Anguilla: Straw Hat at Frangipani (April 2016)

My spouse and I dined at Straw Hat for lunch on a weekday in late April 2016. The restaurant is open daily for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, although reservations are accepted for dinner only. Off-street complimentary parking is available in the hotel parking lot, which is used both by hotel guests and restaurant patrons.

Straw Hat, located at the Frangipani Resort, offers panoramic views of Meads Bay from the restaurant deck. (The pale-pink Mediterranean-style Frangipani property is our first choice of lodging should we ever return to Anguilla. On this visit, we stayed at Cuisinart, which was too large, impersonal, and all-inclusive-feeling for our taste.) Note that although the Straw Hat restaurant has been in business since the mid-1990s, it was not always located at Frangipani Resort. Previously, it occupied space in Forest Bay until 2008. The Straw Hat restaurant appeared on Conde Nast Traveler’s “50 Best New Restaurants in the World” list in 1999, and it has been a hit with customers ever since. Straw Hat, like nearly all waterside restaurants on Anguilla, is primarily open-air, with tables positioned on the deck under a roof as well as out in the open beneath palm trees (the exposed tables use umbrellas for shade during the daytime). The restaurant also keeps a few tables “indoors” near the small bar. If you dine at the restaurant, you are invited to use their complimentary beach chairs and umbrellas (however, restaurant guests may NOT use the lovely beachside pool at Frangipani). Chandeliers that utilize straw hats as shades are an adorable decorative touch, in keeping with the name of the restaurant, and some of the servers wear large straw hats as well. The restaurant must be even more attractive at night, lit by candles and white string lights.

Straw Hat serves Caribbean and American cuisine, and it is delicious! We had some of our tastiest food of our entire 9-day Caribbean trip during our lunch at Straw Hat. (In fact, our food was so good that we debated returning on another day, although we did not because we wanted to try a variety of restaurants instead.) We shared the delicious conch fritters as a starter, which the chef served with tomato jam/relish. As main dishes, we ordered the shrimp/lobster taco starter (which was fantastic; the tacos were topped with mango crème fraiche and aioli, as well as herbs and shredded veggies) and the curried goat entrée (Straw Hat was the only restaurant on Anguilla that offered goat on the menu, so we there was no question that we would order it; the delectable dish was served with rice and peas). For dessert, we shared the yummy Kahlua ice cream pie (with a chocolate cookie crust and toasted almonds).

Our lunch at Straw Hat was one of our favorite meals on Anguilla – gorgeous scenery, great food, and attentive staff.















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