Let me start with a peculiar observation from this afternoon. After work we decided to stop by La Coquille for take out dinner. As we waited for our meal to arrive, I observed the "guardien" from the restaurant chatting with the guardien of the neighboring business. What was interesting was the fact that they were both wearing designer shirts! Now, whether or not they were knock offs I couldn't say, but one of them had a light blue big pony polo shirt and the other had a Gucci shirt.
Since so much has happened since the last post, I decided to group them by subject to give you a better rundown. So, speaking of restaurants, we went to View, La Reserve, Quartier Latin, Barak, and Kenscoff. View is located on the top floor of the Belvedere building in Pétion-Ville. It was a hot spot for a while about a year ago but now I guess it's not as fashionable. In any case, it's definitely a must see. The view from so high is breathtaking as you can see the whole capital at your feet! The service was exemplary with very well trained servers who anticipated your every whim, and took care of you while being unnoticeable. The food itself, or whatever we tried was scrumptious. Instead of bread or rolls, we received a sample dish with a hot roll, a tomato bruschetta, some kind of beef ragout on a tiny spoon, and a banane pesée with pikliz. For the main dish, we ordered a mixed grill plate with white rice. It had sausage, chicken, beef, lamb and pork grilled to perfection. We also ordered the Mediterranean sample which included tabouleh, flat bread, two kinds of hummus, kibby, kefta, beef and chicken kabobs, and another cheesy pastry whose name escapes me. The tabouleh was so perfectly juicy and lemony that I dipped everything in it and nearly licked my fingers at the fancy restaurant!
La Reserve was beautiful and had a nice vibe. Located in Berthé, Pétion-Ville, it is a gem in the middle of a lush tropical garden. The night we went there, in the rear garden, there was an event. A couple was celebrating their ten year anniversary. The set up would rival any event in the U.S. with table linens, chair covers and sash, gorgeous tropical centerpiece bouquets, a sophisticated buffet set up, and my favorite, a live jazz band! The music was awesome! At some point, the husband went on stage and sang a song to his wife. It was all so romantic! The restaurant itself lived up to my expectations. It seemed to be a little bit of everything with something for everyone. I saw foreign expats with t-shirts and shorts, young early twenty somethings with fashionable casual wear, a local family dressed to the nine, several couples ranging from young to old in casual to semi-formal clothing, and everyone seemed to fit in perfectly.
Quartier Latin Brasserie, located in Place Boyer is a nice casual dining restaurant with an assortment of french dishes and extensive wine list. It seems to be a favorite spot for expats,and it sometimes has live bands. The food was good, and the bill what you would expect but what I like most about it is the structure itself. It's an old style Haitian gingerbread house complete with the wood floors and beams and tall windows. In contrast, Barak is more of a bar/disco than a restaurant with a huge bar, and at least 4 or 5 big flat screen televisions, a small dance floor and an urban feel. It's definitely a place to meet with friends or indulge in happy hour, so stick to finger foods for nibbling as they taste the best.
As many of you know, August 15th was the patron saints day of Les Cayes, Petit-Goave, Cap-Haitien and some other cities around the country. While most people headed out to their favorite province to celebrate, we headed out to Kenscoff for a nice relaxing day in the mountains. What was supposed to be a day outing actually started at 3pm since we slept in and procrastinated all day. The plan was originally to stop by Boutilliers, Fort Jacques, Fermathe then Kenscoff but given our late departure we just stopped by Fermathe for our first plate of griot and continued to Kenscoff for some more and of course the pièce de résistance: café du soir! For those of you familiar with the stuff, you know that the only place to get it is "kay Sovè". When we got there, it was closed (bummer!) but right next door bright and inviting was "Kay Sovè Fils, West Indies".
His son informed us that Sovè is so old he could no longer run the business so he passed on the recipe to his son who is following in his footsteps. The small cup of cafe du soir is 25gdes, it's about 4oz. If you don't know what cafe du soir is, the best way to describe it is a slightly sweet concoction of steeped herbs and spices and maybe some fruit in local kleren. No one knows the recipe but it looks like coke and tastes great! As we sat on the business's steps enjoying our drinks and the cool temperature we nibbled on some mais boukanen, and some kann anana while watching the activity around us. The place has been updated and now has a designated area built for the machann griot, a structure that looks like an overgrown gazeebo and doubles as a round about, and motorcycles all around since there is also a station for taxi moto. So we spent a few hours entertained by the going ons of a moun fou poet equipped with a megaphone and spouting poetry in perfectly good french, and a guy named blan, who kept wanting to take pictures with us. He told us about a club called Rustik further up in the mountains where "mulat al pran plezi yo". His words exactly. I thought he was making it up until I confirmed with a friend of mine that it's a cool club with an exclusive loyal clientele. All in all, it was a really nice afternoon and we were so stuffed that we did not even need to eat dinner.
Now that we have moved out of the hotel, we'll probably not go to restaurants so often, but there are still tons to discover. So whenever I hit a new spot I'll keep you posted!
Christian's Corner
Hello it's my turn now. We went to lots of restaurants and tasted lots of food. But my favorite restaurant is Mr.Grill and my favorite food at Mr.Grill are chicken kebabs. My favorite dessert is from the hotel, it's so hard to choose which dessert is the best. I went to some restaurants that had water bags hanging from trees or the roof so my mom asked the waiter what they were and he said the water bags keeps the bugs away. That's all from Christian Corner.
