The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Fishing for compliments in St Kitts
Chefs and fishermen are working on new ways to win plenty of plaudits from food lovers, says Nigel Tisdall
‘The call might come as early as 6am from a guy called Shotgun,” says Roger Brisbane, owner of upmarket Spice Mill restaurant on Cockleshell Bay Beach, St Kitts. “He’ll have been fishing all night and could have a big box of snapper he’ll land in the next 20 minutes. If I want it, I’ll have to jump in my car and race to meet his boat with a cool-box. Some days I drive 60 miles up and down this island chasing fresh fish for my customers.”
Given the bountiful waters surrounding the islands of the Caribbean, you’d have thought that enjoying one of its classic experiences – sitting by the sea in the sun, tucking into some freshly grilled fish to a lilting reggae soundtrack – would be straightforward enough. But sadly it isn’t. As a frequent visitor to this alluring region, I’ve suffered far too many meals where the “catch of the day” has been nothing of the sort, where the spiny lobster has been cooked to rubber and the locally caught mahi mahi smothered in industrial sauce. In one luxury resort I was once cautioned that, God forbid, my fish “will be served still with its head and tail on”. You can see how things ended up like this. Hotels and restaurants want ease and consistency – and, frankly, a lot of their customers are not that discerning. Imported frozen seafood and fish fillets, simple to prepare with no nasty bones, can fit the bill nicely. At the other end, being a Caribbean fisherman is no soft ride. Long hours, dangerous waters, rudimentary equipment and no certainty of a profit hardly make this a must-have job today. Last summer, two fishermen from St Kitts were hit by a freak wave six miles out to sea. One drowned while the other made an epic, 12-hour swim home. Such tales make you appreciate what efforts can lie behind the simplest of holiday pleasures. Brisbane always saves his best fish for dinner and when I taste some of his tuna, caught the day before by Shotgun, I’m in ecstasy. We all have our own foodie wonderlands, and fresh tuna is one of mine. Of course, it has to be cooked right too, in this case briefly pan-seared in coconut oil. So how does the traveller find such heavenly moments? On a recent 10-day trip to St Kitts and Nevis, I decided to order fish at every suitable occasion and ask about its provenance. The results were heartening. These are clearly islands where the locals still bother to go fishing.
One surprise was the increasing prevalence of lionfish on menus. This new king of the reefs has to be hand-caught by spearfishing, and is an invasive, venomous and fastproliferating monster. Originally from the Pacific and Indian oceans, it is gobbling up native species at a frightening rate. It’s worth tasting, and not just for the satisfaction of devouring a vicious predator. The flesh is white, delicate and innocuous, and chefs have creative ways to liven it up. At Serendipity, a spacious terrace restaurant overlooking Basseterre, the St Kitts capital, they like to serve it pan-seared with bok choy and brandy cream sauce. Next door, at the recently opened Ocean Terrace Inn, you can have it for breakfast, marinated with coconut and accompanied by eggs, beans, breadfruit and plantain fritter.
Another revelation is that you don’t have to pay a fortune to enjoy the fruits of these seas. The Caribbean spiny lobster makes a useful barometer. This species is clawless, so you only eat the tail, which is normally grilled and served with garlic butter sauce – although at Spice Mill they use curried butter.
The most extravagant way to eat it is at the Four Seasons Resort Nevis, which offers a “Dive and Dine” experience for £1,337 where you can don a wetsuit and lasso your own with the help of a dive master, then have a lesson in grilling it from the chef.
Visit a restaurant in a four-star hotel and you’ll pay around £35, but if you’re happy to dine in a glorified seaside shed with a live reggae or soca band, head for Sprat Net on the west coast of St Kitts. Family-run by local fishermen whose motto is “we eat the one we catch”, a grilled lobster here can cost as little as £13 (excluding tip). It will come with a baked potato and corn on the cob and be served without ceremony on bare wooden tables with paper plates and plastic cutlery. It’s good too, but just don’t ask for wine or dessert – there isn’t any.
“Do you freeze your lobster?” I ask Alison Spencer, part of the Sprat Net team. She laughs at the suggestion. “Ours turnover so fast we never have time,” she explains. The issue of freezing fish causes a lot of customer confusion, and in an ideal world it would be avoided, which is exactly