St. Martin restaurants: jacket required?
Oct 21st, 2006 | 07:45 AM
#1
Original Poster
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 112
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St. Martin restaurants: jacket required?
Help! I just read in another thread a post by "jacketwatch" that many Carribean restaurants require jackets. My husband and I will be staying at Le Petit Hotel in January - he'll kill me if he has to bring a jacket!
Oct 23rd, 2006 | 09:16 PM
#7
Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 12
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100% no jacket needed. My wife and I spent our honeymoon at Grand Case Beach Club on the French side, April 2004. I was honestly confused as to how many people actually felt they had to dress nicely with long pants, etc. (but you do for the "best" restaurants - more on this below) as the walk from the hotel through the somewhat derelict town strip included saying hello to goats tied to trees, homeless people, empty burned out houses, etc. I'm not trying to be "neg" about St. Martin. It is tons of fun, as long as you don't expect Paris. Apparently the tax benefits to opening a restaurant there (and establishing citizenship perhaps? - but I'm just guessing) make otherwise decent/great chefs from France set up shop on this island. It is a very strange experience, overall. We had one dinner that was $250 for 2 of us and walked back to GCBC with a hungry stray dog (friendly though) following us the whole way and a very funny hungy native (again, friendly) following us for a several minutes ("Give me some money or give me that food!" - we had leftover pizza, my wife, gave him a slice from the box). Go figure. (Our next two Carib vacations were to other islands - enough said.) As far as eating on the French side of St. Martin, we had a blast the second half of our honeymoon - eating every night at Le Pub - great pizza, salads, sandwiches, locals, tourists, service, prices - LOVED LE PUB!!! - basically everyone whose figured out the rest of the French side is mostly a colossal ripoff (or a haven for gourmands, at least - no offense meant) eats at Le Pub as far as we could tell.
