Anguilla: Tokyo Bay at CuisinArt (April 2016)

My spouse and I dined at Tokyo Bay at Cuisinart for dinner on a Saturday evening in late April 2016. When we planned our 4-night stay at the resort, we did not intend to dine at Tokyo Bay, instead choosing to eat at Cusiniart’s AAA 4-diamond restaurant Le Bistro Santorini; however, on Saturday evenings, Santorini offers only a $95 per person BBQ buffet, which we were not interested to eat. Initially, we overlooked Tokyo Bay because we thought that it only offered a hibachi/Teppanyaki menu; however, we could not have been more mistaken! Upon further investigation, we noticed online that Tokyo Bay offers an a la carte menu of both raw and cooked dishes, cold and hot dishes, ramen, Teppanyaki (hibachi), as well as 6-course and 9-course chef’s tasting menus. (We love Japanese omakase tasting menus! In Japanese, “omakase” means “in the chef’s hands”, so the chef chooses what you will eat and in what order.)

What further strengthened our desire to dine at Tokyo Bay was our successful pre-dining investigative visit to the restaurant, which is located on the third floor of the “spa building”. (The first floor contains a gift shop, locker rooms, hamam [steam room], and some treatment rooms.) Take the elevator to the third floor, where you emerge into a chic and sophisticated dining room! Although there is one hibachi table located towards the back of the room, the middle of the room contains the spotlessly clean open kitchen and the sushi bar area, and the front of the room contains elegant table dining. Two outdoor terraces (one with a bar) are accessed from opposite ends of the restaurant space. Tokyo Bay boasts that it is the only completely enclosed (air-conditioned) restaurant on Anguilla! A DJ plays music on Friday evenings. We chose to eat at the sushi bar so that we could watch the chefs at work.

We ordered the 9-course Chef Joe’s tasting menu, which costs approximately $165 per person (a smaller 6-course tasting menu costs $125). Our tasting meal at Tokyo Bay was the highlight of our entire Caribbean vacation! The entire restaurant staff treated us like royalty! Chef Joe Richardson comes to Anguilla by way of Las Vegas, where he worked at SushiSamba (in Las Vegas at the Venetian) and Bar Masa (also in Las Vegas at the Aria). Chef Joe trained at Le Cordon Bleu. The chef artfully designed and innovatively presented each dish. Some of our courses follow. We only wish that we had requested a printed menu so that we could exactly remember every course and ingredient.

• Tomato ceviche with yuzu, olive oil, togarashi yuzu powder, and puffed rice (the tomatoes are grown at Cuisinart’s hydroponic farm)
• Koal keel grilled tuna, topped with fried Chinese noodles and served on a banana leaf (in Anguilla, charcoal is still made the old-fashioned way, by building a "koal keel" of wood and dirt that slowly burns the wood down to charcoal)

• Snapper with Ponzu gelée and cucumber strings
• Tuna with foie gras, sherry unagi reduction, gold leaf
• Salmon sashimi with pickled onion, garlic ponzu
• Tokyo Bay kamikaze roll with shrimp tempura, spicy tuna, unagi sauce
• Miso crème brulee (This was the only course that did not “knock our socks off”.)

Our meal at Tokyo Bay was the highlight of our stay not only at Cuisinart, but on our entire 9-day vacation to St Barth and Anguilla. The quality of the food, and the service that we received from every one of the employees at Tokyo Bay is truly exemplary.

A meal at Tokyo Bay (and in particular, participating in the 9-course tasting menu) should be a must on any visitor’s list!