Aruba Ostrich Farm: everyone gets fed!

Pop quiz, hotshot: you have a rental car, a small island and five hours of free time. What do you do?

Answer: eat ostrich.

Okay, it was more like "drive around with a map listing the island's major highways (1 through 7) but not the dirt roads, try to find the donkey sanctuary, give up, go to the ostrich farm."

Before we ate, we visited our victims.

Actually, the boids on this farm are for show (and for edumacational purposes); the meat comes from the owner's other farm on Curaçao. So we we able to look these guys in the eye, guilt-free.



And we learned that:

• Ostriches can grow to be nine feet tall and (in captivity) live to be 80 years old!



• They only have two toes!



• If you clap your hands at a female ostrich, it drops to the floor and you can climb on its back!

Only after she'd invited me to mount the bird did our guide explain that the female had assumed the position. And there I was, crawling all over her. Bow-chika-bow-wow!

Then she handed The Boy a bowl of food and made him stand next to a corral of hungry one-year-olds. ('Scuse the sound; that's the gentle breeze whipping across the condenser mic.)




And then it was our turn to feast.

First up, ostrich carpaccio, smoky and tender, with a drizzle of bright pesto as a foil.



And then The Boy had bird burger and I had bangers and mash, ostrich-style (see, there they are! The omnipresent veggies!).



Why isn't ostrich more prevalent? We occasionally find steaks at WholeFoods, but otherwise it doesn't get much play. It's a great alternative to beef; it's lean and cholesterol-free. Manly, but healthy. Renaissance meat.

Masha danki, Amsterdam Manor

For all that disappointed us about beach dining at Passions, the opposite was true of pretty much everything else about our hotel. Maybe it's because the Amsterdam Manor Beach Resort is a modest, three-storey place, so staff and guests become more familiar to each other than they would in one of the high-rise über-resorts further up the coast. Maybe the employees are empowered in a way that might not be possible at a large corporate chain. Whatever the reason, they gave good customer service.

Three different employees wished me happy birthday on Friday, despite the fact that we hadn't mentioned the occasion at check-in.

The day after my birthday, we discovered a bottle of wine had mysteriously appeared in our fridge; when we asked at the front desk, the response was a smiling, "Well, I wonder how that happened??" No "Ma'am-it's-our-corporate-policy-to-mark-your-celebration-and thank-you-for-choosing-us" (or worse, "What? Let me find out who did that!"). Just a sweet gesture.

Trying to decide between two Aruban restaurants on our last night, we decided to seek advice from Illis at the front desk. "My personal preference," he said, "is Gasparito." And then, without prompting, "But it might be busy tonight; let me call and make sure they have a table for you."

The Amsterdam Manor is also a six-time recipient of the Green Globe certification for environmental sustainability, and this goes beyond the obligatory "please reuse your towels" bathroom sign.

It's the first place I've seen can- and bottle-recycling bins around a hotel pool (why don't more places do that?). And lunch ordered from the restaurant on the beach comes not on plastic plates or styrofoam takeout trays, but rather in reusable bamboo dim sum baskets.

(Oh, look--another change to show bitterballen pr0n! Yeah, I know, you've seen this one before. I don't care.)



Yes, they still serve drinks in plastic cups, and yes, the balcony lights are on all night (largely, I assume, for decorative purposes), but the hotel is at least demonstrating that some eco-friendly actions are painless and unintrusive.

Plus, it's pretty. And check out the sky-blue perfection of the trompe l'œil on the far wall.

The rundown on Aruban food

We were really excited about our Aruba vacation and looking forward to checking out the food, beaches, and culture.

The big discovery of the trip was that Aruba is not a foodie destination. It's great if you want filet mignon, lobster or shrimp--or all three at once--as they appear on pretty much every menu, regardless of whether the cuisine claims to be Italian or French or Aruban.

The default cheese is Gouda. Want a cheeseburger? It comes with Gouda. A grilled cheese sandwich? Gouda (and also, possibly, pineapple slices). It's sold in enormous wheels in everyday grocery stores. It's touted in the stores for cruise-ship visitors (as "queso holandés"). I'd rather find Gouda on everything than Kraft slices, so this was a big plus.

One of the default appetizers is escargots, which are meatier than their US cousins. The butter isn't as intensely garlicky, but the finished dish is topped with parmesan, which gives a nice edge to the dish.

The default restaurant bread comes smothered in garlic butter.

The local beer, Balashi, is a pretty good pilsener, not surprisingly similar to (but less skunky than) Heineken.

The low amount of rainfall and the unforgiving terrain (limestone and coral) means pretty much everything edible has to be imported. Most of the packaged goods available in supermarkets, again unsurprisingly, are Dutch, including many forms of sausage, more enormous wheels of cheese and strange things like canned parsley.

