Dining in Bora Bora

The post should really be titled "Dining at the St. Regis" because we ended up having every meal at the St. Regis. A full breakfast buffet was included each morning. The spread here was a bit better than at the Hilton Moorea, as was the service. Amanda also discovered her new breakfast of choice. She calls it a vegetable medley, but I call it a plate of trash cause that is what it looks like. She gets a vegetable omelet, then proceeds to chop up and mix in hash browns, prosciutto, cucumbers, tomatoes, chopped cabbage and really anything else she can find until her plate looks like a giant pile of trash. She insists it is delicious.

 Now picture all of this mixed up on the same plate.

Perhaps I should give it a go though, as my daily helping of waffles with nutella, pineapple and Tahitian vanilla whipped cream haven't been the best for keeping regular.

Some fresh fruit at the breakfast buffet.

As I mentioned in the post about Dining in Moorea, we didn't have our hopes up about the food. But once again, I think all the reviews on TripAdvisor are way off. We had some very delicious meals at the St. Regis, easily the best we had on this trip, and a few dishes were better than a lot of the food we've had at top restaurants elsewhere. I guess it helped that Jean-Georges Vongerichten opened a restaurant at the St. Regis.

Pineapple-glazed char-grilled chicken at Lagoon.

One of the things that made dining at the St. Regis special was that with every meal we received an amuse-bouche, and sometimes an entire additional dish, as a gift from the chef. From duck dumplings to scallop something-or-others and even an entire plate of salmon sashimi, they were all delicious -- and they helped soften the blow when the bill came. We probably paid about twice what we paid on Moorea, but honestly, for the quality and complexity of the food, it's on par with what I would expect to pay at nice restaurant in Montreal or New York.

Scallop amuse-bouche at Lagoon.

Another delight was that our honeymoon package included one free dinner at the restaurant of our choice at the St. Regis. Amanda and I have a rule that free food is also calorie-free, which is very good for us, because the giant pieces of foie gras on the steak tasted very rich.

Wagyu beef (imho, even better than Alberta beef).

Calorie-free dessert.

Most dishes had coconut, pineapple or passion fruit highlights. One of my favorites was the above-pictured passion fruit sorbet. Have you ever seen a passion fruit though? I remember the first time I saw it in Australia, I thought to myself, who in their right mind could eat this fruit -- it looks like snot! Runny, booger-laden snot!

Delicious snot passion fruit.

I hate cooked fish, so some mild-flavored sushi is really all the seafood I eat. After a few amuse-bouches and some delicious hamachi (yellow tail) sushi though, I realized that if there was ever a place to try some fish, this would be the place. I had their mildest fish, the Mahi Mahi, and it was good. It was swimming in a lake of garlic and butter though, so I'm guessing that had something to do with it. Still, a momentous occasion for me.

Mahi Mahi at Lagoon.

Tuna, salmon and yellow tail.

Lastly, we went into Vaitape one day to stock up on snacks and see the city. There really wasn't much to see. The saving grace was their only grocery store's selection of Tim Tams! My love affair with the delicious biscuit from New Zealand began when I visited Australia in 2004 and was introduced to the Tim Tam Slam (sucking tea/coffee through the biscuit before popping the whole thing in your mouth). Before they started importing them into Canada, I would have my sister import me boxes whenever she visited Australia. We now have the chocolate and caramel flavors at the Loblaw's in Montreal, but nowhere near the selection on this remote paradise.

From left to right: double chocolate, honeycomb, double caramel, turkish delight, dark, white and original flavored family-sized pack in my hand.