The Inquiring Iguana spends too much time surfing various forums where
island visitors are eager to get the inside story on what’s happening on island. Here’s some of what he’s heard recently.
21st Century island visitors are not eating in the island’s restaurants as much as tourists use to. Comments on TripAdvisor.com suggest there’s some truth to this. There are lots of questions and answers about bringing your own food.
CandymanJim spells it out, writing, "We did all our shopping at Cost U Less (on the way to the rental villa). This saved our group of nine almost half, compared to buying at Starfish Market." And Connecticut BeachGirl
said she packed food in coolers with freezer bags of ice and brought
along a suitcase full of ice tea mix, coffee, sugar, cereal, and
pancake mix.
While Starfish gets good marks for convenience, I luv stj offered, "For 1/2 the price of groceries at Dolphin or
Starfish, go where the locals go – Pine Peace Market, just past the
E&C gas station. Great place to stock up on rum, beer, soda and
snacks."
Interesting but not surprising. You folks have built wonder villas and have some great kitchens. Why not use them. We actually bring down some of those nice steaks found at Costco. More about quality then about price.
Let’s see
1. Parking is a hassle in CB
2. Meals ain’t cheap
3. Nice kitchens and appliances
4. Your at your villa and ponder whether or not it’s worth the trip to CB after a tiring day at the beach sleeping.
Solution: Moratorium on building permits that include a kitchen.
Personally, it is the trend we are participating in ourselves.
We have gone from eating out every lunch and dinner (past 7 trips) to actually planning on cooking in at least half the time for our upcoming trip.
We are motivated by:
1. High prices combined with poor food/service experienced one too many times.
2. Travel back into town, parking, etc. after a long day
3. 100% agree with Allan – great kitchens and outdoor living areas. We want to take better advantage of the great house we are renting.
We will be putting in an order to our butcher to package and freeze our meat and taking a cooler along this year. (motivated by quality, not price)
Parking in Cruz Bay is our number 1 reason for not going out to eat and staying at the rental villa.
Who wants to drive around town over and over hoping to get lucky finding a parking spot?
Hey guys bail out on on the hassle in STJ. I have no $$ interest in this post. Check out central america for activities, value and friendly people. Look at Honduras,Costa Rica and Beliza. They resemble STJ in the early 90’s -late 80’s . I wonder if the webmaster will post this?
Eating out on St john is very expensive. Don’t forget to include the price of a rental car, or the cab ride to and from town.We just talked about that with people we go down with every year in January. We are either going to start bringing down some food or at least buy some things down there and eat in. The markets are expensive also but still cheaper then eating out. Plus how bad is the traffic going to be with the construction of that rotary????