As we rented a private villa, we sometimes ate dinner there by reheating leftovers or getting a pizza to go if we didn’t feel like heading into town.  However, we did eat at several restaurants in Cruz Bay (the main town on St. John) and over at Coral Bay on the other side of the island.  The good news is that about 90%u of the restaurants have reopened already and with the decreased number of tourists visiting, you can pretty much get a table anywhere and whenever you want.  Pre-hurricane, you really needed reservations everywhere unless you wanted to wait an hour plus for a table so that was one positive, I guess.

We had dinner reservations for the day we arrived, which was also my birthday! We ate at The Terrace, which is probably the nicest/fanciest restaurant on the island and serves French food with Caribbean influences.  It also has a second level terrace with view of Cruz Bay.  Steve and I loved our dinner here – he had the steak au poivre and I had a seared mahi mahi and we started with oysters rockefeller.  They have a great cocktail menu as well and are the only restaurant on the island with a Wine Spectator award so they have a great wine list.  Highly recommend.

A few days later we drove across the island to Coral Bay and visited Skinny Legs Bar & Grill.  Skinny Legs is a super casual beach hut that’s known for its burgers.  Of course, I had to get a burger here and it did not disappoint.  Steve had a grilled fish sandwich with tartar sauce that was tasty as well.  Skinny Legs also makes some strong drinks, including their famous rum punch, which Steve had.  It was too strong for me so I stuck with a painkiller instead.

We also ate at High Tide Restaurant in Cruz Bay twice.  High Tide is a casual beach bar that is on the main beach of Cruz Bay near the ferry dock.  It’s surrounded by sea grape trees so gets lots of shade and is nice and breezy.  Their food is pretty standard fare (sandwiches, wings, salads, etc…) but the view of the bay and location is really nice and they have a great bartender as well.  They also have live music Thu-Sun so it’s a nice vibe here and very popular with the locals.

Our favorite place that we ate at was The Longboard.  It’s also located in Cruz Bay on a small side street and came highly recommended by a few locals.  The menu is mostly tapas style share plates and every dish we got here was awesome – we came back twice.  They also make hand crafted cocktails and make a special frozen painkiller that was incredible. We had snapper ceviche with avocado mousse, Caribbean mango spicy wings, coconut crusted grouper sliders and jerk pork quesadillas here.  There were so many things on their menu that looked good, though, including tuna tostadas, various poke bowls and sushi rolls.  Definitely don’t miss this place for at least a drink and a snack!

Another place we stopped at was the North Shore Deli where we picked up sandwiches to go and had a picnic lunch at the beach.  They make an excellent cuban sandwich here.

Also, I have to say that my hair was a hot mess this whole trip.  I pretty much wore it pulled back the whole time.  First, it was humid and my hair does not do well in humidity.  Second, the water on the island that is used for showering comes from cisterns and let’s just say that it’s not the greatest – it somehow manages to leave your hair straw dry yet gummy at the same time and I brought good quality shampoo and conditioner by Bumble & Bumble.  This is the best picture I could get on one of the few days when I actually washed it, curled it and put on a dress and makeup to go out for dinner.  It looks halfway decent below but I promise you that I looked like Monica in the picture below after about 2 hours.  It was pretty sad.