For our final night in St. Lucia, we made a reservation at The Cane Bar at Sugar Beach. In the weeks leading up to the trip, we devoured every online review and the comments about Cane Bar were all overwhelmingly positive. When we arrived, our concierge confirmed that Cane Bar is a guest favorite and highly encouraged us to experience it.
The Cane Bar is on the second floor, above The Terrace, where we ate breakfast most mornings. As you ascend the stairs, you're met by a very cool piece of artwork.
There's an additional sculpture over the door to the restaurant. It's vibrant and immediately signals that you're about to have fun.
The host ushered us to a table for four. All of the other diners were couples on their honeymoon.
This was the view from our table.
Cane Bar's specialty is sushi, so each place setting is prepared with chopsticks and a dish for your soy sauce.
While we were looking over the drink menu, our server arrived with a bowl of root vegetable chips. These were crunchy, salty and highly addicting. We made them disappear quickly and had no shame in ask for a second helping.
If you're a gin and tonic fan, Cane Bar is the place for you. It's their house cocktail and you can select from dozens of gins. To make the drink feel like the hero that it is, they serve them in goblets.
I decided on the shiso and raspberry mojito. If you're not familiar with shiso, it's a plant in the mint family that is known for adding a flavor of cinnamon or clove.
The drink arrived in a tall glass, garnished with two big shiso leaves. I took my first sip and felt my eyes go wide with delight. It tasted like a raspberry lemonade Jolly Rancher. The perfect harmony of sweet and tart.
This was hands down my favorite cocktail of the entire trip. I ordered a second one!
Pleased as punch with our beverages, we moved on to food selection. To begin, we requested two orders of the salted edamame. We're all big edamame fans and knew we'd need more than just a few pods each.
Next up: sushi. To my left, a friend ordered the spicy tuna roll.
After she enjoyed a few pieces, she said, "The flavors in this are great. It's super spicy, and tasted even better with ginger on it."
Next to her, a friend went with the soft shell crab roll. She was surprised to see that every piece was sprinkled with tobiko (fish eggs) and then garnished with a slice of fresh jalapeño pepper.
When asked how she was liking it, she replied, "I wasn't expecting the tobiko, and definitely wasn't prepared for the level of spice that those jalapeños were adding. I had to pick them off!" That said, she did later add, "Each piece has great texture."
To my right, a friend selected the California roll. I don't know a ton about sushi, but I know this is a very popular flavor combination.
Toward the end of the meal, she shared, "This tasted fresh and I would definitely order it again. I thought I might have had the best roll, until I tasted the soft shell crab one. I really loved that!"
I also ordered the California roll, and the chef was willing to swap out the signature crab meat for asparagus.
If it's not prepared well, asparagus can have a really fibrous taste to it, and I was worried about that here, but the roll that was delivered included asparagus that was cooked perfectly. The whole roll tasted wonderfully fresh and I got great joy sending each piece for a swim in soy sauce.
Cane Bar does have a small dessert menu, but none of the options were appealing to us. That night, we wound up ordering ice cream to our villa via room service. Fun fact: at Sugar Beach, one order of ice cream includes three scoops per person.
If you know you'll be heading to Sugar Beach, definitely plan at least one night at Cane Bar. It's a beautiful (and very romantic) restaurant. The sushi is delicious and comes in very generous portions. As with all the Sugar Beach restaurants, the view is a stunner.
*All photography by Molly Galler.
