ESSENTIALS THE BEST PLACES TO STAY AND EAT

Getting there

British Airways (0844 493 0787; ba.com) flies from Gatwick to St Kitts twice a week, from £555 return.

Where to stay

double rooms at Ocean Terrace Inn (001 869 465 2754; ocean terraceinn.com), inset right, cost from £246 with breakfast. Belle Mont Farm (001 869 465 7388; bellemont farm.com) has one-bedroom guesthouses from £556 with breakfast.

double rooms at Oualie Beach Resort (001 869 469 9735; oualiebeach.com) cost from £158 room only. Double rooms at Montpelier Plantation and Beach (001 869 469 3462; montpeliernevis.com) cost from £386 with breakfast. Two-bedroom villas at Paradise Beach (001 869 469 7900; paradisebeach nevis.com) cost from £683.

Where to eat

Spice Mill, Cockleshell Bay Beach (001 869 762 2160; spicemill restaurant. com); Sprat Net, Old Road (001 869 661 1901); The Kitchen, Belle Mont Farm. Double Deuce, Pinney’s Beach (001 869 469 2222; doubledeucenevis. com); Oualie Beach Resort; Restaurant 750, Montpelier Plantation and Beach, half-day cookery classes cost £86 per person.

Information

Download the free Telegraph Travel app for St Kitts (see panel) and visit telegraph.co.uk/travel to read Nigel Tisdall’s expert guides to St Kitts and Nevis. Useful websites are stkittstourism.kn and nevisisland.com.

Paulette and Montgomery Fredericks, left, cook a sensational Caribbean breakfast; and Pinney’s Beach on Nevis, below then defrosted slowly in a fridge,” says Brisbane, “you can’t tell the difference.” This is a policy endorsed by Stéphane Caumont, the French executive chef at the classy Montpelier Plantation & Beach hotel on Nevis, who takes me into his walk-in freezer to show me rows of frozen local lobster that will be served in his elegant restaurant with gingered vegetables and cilantro yogurt.

“This is pretty much an organic island,” he enthuses, and visitors with a passion for cooking can join him for a half-day lesson making piquant dishes such as cucumber and lemon grass gazpacho and red snapper with an island salsa. What makes this particularly enjoyable is that, unlike so many cookery courses that use purpose-built spaces, this takes place in the hotel kitchen while the rest of his cheery staff are prepping lunch.

Caumont isn’t the only French cook finding inspiration here. “Try the fish bread. It’s delicious,” advises the taxi driver who takes me up to Belle Mont Farm, a luxury resort set on a 400-acre organic farm in the north of St Kitts. Here Normandyborn executive chef Christophe Letard ponders this strange dish, then decides it must refer to the snapper coulibiac (fish wrapped in pastry) that features in the 30-dish champagne Sunday brunch he serves in The Kitchen restaurant. If you like gourmet delights, this is the place to go (his Spanish number two is ex-El Bulli), with treats that include lemon grass-poached lobster and mahi mahi tiradito, a Peruvian-style ceviche made here using passion fruit.

Ironically, while many visitors, like myself, fly in craving that super-fresh, sea-to-plate experience, most locals have no problem with imported fish. Their national dish is stewed salt fish, a legacy from the 17th century when dried and salted cod from Atlantic Canada was traded for sugar, molasses and rum. A good way to try it is as part of a sensational Caribbean breakfast offered by Paradise Beach, a new villa resort on Nevis where local chefs Paulette and Montgomery Fredericks come in to cook it before your eyes, along with fried plantain, johnny cakes (cornmeal buns) and fresh juices made from guavas and cherries from their back garden.

When I look at their marvellous spread, I think how boring it is that we so often just squeeze a bit of lemon on our fish while here they merrily adorn it with mangoes, papaya, peppers and tomato. But that’s the glory of the Caribbean, where life’s a full-colour whirl of sunny beaches, easy rhythms and charismatic people – and, let’s hope, plenty more fish in the sea.