Fine Dining

There's a pretty big difference between the local Bonairean joints like the one I wrote about here and the stuff that caters towards ex-pats and tourists. It's less like the difference between going to Azteca and eating from a taco truck and more like the difference between no stars and five stars.

The first fancyplace we went was my parents favourite. It's called At Sea. If you peruse their menu, you can see they're big on fancy European technique and serving things "three ways".

I had the Skirt Steak duo, which was tasty, but maybe a little too fancy for me to appreciate fully. The meal started with an amuse-bouche that was a shot glass filled with a raw wahoo salad topped with lemon foam.

 

Like most restaurants in Bonaire, At Sea is open air and near the sea. They have giant umbrellas which they put up as shade from the sun. I'm not sure what they do on the rare occasion when it rains, because very few of the tables are near any sort of shelter, and the umbrellas would just drop water onto the outside tables.

 

The second fancy place we went to is fairly new to the island. Ingridients was rum-punch-party adjacent.

 

They are located directly above the sea, and are also open air. We were there around sunset, which made for some nice photo opportunities (not just for eels.)

 

One of the resort dive areas is directly below where we were seated, so we got to watch a bit of a dive lesson, and a couple head out on a night dive.  

 

 

Ingridients is big on the spectacle, several of their menu items are prepared tableside, including a truffle parmesan pasta that they make in a big parmesan wheel, adding flaming cognac to get it melty.

I took a picture every few minutes after the sun set from our table, so consider this like a do-it-yourself timelapse. They lit some bonfires out in front of one of the resorts when it got dark, which was fun to see. The lights you can see furthest to the right are near the parental homestead.

 

 

 

On the way out we were also treated to a super bright full moon. Between the fact that we were near the equator and that it was a supermoon, it looked ginormous.