Saint Barthélemy: Eddy’s

Where to eat the first night on St. Barts?  Where to eat the last night on St. Barts?  These are the sort of pressing issues one wrangles with when vacationing on this little rock.  We kept it simple and choose Eddy’s for both nights.

For the first time in a long time we did not have an Eddy sighting.  For the uninitiated, grabbing a little Eddy time is a lot like doing yoga.  Eddy epitomizes mellow.  He is a basically a walking shavasana.  If you have just arrived on the island, you can’t help but feel way too wired and intense around Eddy.  But it does not take long –Eddy will wear off on you and that is indeed a good thing.  Sadly no Eddy this trip but thankfully there was a green papaya salad with my name on it.  For the record, I have never eaten at Eddy’s and not ordered the green papaya salad which is served with tomatoes, crushed peanuts and a asian lime-fish sauce vinaigrette.  This dish is St. Barts on a plate.

Bob has a favorite Eddy’s dish as well and that would be the lentil salad made with Le Puy lentils (the French green lentils) and tossed with a mustard vinaigrette.  Eddy’s wife Brigette informed us that this year kale was added to the dish. I thought this was great because (1) I love kale and  (2) I am always trying to get Bob to eat kale.  Bob, however, does not like kale unless it is whipped up into a smoothie but there he was dutifully eating a kale salad to make Brigette happy.

I was delighted to see tuna plate offered as a special.  I have ordered this too many times to count.  The local tuna is served as a tartare, sashimi, tataki and with a light tempura crust.  Wasabi sorbet and a wakami salad round out the plate.  For my second meal at Eddy’s I branched out and had the Triologie du Tartares (I know – super adventuresome ordering more raw fish) which was an appetizer portion of tuna, mahi mahi and wahoo.  It was terrific.

Bob went all creole and ordered the goat “Colombo” both evenings because you do not get that many opportunities to eat goat.  It was perfect the first night but full of small bones the second time around making it a challenge to eat.

Overall the food was quite good and it is an excellent value for St. Barts (I recognize that is damning with faint praise) but truthfully it would be a good value pretty much anywhere.  Salads were 10€ and 11€, trio of tartares were 16€, the goat was 22€ and the tuna special was 28€.

The wine list this year seemed disproportionately expensive with many bottles exceeding 100€ (not very Eddy-like) but they have a 6€ Cote du Rhone by the glass that works.  Service was a little uneven.  They forgot to bring a second glass of wine with our main courses the first night and no bread or rhum appeared on our last night.  Perhaps they were sending us a subtle message to cut back on some of our vices (!) but this being a French island that basically subsides on bread and alcohol I think it was more a question of the front of the house still being a bit “green” this season.

Chances are next time we are on the island you will find us at Eddy’s on our first night or our last night or possibly both.  Maybe we’ll even see the man himself!