceful air. Hevea (87-56-85), with its low ceiling, warm rose hues and colonial antique pieces, charms sweet lovers and calms world-weary travelers. Flavorful bisque de langouste is almost a meal in itself, but even better is the caviar-sprinkled langouste in delicate puff pastry. Hevea`s $30, prix-fixe menu stands out as the best deal in town, including perhaps a creamy leek and cauliflower soup, crunchy salad, tenderly poached fish in rich lobster sauce, and papaya or coconut sorbets.
Auberge Gourmande (reserve at Le Tastevin across the street: 87-55-45)
serves copious portions of delicious fish and meat in cream-, butter- and wine-rich sauces. As if reluctant to charge so much, the restaurunt presents the bill (about $95 for two with wine) in a small music box.
Martinique is an explorer`s island, its terrain pitching from jungle-like mountain to white sand beach with not a moment`s notice. Plot day trips from the hotel hub of Trois-Ilets around the little creole restaurants scattered over the island. Many are in private homes, so you may want to call ahead.
If you time it right, you`ll reach the mountaintop village of Morne des Esses just around lunchtime. Sit on Le Colibri`s (69-32-19) tiled porch, with a treetop view of coconut palms, orange trees and beyond, a serene Atlantic. The family brews a peppery, slightly bitter callaloo soup, with a crab floating in it. Creamy sea urchin tourte, baked in a seashell, sends tastebuds into rapture and cholesterol counts into overdrive.
But don`t stop here; there`s still thick langoustine tarte, and local octopus floating in tomato sauce. Just a bite of the flaky, light flan au coco will make you a convert. Cost is about $16-$25 for a three-course meal.
Save Aux Filets Bleus (76-73-42) for a glorious day, because it juts onto a stunning white sand beach. An overhanging roof and open sides let in salty breezes. Langoustes live in a glass-topped pool sunk into the floor of the restaurant and a brave soul, armed with a blue net (hence the restaurant`s name) descends into the pool to fetch your meal. The result is a crispy, charred langouste, its moist meat smoky from a wood fire. Lunch for one runs around $36 without wine.
En route to St. Pierre where a volcano wiped out the Paris of the French West Indies in 1902 is Le Maniba (78-73-89). Located in Case-Pilote (to call this loop of a road a town is an exaggeration), it`s tucked into the ground floor of an apartment complex. Its cool tiled floor, pink and green latticework and courtyard view reflect the simplicity of island cuisine. Two slender filets of crusty-fried fish come with onion-studded wine sauce. A mound of saffron rice and little piles of green beans and julienned carrots provide a light, healthy accompaniment. If you can, save room for the parfait glass of strawberry pistachio (to match the decor!) and coconut ice cream. About $16.
When Martinique`s life-threatening drivers have finally taken their toll on your psyche with games of speed-up-and-pass on torturously twisted and narrow roads, you`ll be glad to walk to a restaurant. Le Matador (66-05-36), with an outdoor plantation-style patio, is in Anse Mitan near the hotels.
Nibble on light accras and black olives while you decide between French and creole cuisines. A splendid slab of salmon pate comes in sweet and peppery crawfish sauce. Island meets mainland with lambi, or conch, steak in cognac-flamed bechamel. Hints of vanilla and cinnamon in flambeed bananas finish the meal with a flourish. Dinner for one, including wine, runs about $16-$25. Sybarites have long discovered-and kept to themselves-tiny St. Barthelemy (St. Barts), just a few miles southeast of St. Maarten. Nearly two dozen beaches dot the island`s perimeter, and pretty roads wind through interior hills. Your chances of finding isolation in paradise are greater here, perhaps due to St. Barts` rather intimidating prices.
