The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

So this morning we checked out of Compass Point and said our fond farewells to head over to it’s antithesis – the mega-resort Atlantis. I’ll admit, as nice as the secluded and calm environs had been, I was ready for the change of pace to the tourist activity mecca that we’d visited the other day. I was prepared to shift gears.

What I wasn’t prepared for was The Cove. When we’d been there two days ago, we were in the main part of the resort, which was very much a theme park, and flooded (as we found out from our cabbie) with a 3,000 person mexican tour group. The Cove (the only section of the resort we could get a room) opened up 6 months ago, and is the somewhat secluded extremely upscale portion of the resort. And boy is it upscale. From the moment we arrived, we realized this was something different than we expected. I’ve been in a lot of nice hotels, and the entrance lobby to this one is the nicest I’ve ever seen, and the room was huge and really well appointed – at least on par with anywhere else I’ve stayed. The whole place reminded us strongly of the St. Regis on Bora Bora (where we most definitely did not stay, but had dinner at one night when we were there).

Now that we realized that we were staying at a 5 star resort, and not a theme park, we looked at each other and promptly decided to see how easy it would be to change our flight from Friday to Saturday (thankfully easy) and to book another night (lesson, book through expedia! The hotel wanted to charge us $200 more a night than the exact same room cost through expedia!). Thankfully both worked out, so now you all get to see one more day of Bahamian blogging. Lucky you?

After sorting out our extended stay, we decided to check out the adults only cove pool, which we could see slightly from our window, that looked quite swank. Swank it was, it was like we were at the pool at the Shore Club in South Beach (well minus most of the people – this is the off-season), with a bonus – they have a small pool-side casino with blackjack and craps!

Of course it had been sunny all day up until the point we went to check out the pool – at which point there were some ominous clouds rolling in. Thankfully it was time for lunch, so we went to the small covered restaurant at Cain and sat down for lunch just as the sky opened up around us with a torrential downpour. The food was ok, better than the lunch we had last time we were here, but as seems to be the theme of the place, extremely overpriced and not of the best quality. I had a 17 dollar hamburger that was basted in a bbq sauce and topped with blue cheese. The burger was gigantic, about a third again as big as the bun it sat on, and they very impressively managed to cook it the medium-rare that I asked for – although in hindsight don’t order a frozen beef patty anything but medium-well. Something troubling about beef with the texture of medium-rare but brown all the way through. Eleanor got the tartar bento box, which was a stratospheric 36 dollars. A very pretty presentation, but as with most of the fish here, it tasted like it had been frozen and was of lower quality. Still, not a bad lunch, and our timing was pretty perfect – as the rain let up and the sky cleared right as we were finishing up.

After lunch we got a little sun and digestion by the pool, after which we decided it was time to explore the water park a bit. After reconnoitering we realized there was no place to put all our stuff (other than leaving it all on a beach chair, which we learned actually does appear to be a safe thing to do), so we headed back up to the room and headed down for some good old fashioned adrenaline rush.

We decided to to go on one of the water slides before heading out on the lazy river, and headed up into the “Tower of Power.” Upon reaching the top we realized that of the 4 slides only one of them didn’t require a tube – so down it we went. Hoooleeeee Shiiiiiit! I was most definitely not prepared for that one, it was about a 15 second almost straight vertical plummet, alternating from the pitch black, to the light back to pitch black. It definitely got my heart pounding – far and away the scariest of the rides we tried. We then did take a ride around the river in a tube, and it was actually a lot more fun than I anticipated, there was a decent current and a lot of rapids…not exactly a boring lazy river – but not an adrenaline rush either. Of the three other slides in the tower, two were too tame for my taste (although I admit I might have been spoiled by the first slide) although the third tube ride was a blast as you went down a steep drop and then promptly flew upwards until flying back down in a pitch black tunnel. And then once the ride is over you get to ride a fun rapids in the river before disembarking. We went back for seconds on that one together.

