Treasure Cay - A Disappointing Vacation Spot

The beach at Treasure Cay is uncrowded, extremely wide, and almost as nice as Grace Bay in Provo (Turks and Caicos) or Seven Mile Beach on Grand Cayman (we used to stay at the Regal Beach Club before the 2001 hurricane washed away half their beach). But our recent 10-day stay at the Bahama Beach Club (to which we would never go back) raised the question, "Why do none of the very few online reviews of local restaurants describe just how awful they really are?"

Dining in Treasure Cay is, in a word, horrendous. While researching the area on the Internet, we found a number of favorable writeups of restaurants and shops, but it didn't occur to us that they were all written by people with axes to grind. Of course Beth and John Snowe, for example, are going to say wonderful things about everything in Treasure Cay because they want you to rent one of their three villas. Their website says:

"Another treat is to call Touch of Class or Coconutts and have them pick you up and take you to their restaurants. Good food!"

Well, we had dinner twice at Coconutts and twice tried to eat at Touch of Class, but were driven out by the smell of cleaning products. Since we don't have a villa to rent, you can read our *impartial* reviews of these and other Abaco restaurants below. Let's just say that the local slogan, "Abaco is not for sissies," should be replaced by "Treasure Cay is not for people who enjoy going out for a nice dinner when on vacation." And we think the main reason these restaurants will pick you up is so you'll feel pressured to stay and eat once you get there.

Even more blandly upbeat is Lee Rike, who (surprise!) also has a condo to rent and who calls Touch of Class and Hudson's (also see writeup below) "great food." I wonder what Lee would say if he ever ate in a really good restaurant? Lee also recommends Island Boil, a restaurant that burned down in early 2003, calling it "great food and fun" (well, maybe it would be fun to poke around the ruins - why don't these people update their websites?!). Frommer's Bahamas, which was still calling Island Boil their favorite restaurant almost two years after it burned down, has finally figured things out and currently does not recommend ANY restaurants in Treasure Cay (they do list a few in Marsh Harbour, including Angler's).

Without further ado, here is the unpleasant truth about dining in Treasure Cay (and a couple of good alternatives available in Marsh Harbour, a long drive away):

Angler's Restaurant (Marsh Harbour): Located at the Abaco Beach Resort & Boat Harbour in Marsh Harbour, Angler's is a very expensive but very nice restaurant. Our food was excellent, but the place was packed when we were there and the service was slow. Overall, we enjoyed it, particularly after a few days of dining in Treasure Cay. The problem is that the drive from Treasure Cay to Marsh Harbour at night is long (50 minutes), dark and annoyingly monotonous. I have no idea what the Snowes mean when they say "You drive on the left in American cars that are made to dim to the right. Bad news!" - all automobile headlights I've ever seen, including those on our rental car, illuminate both sides of the road equally - but once we saw the selection of restaurants in Treasure Cay, we wished that Marsh Harbour were closer.

Cafe La Florence: After reading the Snowes' page, we were looking forward to fresh cinnamon buns and warm bread every day. Florence is indeed a pleasant woman, and her cinnamon buns weren't bad (roughly comparable to what you'd find in the fresh bakery department of a typical U.S. supermarket). Her bread was fun to eat, soft and hot right out of the oven, but oddly and utterly tasteless. One morning, I made the mistake of sending my wife inside to buy bread while I waited in the car with the kids, and she came out empty-handed. Apparently, there were so many flies flying around and landing on the (unwrapped and uncovered) baked goods that day that my wife was repulsed. I hadn't noticed this on the previous days - maybe it's a male-female thing, or maybe my wife was just there on a bad day - but where we come from, flies on food is a Health Department violation. Florence should keep her screen door shut, or at least chase away the flies.

Coconutts: Don't go to dinner here if you're particular about how your food is cooked, or if you don't have two or three hours to spare. The first time we ate here, our son ordered a steak medium rare, and it arrived well done and desiccated. The replacement, however, was fine. The second time we came, deja vu! The steak was well done; the replacement was ok. The first time, a couple of days before Christmas, the restaurant was virtually empty except for us, and still the service was glacially slow. A few days later, when we came in at 6:30 PM, we had a sense of impending doom because there was one table with 13 people and another with 10 that had both been seated before we were. We were afraid we'd never get served, so we skipped appetizers and ordered quickly to try to jump in front of the party of 13 in the kitchen queue. The ploy worked: When we had finished and left the restaurant at 8:40, the party of 13 - which included several young children who were asleep at the table - had still not been served their entrees. The food, other than the erratic steaks, was competent but nothing special, and the menu was very limited.

Hudson's Delight: This tiny (5-6 tables) restaurant and bakery was closed for vacation most of the time we were in Treasure Cay. When we drove by one day and saw that they'd be open for dinner that night, we were excited to have a change from The Spinnaker, but it was not to be. We asked to see the menu, to ensure that our children would have things to order that they'd enjoy, and it was extensive and varied - but then the woman named about five other choices (mostly fish) that were less appealing. "Oh, are those the daily specials?" No, she replied, they were the ONLY things that would be available that night. So what was the purpose of the printed menu, we wondered? We couldn't figure it out, but the end result was that we were again bound for The Spinnaker.

Mangoes (Marsh Harbour): We found Mangoes to be an attractive waterfront restaurant with friendly service and pretty good food, which may not have any predictive value for readers because the restaurant is apparently under new ownership. But you can give it a shot.

The Spinnaker: I call it "an island of mediocrity in a sea of horror" (for Treasure Cay, that's a compliment). The Spinnaker is a competent, well-decorated but undistinguished restaurant at the Treasure Cay Resort where we wouldn't have minded eating a couple of times over the course of nine nights, but we ended up going there five times when the other dining options in Treasure Cay proved to be so awful. Service was slow, but the food was basically fine and not that much more expensive than the other places. The biggest problem is that the menu is rather limited, and we were surprised that all the seafood that we asked about was frozen, not fresh.

Touch of Class: We wish we could have tolerated sitting in this restaurant long enough to try their food even though the menu is strangely limited: one beef dish, one or two chicken dishes, 2-3 fish choices, etc. The first night we went there, it was as cold as a supermarket frozen-food aisle when we walked in, and we were stunned by the overpowering smell of industrial-strength cleaning products. My wife thought it smelled like Clorox bleach, while I thought it was more like a very strong, sickly-sweet baby powder-type smell (whatever cleaning product that would be). Our younger son immediately pulled his shirt up to cover his nose while our older son, who has asthma, simply looked concerned. We all looked at one another in disbelief and ran for the door. Luckily, we had rented a car for our stay and had driven to the restaurant, because it would have been awkward to have had the restaurant pick us up and not to be able to eat there. A few days later, when we were thoroughly tired of The Spinnaker and Coconutts, we all summoned up the nerve to try Touch of Class again. Perhaps it was a fluke that they had just finished cleaning the restaurant right before we arrived the previous time? So we went later in the evening the second time, opened the door, smelled the cleaning stuff again and walked right back out.

Conclusion
I would not be surprised if Treasure Cay one day is developed a bit more and becomes a world-class vacation destination, but it's clear that that day is many years away. Right now it's a pretty beach and not much else, despite the hype from the local real estate owners.

This website consists entirely of personal opinion and is not authorized by, or in any way affiliated with, any person or business enterprise in Treasure Cay.