The Dutch influence also means the pastry section is pretty good; we picked up this thing, called a tompoezen; much like an English vanilla slice, but with a generous shot of fresh cream hidden inside the custard.



There's also a strong Indian/Indonesian influence, with many fast-food places offering shoarma and satay alongside hotdogs and bitterballen.

(Did I mention the bitterballen?)



The filling, I discovered, is meat in a bechamel sauce. That explains a lot.

A food apparently specific to the Dutch Antilles is the pastechi, which is similar to a Cornish pasty or an empanada, but with a much lighter, shorter pastry (which apparently requires milk and baking powder).

Wandering around downtown Oranjestad, we discovered the Pastechi House, a small storefront operation that promised fillings from chicken to chorizo to salt cod. Sadly, only the basic varieties were available when we arrived, so we settled for a couple of beef, a cheese and a croquette. A good Aruban lunch.



Our one major culinary missed connection involved these things. They were at the hotel's breakfast buffet, right next to the museli and cornflakes and Kellogg's mini-boxes, and we couldn't figure out what they were. One was chocolate, one was fruit.



Were they cereal? Did you just add milk? Did they go on top of cereal? Unable to figure it out (and afraid to ask and risk gales of derisive Dutch laughter) we didn't pursue the matter further. And then, in the grocery store, we found them. Boxes and boxes. And a clear indication of their raison d'être.

By then, we'd eaten our last breakfast, so had no opportunity to experience this brilliant invention ourselves.

Oh, and it's hard to find decent coffee. Here's a picture of The Worst Coffee in the World Ever (accompanied by the only thing that could mask the taste).



If you see this coffee, do not approach it. It's a dangerous and unforgiving criminal.

Passions: more theater than dinner

I spent much of yesterday making jokes about this being my worst birthday ever: we had a 20-second rain shower; there was a stone in the cherry in my piña colada, the white sand on the beach was too clean for me to find seashells, etc etc. In truth, it was a fabulous day.

We sat on the beach, under a palm-shade-table thing, from 10 am until 4 pm. We lunched on bitterballen, which are a feat of engineering that takes spoonfuls of sweet, fatty pork ragout and deep-fries them in a crunchy breaded batter.



I've never had anything like them, and I want them again. All the time. Like right now.

We watched the sun set across the ocean, and then we went for dinner at Passions, the hotel's restaurant located on the beach, all white tablecloths and linen-upholstered chairs and tiki torches.



And that's where everything started to go downhill.

First, they didn't have a reservation for us. Well, they did, but it was for next week (the guy we'd emailed had corrected it in a message to us, but not changed the date in the book). Luckily, they were able to seat us by splitting up a four-top, and we ended up in the front row, with a ringside view of the ocean (and the occasional ATVs that roared along the shore).

The menu was yet more surf and turf, with plenty of shrimp dishes thrown in. The Boy, being allergic to, as he puts it, "anything that wears its skeleton on the outside," was therefore limited in his choices. As someone who has suffered too many poorly cooked steaks and defrosted shrimp, I was also hoping for something more.

Yes, we did look at the menu in advance, but I guess we were seduced by promises of "the soft light of torches all around you [...] the soft sound of waves caressing the shore" and therefore not thinking straight.

We began with glasses of Veuve Cliquot, and were further seduced by the experience of drinking champagne with our bare feet in the sand. And then I ordered the Aruban seafood soup, and The Boy asked what was in the ceviche.

"Fish," said our friendly Dutch waitron. So he ordered the ceviche.

Which came garnished with a fat, thumb-sized shrimp. So he explained, and she apologized, and dashed off to the kitchen for his second choice, a chilled watermelon salad. When she came back, she apologized some more and said, "The cook said I should remember to always say seafood, not just fish!" Well, hey, we live and learn.

My soup was not bad: a rich, tomato-cream broth that was somewhat oversalted but still tasty. A first exploration into its depths revealed baby squid and tiny shrimp; subsequent spoonfuls dredged up meatless shards of shell and chewy mussels in equal number. The Boy did better with his salad of sweet, ripe watermelon tossed with romaine and a pungent feta, though the abundance of chili oil threatened to overwhelm. Fresh ginger would have made a better foil.

Time passed. We watched the waves thunder against the shore and studied the constellations in the clear night sky.

Eventually, our waitron cleared the plates.

Time passed. We exchanged obligatory "please take our photo" requests with the middle-aged Dutch couple next to us (note half-watermelon used as subtle salad container).



Time passed.

And the entrees arrived. The Boy had opted for the grouper with pesto, it being the only non surf/turf item that didn't threaten shrimp. I had the catch of the day--red snapper--grilled with cumin.

