A Taste of St. Croix

By Margit Biztray

you know you’re in a foodie destination when your taxi driver rattles off dining tips while he steers you out of the airport. Try local specialties like fungi and stuffing (cornmeal with okra, mashed potatoes with pepper sauce), but also the pub fare, Italian, and Continental. He mentions not to buy rum at the tourist shops; buy it at K-Mart like locals do. “Cruzan rum will cure anything,” he adds (delivering next what’s clearly become his favorite line), “especially a hangover.”

Among the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Thomas is known for tourism, St. John for nature, and St. Croix for agriculture. Agriculture might sound mundane, unless your ears prick up at phrases like “farm-to-table” dining and “regional cuisine”, and you appreciate food and drink. Because along with organic farms, natural beef production, and tropical orchards, the island hosts A Taste of St. Croix: The St. Croix Food & Wine Experience every April (stcroixfoodandwine.com): four days of gourmet dinners, wine seminars, and good-natured competitions.

The event was started in 2001 by two local restaurant owners as a way to celebrate the local bounty, the island’s multi-cultural tradition, and the culinary talent concentrated in a 28 by 7 mile island. Carib and Arawak natives,
and Spanish, English, French, Dutch, and Danish settlers have all added to the pot of what constitutes St.Croix cuisine. Expressing this history today is a surprising number of restaurants (over 50 show up for the festival’s cook-off) and homebased catering services, a cooking program at the high school, and regular Slow Food dinners at the Virgin Islands Sustainable Farm Institute (visfi.org). Proceeds from the Food & Wine Experience
stay local, benefiting the St. Croix Foundation (stxfoundation.org), which assists with everything from education to beautification.

Where to Stay
The best place to stay is at the site of the grand tasting cook-off: Divi Carina Bay Resort and Casino (divicarina.com). Located on a private beach, the resort offers rooms with ample balconies and ocean views, a pool, a spa, and a restaurant. It also sells a package guaranteeing tickets to the always-soldout cook-off event and the champagne after-party. After wandering the maze of booths outside the back of the hotel, eating rotis, “man-soup”, boiled kingfish, peas & rice, saltfish & dumplings, vegetarian lasagna, mango clafoutis, cinnamon bread pudding and the local dessert known as “red grout”, the indulgence of having your clean, comfy room nearby is priceless.

What to do
Big Beard’s Adventure Tours (bigbeards. com) depart from the port of Christiansted for half- and full-day trips to scenic Buck Island National Monument, as well as sunset sails complete with rum punch. Best bet on Buck Island is snorkeling the glassy-clear water near the beautiful sand beach. Most of the Underwater Trail, or reef, featured in the tour’s second half was destroyed by a hurricane, but you will see fish like blue tang, parrotfish, and angelfish.

Where to eat
Between Food & Wine Experience events, dip into the restaurants whose dishes win regular awards at the cook-off. Among them, Tutto Bene (Boardwalk Building Hospital Street, Gallows Bay, 340.773.5229 or tuttobenerestaurant.com) where marvelous, local tomatoes from nearby Southgate Farms are worked into the
likes of an Eggplant Caprese Tower and the house’s spaghetti Bolognese, and local tilapia comes blackened and served with grilled onions. Salud (Princess Plaza, Northside Road/Route 75, 340.718.7900 or saludbistro.com) adds an Eastern Mediterranean dash to island flavors and ingredients, as in the Duck Two Ways (chargrilled breast with carrot citrus sauce, and confit with ginger-fig chutney) over coconut Israeli couscous.

Caribbean people are known for being friendly and warm, but the Food & Wine Experience offers a rare opportunity to interact with locals. You dine side by side with them, meet chefs who grew up growing their own food, learn about unusual edible plants and understand, first hand, why those who live there love St. Croix so profoundly.

The St. Croix Food & Wine experience takes place April 13-17, 2010. For information and tickets, go to stcroixfoodandwine.com.