Flamands Part II

It was our fourth evening on St. Barths and my father and I had only gone out to eat once. This was a routine influenced by the obscene and garish price of anything served. On that night we decided that we would go out again, so my father suggested La Langustiere at La Hotel de Petit Anse located at the end of Flamands Beach. My father indicated that this was an old time place that he was familiar with and we could walk there. Reservations were made and shortly after we walked down the road past the Creole restaurant and some islanders’ houses to the end of a dark driveway. The hotel and the restaurant sit perched right on the beach and upon arriving the whole place radiated a calming sense of age and family. A young woman warmly greeted us. I mentioned our name and the reservation, which she confirmed by looking out at the several vacant tables in the dinner room.

As the name suggests this is a place that specializes in lobster. The lobsters are on display in large glass tanks facing the guests. The creatures were the spiny and armored relatives of the crustaceans I was used to in New England. They bunched up in the corners of the tank or latched on the walls, attempting to find some shelter in the impending glare of phosphorescent light and hungry diners. There was something a little too barbaric about the whole thing to pursue the house dish. Also it reminded me of the marginal restaurants that populate Chinatown in New York, those that specialize in various sea creatures swimming in a pool of algae and excrement. The tank here was immaculate, but it was the whole enterprise of the thing that spoiled it for me.

A handsome woman looking to be in her sixties approached our table with two menus. This was obviously the matriarch of the facility. She was tall and tanned with short gray hair and a strong jaw. She wore a simple but elegant black dress that fit her form. The older woman greeted us and my father introduced himself and called her by name to establish a familiar tone, although it was not entirely clear if the woman recognized us.

There is something about businesses with history and family control that put me at ease. This place was in stark contrast to the more slick and modern restaurants around the island that catered to Americans seeking the exclusive and expensive allure depicted for them in magazines at home. Such restaurants and hotels are oriented for people who take stock in spending money in places that their friends might have heard about or cited in an article that they may of read. We were not in such a place and this meant something to me. The following scene that played out furthered this sentiment. Annie had donned a leather glove in her left hand and in her right was wielding a net, not unlike one used to catch butterflies. Standing on the toes of her high- heel shoes, black dress extended, she swooped the net around the tank as the lobsters scrambled for their lives. She did this with little exertion or emotion. Yet the task was not simple at all. Even if she managed to surround a lobster in the net, their strong tails rocketed them out if not quickly lifting them from the water. Once on land a few lobsters crawled out of the plastic crate on the floor, forcing the owner to chase after them. I sat and took in this scene, well aware that I would not see a black dress chase a lobster anywhere else.