TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Lunch at L'Escargot

Hubby and I headed into Philipsburg today for lunch at L'Escargot and to poke around. Since only two cruise ships were in port it was fairly quiet down on Front Street, and by the time we got to L'Escargot most of the lunch crowd had gone so we basically had the place to ourselves. It was such a delightful place to eat, very French and very quaint and charming. We chatted with the owner for a while and he did say that tourism was down this year. Since neither one of us eat a big lunch we tried to order something light; hubby ordered the "Catch of the Day", while I ordered escargot followed by quiche and salad. The food was delicious.

Escargot - they were hidden in the shells, the cherry tomatoes and pastry.



Quiche and salad



Catch of the Day



I loved the way the place is decorated; here are some pictures.

Haven't been to Escargot for quite some time. Does he still have his miniature booze bottle collection? Last time I brought him about 30 different ones that he didn't have before. I just don't get down that way for dinner anymore. It was always good when I did.

What lovely pictures! Thanks so much!

Yes the bottles are still there although we didn't take a good look at them. He was talking about retiring, not sure what will happen to the place if he does. Have you been to the Friday night cabaret there?

I saw on Facebook that the restaurant is up for sale.

Well I hope the new owner keeps it the way it is.

A very fun night

Pretty sure it has been "for sale" or listed for some time now. Like a lot of businesses on the island, many are always for sale for the right price. I think in this case the owners might be wanting to go a different direction in their lives now.

J D and GaKaye,

I'm sure after the late night robbery and beating in their parking lot after closing hours several years ago, they were looking to move on.

Looking forward to another fine meal this March.

No doubt that could likely play a part in their decisions.

And to add to this, the restaurant business is a very hard and demanding business to do and do it right.

There was a time when Front Street was a bustling area both day and night but sadly, given the climate of the island these days, this is not the case and most people just don't generally come into town for dinner anymore unless they have a connection to a certain place so, along with the issue of little parking, there's not a lot of walk-in traffic. You've got to have a very good lunch business to make it profitable yet several times we've tried to do lunch there, they weren't open.

It's been a gazillion years since we've gone to dinner there and there's not a doubt in my mind the food and service are still great but this business, as good as it is and has always been, has a whole lot of things going against it - parking, lack of nighttime foot traffic, not a waterside location, etc., and that's not even taking into consideration their fear factor after what happened to them a few years ago. This is such a very sad state for many of the really good restaurants on Front St.

A trip or so ago, we spent a lot of time talking to another restaurant owner along the street and he cited lots of issues - lack of night-time traffic and the fear factor being among them, but then we also talked about the very high rents landlords want for prime properties, the high cost of help due to many of the laws protecting employees and yes, again, the very demanding nature of the business of owning and running a restaurant anywhere. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" />