Orient Beach, on St. Martin, is your quintessential Caribbean postcard – frothy blue waves propelled by the offshore breeze, the soundtrack of reggae and soca alternating with the beach bars you walk past, and bodies basting on lounge chairs, their inhabitants recovering from a night at the casino or gearing up for a marathon tour of the duty-free shops. But I have come to St. Martin to indulge a different vice – not to gamble, not to shop, not to stretch myself out on its beaches: I have come to eat, and eat seriously.
There’s no shortage of options. A gantlet of chalkboard marquees touts the offerings: Prime rib au jus, steak frites, steamed mussels, cheeseburgers and, most curiously, in this home ground of tasty, spiny Caribbean crustaceans, lobsters flown in from Maine. All delicious, I’m sure, but it’s anywhere food. Not for me.
Instead, I zero in on a cluster of big tents at the west end of the beach, far from the tanning crowd. A ribbon of smoke wafts up from the middle, and where there’s smoke, there’s possibility.
A 15-minute walk finds me chatting up a trio of men drinking Presidente beer in the shade of a tarp. It’s a Friday, and they represent the advance guard of a group of 60 or 70 government employees from the Dutch side of the island, sent here to set up for a weekend camping trip.
“It’s a bonding thing,” says one of the men, David Lejuez. “People who eat together work better together.”
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