There is a red door at the Sand Bar with what naval engineers call a dogging wheel, the kind that forces steel cams into a frame to make a watertight seal on a ship's bulkhead. This is a restaurant. Nobody explained it. I didn't ask.
The Table
Nobody explained
the door.
The mahi-mahi
didn't need explaining.
On an outcropping at Eden Roc, looking out over the Bay of St. Jean. The sommelier arrives before you've finished reading the menu. The planes come in a hundred feet off the water.
The red door. Ship's wheel lock. No explanation offered.
The Sand Bar sits on an outcropping at Eden Roc, looking out over the Bay of St. Jean. The staff wear red uniforms. The sommelier arrives before you've fully read the menu. There is a turret of some kind out on the water with a set of stairs leading up to it, and I spent more time than was probably reasonable wondering what was inside.
Then a plane appeared. About a hundred feet off the water, close enough to feel like a film prop, banking left over the beach umbrellas before disappearing toward Saint-Martin. The Bay of St. Jean sits directly under the departure path for Gustaf III Airport, which means this happens regularly. You might expect it to be intrusive. It isn't. There is something about the scale and the proximity that makes it feel deliberate, like whoever designed this place knew exactly what they were doing. Bond would have clocked the plane without looking up from his drink.
Eden Roc. The turret is out there. The stairs lead up to something. I never found out what.
Bond would have clocked the plane without looking up from his drink.
The mahi-mahi came over a pomme purée, which is what the French call mashed potatoes when they've decided the subject deserves more respect. The sauce was somewhere between a jus and a thin gravy, and whatever the menu called it in French I have since forgotten, which I regret. I cleaned the plate. Then I moved the french fries into the serving dish to get the rest of the sauce.
The truffle risotto across the table was excellent and required no rescuing with additional carbohydrates.
Eden Roc is technically located in an arrondissement of the French overseas département of Guadeloupe. I looked that up after the fact. At the time all I knew was that someone had fitted a restaurant door for a watertight seal, the planes were close enough to read the tail numbers, and the sauce was worth the embarrassment of asking for more fries. The full St. Barths dispatch — the island, the hotels, the drive — is filed here.