A Trip to the Beach: Living on Island Time in the Caribbean
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Product Description
This is the right tale of a trip to the beach that never ends. It’s about a spouse and wife who escape civilization to erect a tiny restaurant on an island paradise — and learn that even paradise has its pitfalls. It’s a tale filled with calamities and comedy, culinary disasters and triumphs, and quick portraits of people who live and work on a sliver of beauty set in the Caribbean Sea. It’s about the exasperating, exhausting, eccentric complications of trying to live the simple life — and the joy that comes when you somehow pull it off.
The tale starts when Bob and Melinda Blanchard sell their successful Vermont food business and choose, perhaps on impulse, to get away from it all. Why not open a beach bar and grill on Anguilla, their favorite Caribbean island? One thing leads to another and the small grill turns into an delightful restaurant that quickly draws four-star reviews and a celebrity-studded clientele keen for Melinda’s delectable cooking. Amid the frenetic pace of the Christmas “high season,” the Blanchards and their kitchen staff — Clinton and Ozzie, the dancing sous-chefs; Shabby, the master lobster-wrangler; Bug, the dish-washing comedian — come together like a crack drill team. And even in the midst of hilarious pandemonium, there are moments of bliss.
As the Blanchards learn to adapt to island time, they become ever more deeply attached to the odd rhythms and customs of their new home. Until disaster strikes: Hurricane Luis, a category-4 storm with two-hundred-mile-an-hour gusts, devastates Anguilla. Bob and Melinda survey the wreckage of their beloved restaurant and marvel whether leaving Anguilla, with its innumerable challenges, would be any simpler than walking out on each additional. Affectionate, seductive, and very amusing, A Trip to the Beach is a like letter to a place that becomes both home and escape.
Amazon.com Review
On a trip with the family tree in Barbados, Mel and Bob Blanchard (of the Vermont-based Blanchard & Blanchard specialty foods company) stumble upon a tiny restaurant/shack on a Caribbean beach:
I marveled at the ingenuity of the set-up. A secluded spot, sand like flour, customers arriving in bathing suits. The guy barely lifted a finger, cleared at least $35.00, and gave us a lunch we’d remember forever…. The man had sold us a frame of mind.
So starts the Blanchards’ 10-year pursuit of the illusory notion of “island time.” In a literary heartbeat, they abandon the “concrete jungle” that was Vermont and open a restaurant on a small-known island in the British West Indies called Anguilla (“rhymes with vanilla”). Narrated by Mel Blanchard, A Trip to the Beach dispels tired notions of the Caribbean–the steel drums, the lush landscapes, and acres of swaying palm trees–and as a replacement for focuses on the understated elegance and simple rhythms of the sublimely “flat, and scrubby” island. Though missing the fruitfulness and finesse of Frances Mayes, and the wit and wisdom of Peter Mayle, Mel Blanchard nonetheless forges a new path in travel writing as the Martha Stewart of the Caribbean. A remarkably intuitive and inspired chef, Mel writes poignant passages on running a kitchen in Anguilla. Here she exposes the meat of the tale, sharing her many outrageous adventures–how to cater to pampered and demanding guests, how to cook for a full restaurant in the darkest of island night with no electricity, how to prepare for recurring and utterly devastating hurricanes that wipe out your business. In these chapters the writing is as excellent as her cooking–inspiring, colorful, and easily palatable. Although she sometimes relies heavily on well-worn clichés and expresses naïve and rather privileged assumptions–”Why would anyone choose to live surrounded by concrete and traffic rather than fishing boats, water and palm trees?”–discerning readers will see the right scenery of this tiny island–a place of simplistic beauty that struggles to maintain its independence while it depends on tourism for its livelihood. With a weird concoction of anecdotes, island politics, recipes, and sweet memories, the Blanchards seduce readers with the allure of “island time,” bringing Anguilla home to the rest of us. –Daphne Durham
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I couldn’t agree more with the above reviewer. Although the writing style and flow of the book was appealing, the attitude and lack of humility by the authors made it, at times, nearly uncomfortable to read. For example, at one point they clarify a hurricane that has hit the island and hurt their restaurant and say “…you saved the wine cellar, brillant? Is the wine still in there?” Paahleeeze! The very next sentence tells his employee to go home and clean up his hurt home but to be back ‘first thing tomorrow morning with your tools and brothers to clean up his mess’. Anymore tales of what their personal strife (enormous shipping fees/taxes and the inconvenience of traveling back and into the world from their “Vermont” home to pick up expensive materials) would have been pathetic. If you want to know and appreciate the island life, don’t buy this book.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
A Trip to the Beach is a fantastic book that you can’t place down. Usually I want a book to end, but not this one – I was sad to end it. I was awed by their ability to open the restaurant with all the trials and tribulations they had to overcome. I highly recommend this book – the food descriptions were fabulous. I am awaiting their new cookbook and can’t wait to try the recipes.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
If you have ever been cornered by an innkeeper or B & B owner whose life contains five minutes of appealing tidbits, but who takes two hours dragging you through a poorly synthesized tale, you’ve already had the experience of reading this book. To make matters worse, the quality of writing and tone are comparable to a sixth grade essay along the lines of “What I Did on My Summer Trip.”
If you are looking for an appealing book about life as an American in the Caribbean, try Herman Wouk’s semi-fictional “Don’t Stop the Carnival.”
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I am 14 years ancient and this is the best book i have ever read. I absolutely like it! It’s an simple read but is very entertaining and it documents Bob and Melinda’s fascinating life. I highly recomend it to anyone!
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Hipkat and ActionJunkie have summed it all up perfectly. Nothing else to add. Oh. Yes there is. I happened to be in a bookstore way back when this book was unrestricted and the Blanchardss were language. I pretty quickly experimental they were reasonably charmed with themselves. I didn’t stay to listen long. The book was passed to me by a co-worker. Couldn’t end it.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5