I've been to many islands in the Caribbean over the past few years St. John, Aruba, Jamaica, and Barbados just to name a few. The two things that most of them have in common are gorgeous turquoise blue waters and awful, expensive food. Sadly, Turks and Cacios falls into that category as well. The beaches were stunning and beautiful but the food was just eh and bloody expensive. I don't want this to be a deterrent for anyone to go there. Definitely go because you'll never see more clear water and white sand! Just don't have high expectations for your food.
Hemmingway's at The Sands at Grace Bay Resort - 3 Forks for breakfast, 2.5 forks for lunch
This is actually in the hotel that I stayed at, so I spent a lot of time at this restaurant because it was so convenient and the only one on the property. I only had breakfast and lunch there, no dinner. Of the two meals, I thought that breakfast was actually pretty decent and very filling. They have the usual line up of omelettes, french toast, pancakes, and eggs benedict type dishes. I got the huevos rancheros the first time we got breakfast there. While it wasn't a bad dish, it clearly was not a huevos rancheros dish. It was scrambled eggs covered with mild salsa served on 2 tortillas. They do serve it with black beans, roasted potatoes and a choice of bacon or sausage (I got bacon). They called the potatoes hash browns, but they were really just cut up potatoes wedges, seasoned with herbs and roasted in an oven and they totally hit the spot. One of the pluses to breakfast here was that they give out very generous portions, so I was always super stuffed after breakfast. The other 2 days, I got the omelette both times. It's a seriously hefty dish (at least 3-4 eggs) and filled with cheddar cheese, ham, green peppers, onions, mushroom and tomato. It also comes with the roasted potatoes and choice of bacon or sausage. I got the sausage these times and good lord. They were giant links that looked the ones you get out of a Jimmy Dean box. But hey, those links were good enough for me as a kid and I still devoured them as an adult. Lav got the pancakes one day, french toast another day and eggs on the last day of breakfast. The pancakes and french toast were nicely sweeten and served with fresh fruit and whipped cream. Really hard to get these yummy sweet breakfast staples wrong. Most of the breakfast dishes were reasonably priced in the $12 range. As for lunch, it was much more of the casual sandwich/salad route. The first day I got the mango shrimp salad ($13) which came with 5-6 shrimp on a bed of mixed greens, mushrooms, green peppers, onions, tomatoes, and mango chutney. It was served with a side of soy cream sauce...the weird thing was that the dressing came out warm. It was a bit off putting to get warm salad dressing, but I put it on there anyways. Overall, the salad was totally fine and similar to a lot of salads I get here in the US. For my other lunch I got the jerked chicken sandwich and that was a bit of a disappointment. The chicken was a bit dry and shoved into a equally dry hero with no mayo or anything to moisten up the dish. I ended up just pulling the chicken out and eating it by itself. Lav had asked for the club but instead of meat, to put in onions and peppers. The waitress nodded like she heard us, but when the sandwich came out, it was just American cheese with lettuce and tomato on wheat toast. It was just kind of sad looking. However, the nice thing about Hemminway's is its location. It's right on the beach, so if you're a lazy beach bum like me, it's super easy to just crawl away from your beach chair and saddle up to Hemmingway's for some reasonably priced food within 5 minutes.