After all those rides we both decided that maybe it was time to relax a bit and we headed back over to Cain to relax by the pool. Well E relaxed by the pool, I was quickly overcome by the temptation of the outdoor craps table. Something very appealing about coming out of the pool, towing off and then throwing some dice. It didn’t hurt that the dice were rolling well, and when they sadly shut the tables down at a little past 5 (they normally close the pool-side casino at 6) because there was another of those pesky thunderstorms coming (this one didn’t actually come down directly on us, but it did cause the power to surge on and off a few time and it sure looked nasty out over the town and the ocean from our room!) it seemed it was time to go get dressed for our turn to dine at Dune at the Ocean Club (the original upscale bahamas resort, which is either owned by Atlantis or has some co-op deal where they share facilities), which will make this the third country we’ve dined in a Jean-Georges restaurant (New York(USA(duh)) in several of his restaurants, and Bora Bora at the St. Regis, about two weeks after the restaurant had opened there).

After killing some time at the casino with blackjack for me and slots for her (I lost a bit of my afternoon craps winnings back – she somehow won $50(?) playing penny slots – go figure) it was off to the Ocean Club.

In contrast to The Cove, with it’s very modern and cool vibe, The Ocean Club has an old world plantation vibe. Incredibly nice, but lots of whites, and ceiling fans and everything is on a much more flat and spread out scale, but quite elegant.

Dune was decorated in much the same style as Lagoon (Jean-Georges Bora Bora restaurant) although it lacked the glass bottomed floor through to the ocean, and had a somewhat less formal feeling to it. The wine list was both painfully expensive and surprisingly short. Seeing 15 dollar bottles of wine on the menu for 80 dollars makes me cringe, so we started out with some signature cocktails. Mine was quite blue. Disturbing. For starters eleanor had a crab cake that I thought was quite good, it had a hard crusting to it from what I’m assuming is a deep fryer and the crab meat inside of it was moist. I had the thai shrimp and egg noodle dish. The shrimp were good, and the sauce left my entire mouth on fire, but the noodles, while plentiful, were clearly not fresh made and had the flavor and consistency of cheap ramen. Dish wasn’t awful, but it felt more like something I’d expect to get at a street cart in east asia not at a gourmet restaurant.

In between our appetizer and main course I got to engage in a lively discussion with the waiter as three times I tried to order a bottle of wine only to be told they were out of it. The wine list has about 50 bottles on it, 10 or so under $100…so being out of three of those, not to mention it taking about 15 minutes to figure this out was unfortunate. Finally settled on a Charles Krug Cabernet, which was good, a strong cabernet expression with lots of tobacco, chocolate and red fruit.

Timing of the meal was also a bit strange, as we waited a long time to get our drinks at the start, yet they presented our mains about 20 seconds after clearing our appetizers, and before we’d even been served our wine.

Main course was a Mahi Mahi dish for eleanor that I can’t say I was terribly fond of…the little of it I had, the fist was somewhat dry and the sauce was strange and not to my taste. I had the peking duck, with a side of asparagus, tarot and shitake mushrooms and a sweet onion accompaniment. The duck itself was decent, although sadly the skin had none of the wonderful crispiness that usually goes with peking duck. Adding the sweet onion to the duck actually made the flavors quite pleasing. The side dish I wasn’t so fond of…the vegetables didn’t taste particularly fresh to me and the flavor of it all was pretty much just butter.

The waiter, feeling bad for our wine troubles, gave us dessert on the house, Eleanor had a panna cotta in a melon soup…I didn’t much care for the panna cotta or it’s broth, but I’m beginning to think I just really don’t like Jean-Georges flavor combinations. I had the thai sunday. The ice cream and the whipped cream were good, the tamarind(?) butterscotch topping (that was at the bottom of the sunday) I found inedible, so I’m glad it was all tightly packed in the bottom of the glass.

As you can guess, I was extremely less than impressed with Dune. I had much the same feelings about his new york restaurants as well. It seemed like there were a lot of intense flavors that were just out of tune. Lagoon in Bora Bora seemed to be much more on note, and there were a lot of similar flavors there that seemed in balance, and were delicious. That the restaurant had only been open two weeks leads me to think that more than any other celebrity chef with a far flung empire, Jean-Georges cuisine doesn’t lend itself well to being out of his hands, as it’s less forgiving than most if the flavor balance is off. Still, an interesting experiment and while our stomachs may not have been in heaven, our minds were fulfilled.

After dinner we headed back in to the casino to see if we could continue our luck at craps. Sadly this time Eleanor discovered the flip side of winning with me, and we didn’t last terribly long and headed off to bed to nurse our losses and rest up for our last day in the sun.