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Nov10

Everything we ate on our honeymoon – Sugar Beach St. Lucia Restaurants

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A review of the Sugar Beach St. Lucia restaurants + review of one off-resort restaurant, Dasheen

When Tommy and I were deciding where to honeymoon, one of the biggest factors in our decision was food. We wanted GOOD food and I also wanted a place that could accommodate my gluten-free diet. Heather felt 100% confident Sugar Beach Viceroy in St. Lucia could accommodate dietary restrictions and she RAVED about the food, whether eating gluten-free or not. She was right. The food was incredible. Everything tasted fresh and never felt heavy. We especially loved all the fresh herbs, homemade sauces, salsas and chutneys served with many dishes.

Sugar Beach St. Lucia Restaurants

Three of the restaurants were in this building – the Great Room, which is an upscale dinner restaurant; the Cane Bar, which is a a sushi bar and lounge; and the Terrace, where breakfast is served daily.

The Bayside restaurant is an open air restaurant right next to the water on the beach. It was just to the right of the lounging chairs, where they served lunch and dinner. If you missed the lunch hours at Bayside, which ends at 2, Bayside Bar in the Sand serves food later in the afternoon and is just across the path. Bayside in the Sand was even more relaxed than Bayside, with the tables set up literally in the sand under the trees. 🙂 Bayside was our favorite spot for dinner and Bayside in the Sand was our favorite spot for lunch. Both are laid back and we like the menus at those spots the best.

Okay, now onto some food photos!

Breakfast

Breakfast was easily our favorite meal of the day. You could order omelets, waffles, smoothies, etc. off a menu and there was also the most incredible buffet. (And I am NOT a buffet person.) But this one had an incredible spread of fresh fruit (including local mango that I could eat by the pound), cheeses, proscuitto, smoked salmon, smoked trout, nuts, dried fruit, jellies, yogurt, bread and more. And the selections were far beyond your “regular” spread of yogurts & nuts. We’re talking nonfat and full-fat greek yogurt, european yogurt, hazelnuts, brazil nuts, preserved figs, dates, apricots, multiple varieties of house-made bread and granola, fresh vegetable juice. I got a jar of fresh-squeezed kale juice every morning!

And the VIEWS at breakfast were incredible. Breakfast definitely has the best view of all the restaurants – I liked it even better than Bayside which was right on the beach.

Each morning, we started with coffee and juice they served tableside (watermelon, papaya or grapefruit). Then, we usually ordered off the menu (daily omelet + bacon + plantains for me and smoothis + pancakes for Tommy), then we went inside to get fresh fruit & yogurt while waiting for our entrees.

I’ve always loved fried plantains after having them for the first time about six years ago when I lived next door to an elderly woman from the Dominican Republic. She taught me how to make them (and it’s so easy – I have a post coming soon about that), but whenever I see them on a menu, I order them. These were perfectly ripe since plantains grow natively on St. Lucia and very lightly fried. So good.

They had lots of omelet options, including the smoked salmon and goat cheese one pictured below, but my favorite was the veggie. It was PACKED with mushrooms, squash, peppers, and onions. 

And bacon was a daily side dish. So crispy. So salty. Perfect.

There are cats all over the resort (to help with pest control), and this one at breakfast seemed to especially like Tommy. Or…maybe he hated Tommy. It’s kind of hard to tell. 😉

After we finished breakfast (where we obviously ate a LOT), we read the local paper and digested our food while drinking more coffee. We were usually at breakfast for 1.5 hours. Loved it.

Lunch

We typically ate at Bayside or, if we wanted a later lunch after our long and huge breakfast, Bayside in the Sand. They both had big menus with pizza, wraps, and sandwiches — AND they had gluten-free options for everything.

The jerk chicken skewers with chutney were AMAZING.

Tommy’s pizza (not gluten-free) was AMAZING (I stole a bite), but the gluten-free pizza was just so-so. But, I was grateful they even HAD a gluten-free option!
The gluten-free wrap, on the other hand, was amazing. The best gluten-free wrap I’ve ever had. I wish I knew the brand! The pesto chicken wrap had beets, arugula, peppers and cucumber. I ordered this 3x during the week. And their fries…don’t even get me started on how much I loved their fries. Perfectly crispy and they had a separate fryer to keep them gluten-free.

We also ordered dessert with lunch a couple times and it was always amazing. This was a macaron with dairy-free chocolate cream and raspberry sorbet.

The first day we arrived, we ordered room service. We were a little disoriented (i.e. STARVING) at the time, so it was nice to be able to settle into our room and eat there. I won’t lie – it was pricey for room service – but after a long day of traveling, it was worth it. (Especially since I’d gotten food poisoning the night before we flew out and we were up all night.)

Dinner

I don’t really have dinner pictures because the restaurants were so dark, but the quality was on-par with everything pictured from breakfast and lunch. One night I ordered a steak. Another night, red curry. Another time, sushi. It was all amazing.

The Great Room was fun since they did lots of little touches, like amuse bouches, pre-desserts and all those fancy things that I don’t know the name of when they serve you something between each course. Whatever it is, it was great. They had gluten-free bread for me when we were seated (since our butler had noted that in our reservation), which was extremely thoughtful.

Sugar Beach St. Lucia Restaurants

I do wish that the menu had more of a local flair, but eh, that’s probably par for resort food. There was a local restaurant near our resort that apparently had incredible food, but we never made it over there. Next time we’d definitely try some of the more local spots to experience more of the St. Lucian culture. We were just all about ease and convenience on our honeymoon.

On Friday night, they had a HUGE buffet on the beach with a wide assortment of food, including some locally inspired dishes, bbq, jerk chicken and lots of seafood and pork dishes. But, I spend most of my time at the sushi bar, loading up on sashimi. I also loved the “make your own ceviche” bar! The seafood was amazing. I think some fish was local, but not all.

Dasheen at Ladera Resort

One night, we took a taxi to a neighboring resort, Ladera, to eat at their restaurant Dasheen. While our resort was right on the beach, Ladera is at the top of the mountain with incredible views. The food was good, but the food at Sugar Beach was much better.

But we both agreed Dasheen is worth a trip for the views alone. Pictures don’t do it justice.

dasheen-st-lucia

Next time (yes, we want to go back!), we’d just go for a long cocktail hour rather than eat there. Note: it was a $50 taxi ride to the resort (for a 2 mile trip, ouch) so factor that into your decision to visit Dasheen! 

Bottom Line: The food at Sugar Beach was amazing and far exceeded our expectations.

I hadn’t been to a resort before, and honestly had low expectations for the food since I think “resort food” has a stigma. But the food here was amazing.

A note about all-inclusive: We didn’t do an all-inclusive meal plan since we don’t drink enough to justify it. From what we could tell, it seemed about  50% of the people there did all-inclusive. Paying per meal was PRICEY (like $60-80 per lunch), but it still came out cheaper for us than if we had done all-inclusive.

Have you been to an all-inclusive resort? Did you do all inclusive? Was it worth it?

You can see more posts about our wedding and honeymoon here.

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