Allez a l’ouest, jeune homme, au St. Tropez!
Translation: “Go west, young man, to the St. Tropez”
We found ourselves in Frederiksted the other night. We had gone to a meeting and needed dinner afterward. The meeting was a brainstorming session about an upcoming event on St. Croix. It will be about Racism and Xenophobia. More on that in a future post.
It had been a looong time since we’d been to Le St. Tropez, the French restaurant in F’sted. I think last time was for carnival parade day 2007. Lesley usually reserves a large table and invites all he friends to sit and rest with a cocktail and hors d’oeuvre when the mood strikes. It’s a cool tradition. But it had been even longer since I’d had dinner there.
We arrived between 7:30 and 8 pm and there were only two other diners in the place. Tom was our waiter, owner Danielle was tending bar, and chef Willy was relaxing before it was time for him to return to the kitchen.
We sat and ordered a bottle of La Vielle Ferme, a lovely and affordable French red wine, while we perused the chalkboard menu. Everything sounded wonderful and we finally decided to try the French onion soup, the blue cheese salad, the escargots and a brochette of shrimp and scallops over rice and veggies.
I love the ambiance in the little courtyard and the coziness of the indoor bar area. It feels so European and comfortable with soft lighting and rustic decor.
Tom quickly brought us a nice basket of crunchy French bread with real butter (not those foo-foo butters with honey and crap like we’re starting to see everywhere). Mmmm!
The soup was perfect, hearty and flavorful with plenty of melted cheese spilling out over the sides of the crock. And the salad fresh with crisp lettuce and veggies and a mountain of blue cheese. Lots of food!
By the time the entrées arrived, I was pretty full, but I sacrificed and persevered, eating all but three of my snails. Michael shared a couple of bites of the shrimp and scallops with me. Magnifique! Since we oh-so-rarely get out to the west end to enjoy the gastronomical delights of authentic French cuisine, we saved our left-overs and ordered the crème Martine for dessert. It is like a crème brulée, but with a chocolate ganache and raspberry sauce topped with whipped cream and toasted almonds. Ooh la la! We asked for coffee, but Tom forgot, and we were finished dessert and didn’t need it by the time we reminded him. I thought it was just taking a while to brew….Oh well, it was still fabulous.
Le St. Tropez in Frederiksted is definitely worth the trip for lunch or dinner!
For more photos see Le St. Tropez gallery
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Honey butter is wrong. Each can easily stand on it’s own.
Butter is so great. Honey is wonderful. Honey and butter on a biscuit is divine.
Honey butter is as perverse as peanut butter and jelly in the same jar.
That’s like everyone is coming out with lime flavored beer now. No. A lime in a Corona, ok. I don’t want a squirt of lime flavor in my beer though.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to hijack your post.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:16 am
That dessert sounds amazing!!!
April 26th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
do you have any more details about the racism thing,i’d very much like to attend or help
April 27th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Hi Ladlie - there will be a day-long conference at UVI (we think) on May 11 (we think).
We had been getting e-mails from ACRRA about “The Truth About Transfer Day” thing that they had in St. John, but we couldn’t go to that. And listening to Roger Morgan’s show, I was feeling another rift in the community because of the incident at Smuggler’s. So I heard about a meeting at Pier 69 on Monday and decided to go, so I could listen to the concerns of the people in attendance and try to get involved in helping to eliminate racism in our community.
Strange, but we haven’t gotten any e-mails from the organizers since. But as soon as we hear anything, I will post about it.
October 22nd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
[...] island family has also just lost Andre Ducrot of Le St. Tropez. We are terribly sorry for his wife, Danielle, and son, [...]