The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

Slept in a bit this morning, that was nice. Eleanor got up early to go exploring along the beach. I eventually rose, and went to lay out by the pool at Cain and read in the sun until Eleanor was done exploring.

She got back and we headed off to Mosaic (the upscale buffet at The Cove) for brunch. Definitely the best lunch we had…figures it’d be on the last day huh? Fairly large selection of food, and lots of good stuff. Lobster, steak, actually the best tasting grouper I’ve had all trip. Definitely not like some of those insanely huge buffets where you have every food type imaginable (no chinese!) but everything there seemed to be very high quality and tasty. Which of course lead to eating far too much - maybe it was a good thing we didn’t discover it yesterday.

Given the cost of everything else so far, we were betting on whether lunch would be 50 60 or 70 dollars a person, so we for once were in for reverse sticker shock at $30. Her mediocre bento box at lunch yesterday cost more than that by itself.

After lunch Eleanor went to lounge by the beach, and I decided to get in on a little more outdoor blackjack action. It went really well, but I felt bad leaving E alone to gamble (although I’m sure she was fine) so I took a break and found her so we could go wander the gigantic property and see what there was to see (specifically the aquarium). The place sure is big, and there were some really gigantic rays in the aquarium which were neat to look at, although the water was a bit cloudy. There was a gigantic thunderstorm on the horizon at this point, and Eleanor and I had digested enough that we figured it was time to try one last water-slide. We got through just in time, as they started kicking people out of the pools right after we went down (although oddly enough the storm never actually hit) so we headed over to the pool-side blackjack for one last play (well I did, E went and sat in the pool) (oh and one more of the best pina colada’s we had there). When we got to the tables I thought they were saying two more hands until they closed, but thankfully it was two more shoes, so I sat down and it went really well again. I was quite sad to see the table close.

We’d made a late dinner reservation at Mesa Grill so it was back to the casino to try some more craps. Another positive run before dinner, and then back to The Cove where Mesa Grill is located.

Some of you may know Mesa Grill from NY, Bobby Flay’s (celebrity TV chef for all you non-food network watchers out there, all two of you) flagship restaurant. I’ve eaten there in the past, although not anytime recently, and it’s good but that neighborhood of Manhattan is particularly flush with great restaurants. But given our Jean-Georges experience, we were very interested to see how Flay fared in the Caribbean.

The restaurant itself is quite epic and stunning in design. Definitely a whole lot of money spent there, and the margaritas (shockingly the signature drink in a southwestern theme restaurant!) are made with patron silver as the house tequila. This is a good sign. And indeed the ones we had before dinner were excellent, although her white peach was a fair bit better than my regular one - and at 12 dollars for a patron margarita it seemed like a veritable bargain to boot!

For dinner I had the blue corn pancake with BBQ duck, and the pork tenderloin for my main. Eleanor had the blue crab and corn chowder followed by the goat cheese “queso fundido”. We also had a side of the southwestern fries and the black eyed peas and rice (his take on the Bahamian peas and rice). I had a hard time deciding which of our starters I liked better. Her soup was sweet and savory, quite delectable. My duck pancake was also delicious, with a sweet bbq sauce that was maybe a trifle overwhelmingly sweet, but I tend to like sweet things, so I didn’t mind so much. I will say though that the menu said that it had a scotch bonnet chile as part of the condiments and I wonder if that was left out, because scotch bonnet is quite the heat, and the one thing the dish was lacking that would have taken it from very tasty to exceptional would have been some spice to balance the sweet. Either way, quite satisfying and quite filling. Which lead me to almost cry when the tenderloin arrived (not to mention the TWO sides) and was three gigantic pieces. Sharing the dish we barely finished two of the three (and probably could have stopped at one if it wasn’t so good) - the sad part was how good it was…it made it hard to not finish it all. The pork was perhaps the best piece of fish/meat I’ve had in the Bahamas (not that that’s saying particularly much) and the bourbon chile sauce was a perfect accompaniment. I was less fond of E’s cheese dip, in flavor anyhow. It was listed as an appetizer and while it would be a good appetizer for a table of 4 to SPLIT, it was larger than my main course! Sadly (or fortunately) it was fairly uninteresting and after one taste I went back to enjoying my pork. The southwestern fries were a huge disappointment - neither the fries (which were soggy) or the seasoning (like old bay but bad) were appealing and they went largely uneaten. The peas and rice was more successful, but I found his switch from the normal rice to a pesto rice interesting but less appealing than the Bahamian original. Needless to say (yet said anyway (after all, this blog is far too short on words)), after all that food, no dessert. Restaurant gets an A in my book. Best meal we had in the Bahamas by far.

After dinner we headed back to the casino for some more craps - it wouldn’t do to try to go right to sleep on such full stomachs! We went on a roller coaster ride for a while which sadly ended up with Eleanor deciding she was done on a downswing. I stuck around a little bit longer and edged my positive day up a hair more to bring myself to even for the trip. This seemed to be a good time to head to bed - an early morning tomorrow as Eleanor wants to get a final dip in the ocean before we head to the airport at 9:30.