Lemon Cafe - 3 Forks
Funny story about our way to Lemon Cafe. We took a cab there and it was one of those situations where the cab turns left and then right and then drops you off. Lav and I literally laughed out loud because Lemon Cafe was less than a 5 min walk from our hotel. When I got to Lemon Cafe, I was taken by how beautiful it was. It's a Moroccan/Middle Eastern themed restaurant and because it's the islands, the main part of the restaurant was an outdoor garden with gorgeous colored lamps and other Middle Eastern themed decor. I loved the fact that the menu was different than you usual island fare of fish and pasta. This was authentic Middle Eastern food with a range of tapas such as roasted eggplant, stuffed peppers, chickpea corn fritters and main entrees including a lamb burger, moussaka, and kabob platters. This was also a great place for vegetarians because there was more than 2 options on the menu. Lav and I started with the hummus ($9) and then we split the corn fritters ($10) and she had the stuffed pepper with rice, pine nuts, goat cheese, and cucumber yogurt ($12) as an entree. I had the grilled chicken kabob platter served with basmati rice, cucumber salad and mint yogurt ($22). The hummus tasted like your usual hummus but I did love that the pita that came with it was super soft and warm. The chickpea corn fritters were like little corn cakes patties but the chickpea did make it a bit mealy in texture. My chicken kabob platter was quite tasty....the chicken was cooked well but my one main complaint would be that the chicken was pretty stuck to the stick and it made it hard to pull the meat off the stick. I found the mint yogurt and cucumber salad very refreshing with the grilled chicken. The rice was steamed perfectly and it really rounded out the whole meal. I didn't try the stuffed pepper, but Lav mentioned that it was just ok. Of course, we left room for dessert and got the chili brownie ($10) which was super super decadent. While I don't love chocolate, I do prefer dark chocolate and this was the darkest of chocolates. This dish felt more like a frozen piece of mousse than a brownie. It was rock hard and very very hard to cut through. The knife barely cut through it, so that made the eating experience a bit not fun. But when I did get a bite in, I got a sweet mix of dark cold chocolate with a hint of the chili at the end of the bite. It would have been a much better dish if it actually was a brownie and softer. Overall, this was a surprising ethnic treat in an island that's full of basic, boring food. Do be aware that if you go during the off season like we did, the service will probably be pretty slow (I know, it is the islands and everything is slow) but there was literally 1 waitress for the entire restaurant, so I can't really dock too many points for this as I did empathize with her. Total bill: $50/pp including tax and tip.
Coco Bistro - 3 Forks
This is apparently THE place to eat in Turks and Caicos. My friend who had been to Turks earlier this year tried to get a reservation here for at least a week and couldn't get it, so I was pretty pleased that I was able to get a table for two on Saturday at 9:30pm. Even our cab driver told us it was the best place on the island. Similar to Lemon Cafe, it's a beautiful outdoor garden setting with lovely trees and Christmas like lights. We thought that since it was the off season, we could try to waltz in early and be seated but no dice. We were promptly seated at 9:30, so we were starving by the time the we sat down. The first thing I got when I opened the menu was sticker shock. Appetizers were in the $15-20 range and entrees were in the $30-40 range. I may live in NYC but it still doesn't stop my inner middle class self from being in shock when food costs that much. We started with the fried conch appetizer and the fresh mozzarella and tomato salad. I've had conch before and don't think much about it, but hey, when in Rome, right? It basically tasted like fried calamari and the dish came with 3 dipping sauces: an aioli mayo, sweet and sour sauce and a honey mustard. All perfectly fine and went well with the fried conch. The best part of the dish was the papaya salad that came with it. It was amazing. So refreshing and the combination of papaya with red onion and peanut was delicious (very similar to a thai papaya salad). The tomato salad appetizer came with the usual suspect of tomato, fresh mozzarella, basil, olive oil and aged balsamic reduction and as usual it was delicious. Super super fresh ingredients and the balsamic had a great tangy bite to it. For my main dish, I got the rare ahi tuna with wasbi mashed potatoes and asparagus served with a hoisin sauce. All things I love right, so how could it go wrong? While the base of the dish was good, overall it was just too salty. I prefer my fish natural and fresh tasting without a whole lot of pomp and circumstance to it. The hoisin sauce (while it was just drizzled over the fish) made the dish way too salty for me. The wasbi mashed potatoes were also too strong on the wasbi and this is coming from someone who loves wasbi to death. But there is something to be said about keeping your food as clean/simple as possible to really highlight it's natural flavors. I also would have liked my tuna to be even a bit rarer as some of the corners of the tuna were cooked all the way through. Sadly for Lav the only real veggie entree option was a penne pasta with vegetables and Asiago cheese shavings. But the good news was that they didn't skimp on the vegetables and made the dish as robust as they possibly could given what it was. For dessert we ordered the "famous coconut pie" with fresh cream. As someone who loves coconut, this was an amazing light and fluffy dessert. Unlike the dessert the night before, there was nothing heavy or rich about it. It was seriously like eating a cloud laced with sugar. While I can see why this is easily the best restaurant in Turks and Caicos, the reason why I can't give it a higher rating was the price of the food. Now I get it, that almost all restaurants import their ingredients and thus have to charge a lot to make any profit, but given that our bill was almost $90/pp, I just can't bring myself to give it a 4 fork rating because the prices are just way to high for the food you are getting. But as long as you are prepared, it's still probably the best place on the island.
