Welcome back Regan! Thanks for the updates. Sounds like you had a good working-vacation :).

--Islander

Regan,

Enjoyed your restaurant summary. I think The Balconey is the most improved restaurant on STJ. We ended up dining there several times during our June trip simply because the food is terrific and the service is quite good. (not as expensive as some, but certainly not cheap)

I'm glad to see your comment to ignore the weather forecasts on weather.com etc. We are going to St. John soon and every time I checked the weather it all doom and gloom.

Out of curiousity, how do you rate bar food next to fine dining food or service for that matter? If you pay more, the service should be better as well as the the quality of the food. Burgers being compared to fine dining food kind of leaves an after taste for me. Compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

I don't mean to pick on you.
I guess I take food way too seriously.
--Chris

I tend to ignore the weather forecasts and instead rely on the Boy Scout motto, which is "Be Prepared". I'm arriving in November, and whatever the weather is...it is! (lol, like there's anything I can do about it?) That's what Gore-tex is for! And I agree with Chris, compare apples and apples. I'm certainly not serious about food...I STILL love peanut-butter and jelly. Pizza and beer to me is a gastronomic delight! But to an enthusiast, slapping down a pitcher and a pizza certainly doesn't require the expertise of an expert chef and sever.

Chris, I think Regan's review was helpful and informative, but I agree that it would have been even more helpful had she grouped the restaurants into several categories, so as to permit a more meaningful comparision. But apart from that, I have read a number of your comments on St. John restaurants and food, and I for one am glad you take food seriously. It is great to get honest assessments from somebody like you who is in the business and has a passion for food.

Chris,
You raise an excellent question, and after giving it a moment or two of thought, I realize that (at least in my mind - it could be different for others) comparing food or service between bars and fine dining establishments has everything to do with what I perceive as reasonable expectations.

To elaborate: When I walk into Skinny Legs' for example, I expect nothing more than a good burger, cooked somewhere close to the meduim rare that I ordered, and served sometime yet that same day (as advertised). If they nail it and my cheesburger is exactly medium rare, the server is attentive, notices my beer getting low and brings me another before I run out completely, etc, in my book, for a bar, that's three star performance.

When walking into a mid-range establishment, my expectations and criteria for food and service rise accordingly, and when visiting someplace like Tage, I become quite picky indeed, because I know what Ted is capable of, and my expectations are at their highest. (Btw, the same would be true for anywhere you were working as well, Chris!)

In other words, even what I would judge a mediocre ** performance at Asolare would probably still be far beyond the reach of Island Blues on their best day, but that's OK, it wouldn't be reasonable to compare the two head to head, For that matter, I'm also equally pleased with my Honda CRV and my Infiniti G35X, but they're certainly not comparable vehicles. Like different restaurants, I like them both for quite different reasons. It's all a matter of how they perform compared to reasonable expectations for the type.

So, now I'm curious: what do you all think? Fair enough? Good way to do it, or still too subjective to be useful?

Best,

Regan

P.S. I'm a HE btw, just for the record! 🙂

I understood what your ratings indicated. It gauges how well a place accomplishes what it sets out to do. It doesn't compare a really good pate stand with a mediocre fine dining restaurant. It rates how well the pate stand does in accomplishing what we'd expect of a pate stand. It doesn't compare apples to oranges. It lets us know that if we're up for an apple, this particular one is great while that isn't so hot. It doesn't compare it against oranges. I had no difficulty grasping what your comments were about. A movie rating system of "stars" is a similar kind of standard.

Regan-

I am serious about food and I found value in your review. I thought the fact that you listed $$$ was a way for us to differentiate amongst those on your report (apples to apples). A newbie to STJ's dining scene could figure that $$$ meant that the expectations should be higher than a $ - so that covers those who don't know that Uncle joe's shouldn't perform like an Asolare.

Although I don't expect the same level of service and gastronomic delight from Skinny Legs that I would from Asolare, I do expect *relatively* good service and food.

There are ways to ruin a pizza, burgers, etc. If you had gone to a barbeque place and the meat was fatty or too tough, you could have rated the food poorly. If a pizza place brings you a pizza with a burnt crust and warm beer, well, thumbs down.

While I wouldn''t expect a casual spot to shower me with attention scrape the crumbs from my table with a knife, I do expect a smile and a check every so often to see if my drinks are low or we need something. Trust me, MANY places can/will mess up on the simple things like that.

