One of the best lunches I ate on St. Barthélemy last month was served from a food truck without wheels and just a few tables at the end of a mud-and-sand path where parking resembles mortal combat and orders are placed by circling choices on a paper menu. The other began outside a chic hotel where crisply attired valets park your car for free and after a stroll on perfect boardwalks through a manicured tropical jungle, you’re given the choice of a table in the sand or in a Jacques-Grange-designed al fresco dining room, and waited on by multiple servers. Neither is one of the island’s bucket list lunch clubs where Neil Diamond, ABBA, and AC/DC pour from speakers at deafening levels, while rosé-drenched diners sing along. Writing Treasured Island, my forthcoming social history of the island, I charged myself with clarifying how a simple, chic French island was transformed into an international billionaires’ beach club while retaining its authenticity and charm. Those dueling dining experiences summed up St. Barth’s contradictory nature quite well. If liquid lunches at Nikki Beach, Nao Beach Club, La Guerité Beach, Gyp Sea, and dance-on-tables dinners at Bagatelle, Le Ti, Sella, and La Petite Plage are your beach thing, read no further. This post is not for you. But if you want to see what made St. Barth St. Barth, then book tables at Ti Corail on the beach called Grand Cul de Sac and La Cabane at the Cheval Blanc St-Barth on Flamands. It is somehow fitting that despite the vast stylistic gulf between them, they share deep taproots.
La Cabane
“I try to give it the Taïwana feel,” our waiter at Cabane said as we dissected the menu, which ranges from street food to Wagyu steaks. Fifty years ago, La Cabane was born as a lunch club with the name Taïwana though it didn’t even have a sign. It discouraged many with sky-high prices and haute attitude, and then flourished as it expanded into the island’s most exclusive hotel. Our waiter, it emerged, worked there before it was sold and absorbed into Cheval Blanc. That hotel’s manager, Christelle Hilpron, started her career on the island 22 years ago next door to Taïwana as the maître d’hôtel of the Isle de France, a top island hostelry. She stayed after it was renamed Cheval Blanc by its parent, LVMH, in 2013. “Our lentil salad is cheaper,” than the $50 version that made Taïwana famous in the nineties, “with no inflation adjustment.” Or so the waiter told us with an impish smile as we enjoyed Cabane’s crispy fish fritters, tuna tataki, fish and chips with coconut sauce, and glasses of Whispering Angel.
Path to La Cabane
After training at another island hotel, Le Toiny, Yann Vinsot worked 22 years alongside Hilpron as the Chef de Cuisine at the Isle de France. He remained through its rebranding before leaving, five years ago, to create Ti Corail as its chef and co-proprietor. He was looking for “something simpler,” he explains. So, whether you choose a crab and lobster roll, a Croq’truff (a croque monsieur with truffles), or something more elaborate like a duck confit and béchamel lasagna-like confection, it will be served in a take-out container. Nowadays, though, Ti Corail has stemmed wine glasses. It’s a simple case of growing up without outgrowing your roots. That’s a more complicated story, though, and you’ll have to wait for Treasured Island to read it.
Ti Corail
Yann and Team Ti Corail
