For no good reason, we never ate at Straw Hat last year. It’s super close to the Viceroy, has lovely outdoor seating beneath strings of fairy lights, and serves a fantastic goat curry – so this trip, we went several times!
Tables at the edge of the patio overlook the Meads Bay beach, all lit up, with the dark ocean beyond. There’s a good wine list (I especially liked the Chateau Mont-Redon 2007 Chateauneuf-du-Pape) and plenty of fun cocktails. I tried my first BBC (Bailey’s banana colada) for dessert one night – even I can’t quite imagine it as a pre-dinner drink!
My favorite dish was jerk braised carrot soup with okra-stuffed sausage. Actually D ordered it, while I had gazpacho, perfectly good but nowhere near as wonderful as his choice, which was complex and spicy and sweet with locally grown carrots. In the bottom of the bowl there was a surprise – tiny, tender carrot spheres.
So when we returned a few days later, I made sure to order the carrot soup and savored every bite.
Of course the curried goat is a must-have – flavorful chunks of meat in a lightly spiced sauce, served with mango and coconut rice balls and shreds of raw carrot (that same wonderful, sweet local carrot!).
Everything we tried was great, really – from my grilled mahi one evening (with a truffle-tomato sauce) to D’s lobster with lemon-butter sauce.
Besides my dessert BBC (which I definitely recommend – the combination of coffee and banana sounds a little odd but it really works), I also enjoyed the molten chocolate cake, a classic dessert that I never tire of. For something a little lighter, D had the caramelized bananas.
Like everyone we’ve met on Anguilla, the people at Straw Hat are just so friendly – dinner there is easy and relaxing. And you can never go wrong with goat curry!
Yakitori under the tracks at Yurokucho, Tokyo
A picturebook from Japan
Five favorite food books
Snapshots from Anguilla