(When we ordered, the waitron had paused in her description and asked, "Do you know what cumin is?" as though spice illiteracy was prevalent among the restaurant's clientele. Then again, she'd also seemed flustered when I declined the starch options. "But it comes with rice or baked potato," she'd explained. "You can have either. Really? Not at all?")

The Boy again fared slightly better; his fish was moist and flaky. Mine, alas, was dry, bony, sad, the cumin adding little to the flavor. On the side was a half of a fruit neither of us could identify; in fairness, we were dining by tiki-light at this point. The one saving grace was that the greens (possibly kale) were raw and tossed in a sweet tomato confit--the most creative thing on the plate.

Time passed. The tables around us started to empty. We stared out at the dark horizon, where ships, visible only by their lights, seemed to float in midair.

Time passed. We started to wonder whether the shapes near the shore were evil crabs lying in wait or just piles of sand caught in the flickering torchlight.

Time passed. The annoying table of loud Americans behind us got louder and louder. A young boy (also American, but from a different table) chose to stand in front of us while he peed into the ocean.

Time passed. We wondered whether the evil crabs had dragged our waitron into the thundering waters.

Some 45 minutes later, a busboy wandered over to refill our water glasses, took our plates and asked if we wanted to see the dessert menu. We'd guessed it was the usual selection (tiramisu, key lime cheesecake, somekind of tropical sorbet) and so declined.

Okay, it wasn't a terrible experience. We should doubtless expect island-time service in the Caribbean, and it was nice not to be rushed so they could turn over the table. And our waitron was pleasant and considerate enough--while she was around.

But we had the feeling the place was coasting on the theatrical aspect; 95% of what made the evening different was the location, the atmosphere, making it, in many ways, not that much different from the bad food at Medieval Manor or at some Tony-and-Tina's-stereotypical-Italian-wedding event.

It's probably not fair of me to compare this dinner with those of previous birthdays (at Clio, Craigie Street Bistro, Radius); this is not Boston. And the weather alone makes me glad about that. I feel a little ungracious, a little ungrateful, to criticize an evening spent surfside, in a sleeveless dress and bare feet, when the alternative would involve bundling up in several layers to brave the freezing January night.

But still: while this was not the worst birthday ever--not by a long shot--I think The Boy would agree with me that this was, without doubt, the worst birthday dinner ever.

But today is a new day, and we're thinking about visiting the ostrich farm. For lunch.

Important facts about Aruba

Wow, Aruba is windy. Tie-stuff-down, hold-onto-your-hat windy. Even the native watapana trees bend at an angle because it's so freakin' windy.



It's also not American; we've heard very few English-speaking tourists so far (apart from the Bostonians on our flight, the average age of whom was 103), though many Spanish-speaking, plus Dutch (unsurprisingly, as Aruba belongs to the Netherlands) and even Luxemburgers, who are apparently used to explaining to people where Luxemburg is, exactly.

Aruba is also tiny--only 20 miles long and about 6 across. You could run all the way around it and still not have done a marathon. We flew in from the west, and I could see clear across to the far side of the island.

Its many attempts at being colonized, plus good year-round weather, mean Aruba is a collage of cultures; street signs are in Dutch, but many building names are in Spanish, and most other signs are in English. Waitrons can switch from one language to the next mid-sentence.

When it comes to the food (come on, you've been waiting for me to get to the food) this is expressed better in theory than in practice.

F'rinstance: on our cab ride from the airport to the hotel, I asked the driver where we could find real proper Aruban food.

"Oh," he said, "you should go to The Old Cunucu House. That's the real stuff: goat, pumpkin soup--you'll find all that stuff there."

Well, he was right, I guess; the menu does have goat, and Aruban fish balls, and little cheese "pastechi" (which I think translates as "pasties"). But apart from that, it's pretty much the same as every other menu on the island: lasagne, bolognese, surf and turf, shrimps (everywhere shrimps). Interestingly, escargots seems to be a default appetizer.

So The Boy opted for the goat stew, which came as a tender, moist, goaty version of a beef stew, and I had the keeshi yena, a casserole of chicken with olives, raisins and cashews, topped with melted Gouda. And I got the recipe to bring back (though frankly it didn't look too hard to figure out).

From there, we wandered over to the Hyatt and hung in a squishy pillow-filled cabana at the bar, drinking champagne and waiting until midnight (my birthday).

And then we strolled the path along the beach, passing the high-rise hotels with their winding lazy rivers and hot tubs (and we attempted to play giant beach Connect 4 but couldn't get the pieces out) and then took a taxi back to the hotel (seems taxis are the main mode of transport around here).

Today: beach, lunch (hopefully including bitterballen, which appear to be deep-fried pork balls); dinner on the beach.

Oh good--the menu includes shrimps.

Photos to follow once we get back.