What most guests do for meals (seven-night stay)
✦ The first night dinner is salad and Doxie’s roti (welcome pack)*
✦ They dine at the villa for two or three nights by hiring Doxie on the “take care of us” plan
✦ They dine at resort restaurants two or three nights
✦ The other nights, dinner is leftovers or they do their own cooking
✦ Lunches: Leftovers or eaten at restaurants while out on activities (or skipped)
✦ Breakfasts: Guests usually make their own breakfasts, but a few hire Doxie to do it for them
Click on the triangles for more information in the sections below.
Subject to availability, the welcome pack contains: a few soft and hard beverages (beer, rum punch, Coke, Sprite); some snacks (such as cheese and crackers or chips and salsa); and a dinner of one roti per person and salad.
A roti is turmeric-seasoned vegetables, with or without chicken, wrapped in a thin flour wrapper – a little like an Indian burrito. Welcome pack contents are subject to change without notice.
Restaurants
We are only a short drive (10 – 25 minutes) to a good choice of restaurants. From BBQ chicken wings with fries to crystal and white-tablecloth restaurants, you should be able to find something that meets your taste and your budget nearby. But you won’t find a fast-food restaurant or any food delivery.
Lunch is the main meal for St Lucians and the most cost-effective restaurants are open only at lunchtime. So if you are trying to maximize your food dollar, we suggest you do as the St Lucians do and have a hearty lunch at a local restaurant, then have a light dinner.
Doxie cooks for you
Doxie, our extraordinary property manager, housekeeper and cook, can make meals for you. She is an excellent St Lucian cook, but is not a formally-trained international chef. She cooks dinners in the afternoon so you can eat when you are ready.
Doxie offers two options for cooking: “just cook” and “take care of us”. Most of our guests have her “take care of them”. She accepts cash ($US or local $EC) or you can pay us with Zelle or a credit card and we’ll pay her for you (transaction fees apply).
You cook
For those of you that like to cook for yourself, we have a well-equipped kitchen and a large propane grill with an infrared burner. There is an open-air market daily and several stores (grocery, bakery, butcher) in Soufriere, a 10-minute drive from the villa. Alternatively, Doxie can shop for you and deliver the groceries for a fee. Please give her at least a days’ notice to do this for you.
As long as you are willing to buy store brands, prices are usually 20-30% higher than in the US. But if you insist on a name brand (“Cheetos” instead of “cheese curls”), you can pay twice or more what you usually pay.
For the best selection of fruits and vegetables and fresh fish, go to the open-air market in the mornings in Soufriere. There’s a fairly well stocked Massy Mini Mart near the market, and a larger Massy grocery a few minutes away from that. For meat and poultry, either go to the butcher just down the street from the Mini Mart or go to the larger Massy store. Most meat/poultry will be frozen. There’s a bakery near the church. The grocery stores take credit cards with proper identification; bring cash (preferably local) to the other stores. Liquor and wine – the Massy stores carry a limited selection.
The best selection for groceries will be at the La Tourney Massy grocery and the best selection of wines and liquor is at Uptowns. Both are between the airport and the villa.
Although the local grocery store is surprisingly well stocked, we sometimes bring food with us to be sure we get our favorite brands and flavors. We frequently buy boxes of our favorite breakfast muffin mix or brownie/cookie or cake mix and crackers and cheese at our local grocery (or Costco) in Houston, and take those in our luggage.
Contact us for how to bring meat with you. Please note poultry cannot be brought in and will be confiscated.
We have a large stainless-steel propane grill on the deck, and the kitchen is well-equipped with practically anything you need to make your meals: lots of pots and pans, cutlery, hand mixer, blenders, coffee maker, espresso/cappuccino machine, toaster, hand-crank pasta maker, rice cooker, waffle maker, and we even have an automatic ice-cream maker. The one limitation is our oven – there is no built-in oven, so we have a countertop convection oven, which works well for smaller items (muffins, a single cake layer, etc.)