When I read your report, I looked for value in the restaurants. Because you listed the $$$ (expense factor), that told me that I should also look for and SSS where I saw . In one case, you rated a place with $$$ and only ** and SS. Well, that place might not represent as good a value as one that would have $$$ and ***. Conversely, you've rated a place with $, **, SSS. Sounds like a good value. NO, I wouldn't expect SSS here to mean the same as SSS at a $$$ place, but I would expect it to be much better than most other $ places.

Anyway, that's just how I interpreted your review and I was delighted to see that you had posted one in this fashion because it gives a nice snapshot.

And, since we're talking about the VI (where restaurant reviews can sometimes be as useful as a weather report because service levels and food are often so inconsistent) I would love to compare this to your next trip down and your review of these same places, or someone else's review in this same fashion.

Regarding the groupings: I wonder if Chris and Stefan would want it grouped by $$$ or some other, additional factor. How would we categorize the fine dining places, if not by $$$ factor? What makes them "fine dining"? Need some help from our restaurant friends here.

Now I'm really hungry! I agree with you all that its an apples to oranges thing. Its really pretty difficult because we're apples and oranges people when you think about it. I constantly ask for recommendations for "good" restaurants near where I work in Providence, and despite my qualifying it (some place where its not exceedingly loud, the waitress won't start with "how are WE tonight?", the salad doesn't come in a plastic bowl with dressing in a plastic cup, and the wine list actually exists and has wine outside of Calif) I still consistently get recommendations for "good" restaurants that please the orange while I'm the apple (or is the other way around). I know I'm picky and part of it comes from being a part-time assistant chef to a very high-end catering company where I'm surrounded by the best food when I work with them.

So for you true, snobby (I mean that in very complimentary ways) foodies- where is the best food/romance place in STJ for a dinner and BTW- how about Seattle as I'm going there in October for a conference and need a $$$ restaurant to go to with some collegues? Thanks, the self-proclaimed foodie Queen of Boston and Prov

FYI, considering the following:
"Ferries: There is now a $2 per bag charge for transporting luggage on the ferries. Also, the picture ID requirement for boarding was not uniformly enforced, but be prepared in case the security folks are bored."

The MARSEC2 status was recently reduced back to MARSEC1, which means that the ID will no longer be examined for each passenger. But, as Regan said, have it anyway. That is also the word from the local head of Homeland Security.

Oh, and there is now a temporary fuel surcharge, which raises St. John ferry fares $1. Read all about it in the VI Daily News: http://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/index.pl/article_home?id=7784545

Neat report, I enjoy reading them as a local, especially if there's someplace I've never been.

I was a chef on St. John for three years. I would have to say that having my life's work compared to bar food is kind of insulting. I didn't take it that way but an outsider reading it might think that Asolare is comparable to Skinny Legs. I would just have made a grouping for the fine dining and paired them together.
The great thing about restaurants is that everyone has tastes and each person's experience will be different. I would say that the best places for fine dining food is between Tage and Chloe and Bernard's. I say that with a biased tongue because I was the head chef at Chloes but I don't think I would say it unless I felt that way. Ted's food is great. Tim at Chloes, my former sous chef, has taken my menu and made some nice changes. I think Tim is going places and I recommended him to take over for me. I was happy that he did. He has my passion and drive. It's not easy to give your baby up for adoption but that's how it felt.

I have always taken it as a compliment if someone said my food was as good or better than Tage but I never believed it and I always try for better. I am excited for Chloes, still, because I think people are truly suprised when they dine there. Tage has some real competition. Sorry, Ted! ~WalleyeCody

Bluewater, in answer to your question, price is one possible criterion for grouping restaurants, but I still think it is preferable to group by type of restaurant, because prices can vary within a single type of restaurant. Bar food at one restaurant may be higher priced than bar food at another restaurant, for example. I think "Fine Dining" and "Bar Food" are useful categories, and I would probably add at least one other category such as "Family Eateries," to include restaurants like the North Drop and Dottie's Front Porch, both of which I happen to like a great deal. Perhaps there could be another category for "Quick Local Lunch Spots," which would include places like the Ideal Restaurant/Deli in downtown St. Thomas, which makes tasty and inexpensive rotis and curried chicken dishes. There may be some disagreement about which category a particular restaurant belongs in, but in the main I think there would be broad agreement.