Tag Archives: review

Restaurant Review: Kome

Kome is the Papiamentu word for “Eat.” It’s a restaurant that was conceived by a couple of ex-pats to serve tasty food, as locally sourced as possible. The food is fresh as fresh can be! The staff is beyond wonderful. The heritage building has been tastefully remodeled into a welcoming airy space.

They have lots of beer choices, probably the largest beer menu on the island. There was a choice of a couple of types of sangria as well: We tried the watermelon sangria. It was an interesting choice, but I switched to beer after one glass!  I enjoyed the sangria, but, well, beer is more my style.

The food: we went on my birthday with a couple of friends for the Wednesday tapas menu. It’s a wide ranging menu, with seafood, beef, pork, chicken and vegetarian dishes. They suggested we order two or three dishes each, and they would bring two or three at time, so the table wouldn’t become overloaded. I would suggest that two would be enough for most women, and three for men. We ordered lots of different dishes and shared them between us, as they came.

We chose dishes like chicken and waffles, wild mushrooms on toast, green beans in a sriracha sauce, buffalo chicken sliders, pulled pork tacos, crab Rangoon, blackened fish tacos, flatiron steak, hoisin ribs and more! We did order too much. I liked everything we ordered, with a special shout out to the green beans and the fish tacos. Pam really loved the ribs. The buffalo chicken sliders were especially spicy, and I loved them too. The only dish I would not order again was the crab rangoon. It was a generous serving, but I just didn’t “Love” them as much as everything else.

I would have no trouble eating again any of the dishes we ordered. Just a great sampling of food. Each was wonderfully presented, cooked very very well, and delivered in a great way. We ate and ate and dishes kept arriving, and it was really a wonderful dinner. The company was amazing, and the night just flew by! Couldn’t have had a better time.

The staff are really a special collection of people. They are truly motivated to give you an experience that is virtually unparalleled on Curacao. It ranks with the best service I’ve ever had, anywhere in the world. The only problem is that this level of service will spoil you for so many other restaurants on Curacao!

Rank: 10/10 There is nothing this restaurant can do to improve.

Restaurant Review: The Green House

Pam and I have gone to the Green House several times since we have come to live on Curacao. We took Mike there just after Christmas, too. It’s just a few minutes from us, on F.D. Rooseveltweg, in the district of Santa Maria, near the 24 hour gas station. There is plenty of parking just out front, with a guy who will help you park and get you back out into traffic after your meal. There is a location on Mambo Beach Boulevard as well which we’ve eaten at once.

The restaurant has limited outdoor seating, with lots of indoor seating, and a smallish sports bar area, mainly for watching soccer and baseball. It’s a fairly boisterous place, with lots of locals. Every time we’ve been there, there have been large family celebrations, and people obviously on dates. It has a more local vibe, than a tourist vibe, but the service staff all speak English very well.

The food is always good. The menu is varied, with lots of choices, from Mediterranean dishes, to local dishes, to standard fare like steaks and chicken. There are always a couple of specials, usually a fresh fish, and a chicken and ribs combo which is Pam’s favorite.  The portions are not small, so we always have a container of leftovers to take home for Bailey, our dog. At the Mambo Beach location, you can order sushi from the Origami Sushi house. It was very good sushi, worth the visit for sure.

The prices are reasonable, and the service is always good and friendly. They have lots of staff, and any one of them will grab you another drink. I like the unpretentious nature of the place, but the food is well presented, plentiful and very tasty.

Rank: 7.5 out of 10. The only deductions are for the deserts. They aren’t great, just ok.

Long time, no post

It’s been a long time since I have sat down and wrote a post, and for that I apologize. Life goes on, walking the dog, going for dinner, not much new. (I did get poisoned at work, and I’m recovering slowly but still feel very out of sorts, and I’m not able to think for long periods of time.)

Saturday night we felt like trying someplace new for dinner. It was around 8 pm and we went by the 120 Bar and Grill on 120th street. The establishment is large, with two generous rooms. As you enter, to the right is “The Grill” which was empty, so we went left into the bar.  There was no one serving as a hostess, so we kinda looked around a bit. We got a few strange stares so we sat ourselves in a booth.

A waitress with a LOT of makeup asked us for an order, and I requested Sleeman Honey Brown. They don’t have it, but have Rickard’s Honey, so I take that. It comes flat. I order the “pork special” but she doesn’t know what that is, and I say, “on the board, the pork special.” “Oh, the pork wellington,” she says. Uh…. ok….

The bar is quite dirty. It really needs a good scrub. It feels like it has not been properly cleaned since they banned smoking, which was what? 3 years ago? 4? The tables are still horribly scarred with burn marks from cigarettes.

We were watching the football game, but the bartender turned all the televisions to the Cartoon network. When we queried him on it, he said they wanted to turn the bar into a club at night, so putting on kiddie shows seems to be the way to attract their desired clientele.

Wonderful. We’re looking for a nice adult evening out, and we get cartoons blasting at us from 15 televisions, all tuned to the same program. Needless to say, five minutes after the switch, the bar, which had 10 tables, emptied. There were three tables left. Yes, the joint emptied.

Dinner arrived. What a joke that was. The “pork Wellington” was a piled high mess of stuff, that came in a bowl. When dinner arrives in a bowl it’s never a good thing, unless you’ve ordered soup of course. There was something on the bottom of the plate, then a pile of mashed potatotes, then some pile of something, then something piled on top that, that made it look a little like a Mickey Mouse doll head. The two “ears” were “roasted peppers”, which fell off the pile when the waitress set it down. She was embarrassed and apologized, but really the chef should apologize for that stupid stack of food.

The pork was NOT wellington (Wellington means it’s wrapped in pastry – there was no pastry in this dish). It was a piece of POORLY cooked meat, that was SOOOoooooo rare, it was bleeding on the mashed potatoes. When I called the waitress over and told her the pork was not cooked, she asked how I’d like it cooked! I said, well how about cooking it so I don’t die when you serve it??

The 120 Bar and Grill is a total embarassment. The staff obviously need better training. The chef is a moron, who should be charged with reckless endangerment. The management well, what can you say about management that puts cartoons on TV on a Saturday night, when people are there to watch football!!? When three quarters of your tables get up and leave, you think they’d catch on. Of the three tables that did not leave, one was us waiting for dinner, the other was eating their dinner (they left as soon as they finished), and the other was a group of Sikhs getting drunk.

Check out the 120 Bar and Grill – walk in, look around, leave – Just don’t order the beer or the food!