Anguilla: Jacala (April 2016)

My spouse and I visited Jacala for lunch on a weekday in late April 2016. Jacala is open for lunch and dinner on Wednesdays through Sundays (the restaurant closes on Mondays and Tuesdays). Parking is available in their dedicated parking lot. Jacala offers its restaurant patrons complimentary use of their beach set-ups before and/or after they dine.

Jacala, owned by a man named Jacques, enjoys a prime beachfront location on Meads Bay, and it offers great views of the sand and ocean. The small open-air dining room, which holds about 36 people at well-spaced tables, features overhead fans to cool the space. This restaurant was conceived by two former employees from nearby Malliouhana (whose restaurant at the time was called “Michel Rostang”, now just called “The Restaurant”). Jacala is well-respected: Martha Stewart once called it her “new favorite Caribbean restaurant”, and in 2014, its chef Alain was named one of the top 25 chefs in the Caribbean.

Jacala serves French and Caribbean cuisine. We did not order a starter on the day that we dined; however, the restaurant delivers a complimentary breadbasket, along with three spices for dipping. As main courses, we ordered the lobster tortilla and the salad nicoise. The lobster tortilla (served with a small salad) was intriguing and unusual, arriving as sort of a cake/large muffin that was accented by an amazing coconut sauce. (When we saw the word “tortilla” on them menu, we envisioned some sort of wrap, so we were pleasantly surprised when the dish arrived, and even happier when we tasted it. As it turns out, a “tortilla” is a traditionally Spanish dish similar to an omelet that contains egg, potato, onion, and protein. How delicious!) For the salad, our waiter inquired as to whether we would like fresh or canned (tinned) tuna on top, and of course, we said “fresh”! (We are still perplexed that they asked about the tuna – who would not want slices of seared rare tuna instead of something pre-packaged and mass-produced?) For dessert, the host presents the menu on a chalkboard. With so many delicious options, it was difficult to make a choice, but we decided on the rum baba, which was a little vanilla cake filled with banana sorbet, topped with whipped cream (which did not seem home-made), and set atop a rum sauce. When we finished our meal, the host brought offered samples of house-made rum as a digestif, which was a lovely way to end a great meal!