Stelle at the Gansevoort Hotel - 2 Forks
I am usually not a fancy/trendy hotel person but for some reason I was mildly excited to check out the Gansevoort on the island. While I loved our hotel a lot and would totally recommend it, there weren't a whole lot of young people there, so I was expecting that kind of crowd here. I don't know if it was because it was low season or what, but there was almost nobody here. We made a reservation and it was almost embarrassing how unnecessary it was. I guess one of the signs should have been when we got in the cab, we asked the driver how the restaurant was and his response "well, they just changed owners, re-named the restaurant and I heard the service kind of sucks". Great. We decided to give it a go anyways. The hotel is pretty but in a very Miami kind of way. It's all white, very modern and just doesn't have any kind of local, Island feel to it. I get that the brand needs to adhere to a certain look but it would be nice if they tried just a little bit to incorporate some local feel to it. Again the prices at this place are ridiculous, here with some entrees even going above $50 (the veal chop was $52). We started with the special of the day which was a chilled tomato compote served in a martini glass ($12) and the mozzarella and fresh tomato salad ($22) - thank god for cheese and tomatoes! For some reason, when I saw tomato compote I was expecting some kind gazpacho type dish - dark, red and cold soup. Instead, we got a clear liquid in a martini glass with some tomato seeds floating in it. Honestly, it tasted like a cold deconstructed tomato soup, which in itself is fine but just seeing it as a clear liquid was just really unappealing to me. It made me wonder what the hell I was drinking since tomatoes and their juices aren't clear. Next came the mozzarella and tomato salad and unlike the one at coco bistro, this was was pretty underwhelming and not that great. The tomatoes were cut into wedges which gave it a slightly less sophisticated look to the dish and there wasn't basalmic vinegar on it, which is a shame. The pine nuts that were served with it were overcooked and didn't have much crunch to it. I can't believe I paid $22 for it, it was more like a $8 dish in my book. For my main, I ordered the linguine, stone crab, white wine, garlic, lemon and tomato ($31). I was expecting this dish to come in a light white wine sauce with fresh tomato tossed in but instead it was very heavy on the tomatoes - it was pretty much a red tomato sauce and it totally overpowered the taste of the dish. I couldn't really see the crab (although I did taste it) and the pasta was drowning in tomato sauce which made it hard to taste much of anything else. If I wanted a more heavily sauced dish, I would have gotten the braised beef and pappardelle pasta. So that was kind of a bummer and at $31, I expect to see larger chunks of crab in there then just the small stringy bits tossed in the sauce. For dessert we got the Key Lime Pie ($12) which was your standard key lime pie fare...I will give props to the graham cracker crust on it. For what we paid ($87/pp), I expected to have my mind blown at dinner and I didn't even really come close to that.
When I travel, I usually love to go more street food, local style and eat where the locals eat, but I feel like that's not that easy to come by in the Caribbean. You're kind of trapped in an area of expensive restaurants with not a lot of options to choose from. Plus Lav and I were only there for 2 full days without a car, so with that lens, I'm actually quite pleased with where we ended up eating. There were for sure many more places that were on my list and recommended by friends and staff there, so I don't want to write off food in Turks and Caicos completely, but just be warned to stuff your wallet with cash if you want a decent meal.
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