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It’s home suite home on your next St. Barts jaunt
By Chris Bunting
April 7, 2014 | 6:43pm
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Cool down from that hot St. Barts sun inside Le Toiny’s plush open-air villas.
LAST time I washed up on St. Barts, I went against the grain and crashed at one of its rare, now possibly extinct 100-ish euro-a-night “motels” — condescendingly known ‘round the island as “the projects” — just to be different.
I saw myself as a rebel with a cause. A revolutionary. A troublemaker.
I’ll never make that mistake again! This time around I happily played sell-out conformist and wound up bedding at Hotel Le Toiny, a 15-bungalow five-star enveloped by well-libated vegetation on 3½ dozen acres of the island’s far-eastern coast.
Just mind the hermit crabs that scoff at your villa’s “do not disturb” flag as they scamper up and down the steps — they enjoy the good life, too.
Enjoy: Once you procure your room key from the why-isn’t-she-modeling Hungarian blonde at the front desk, you’ll come face to face with an entirely private, open-aired villa (ranging in sizes from a 720-square-foot Junior to a 1,215-square-foot La Villa master), complete with private plunge pools (best cannon-balled at night when its lights turn it alternating shades of neon colors), Nespresso coffee makers (home to the occasional anthropod), not one but at least two satellite-equipped HDTVs and giant poolside hammocks that are a hate crime not to use.
Eat: Chef Sylvain Révélant just took over Le Toiny’s prized open-air restaurant, Le Gaiac, in July — Marie Hue co-pilots as Pastry Chef (both have several Michelin-starred resorts on their CV). While your eyes gobble up Gaiac’s cliffside ocean views, your stomach should slowly but surely digest starters like Caribbean lobster and passion fruit in jelly, green apple, celery with foie gras and lobster consommé.
Then you’re sucking down seafood entrees like “big eye” fish, braised sea bass and poached monkfish in olive oil; four-legged dishes of suckling piglet and sauteed beef filets; or fly-no-more bird dishes of duck and Guinea fowl breast. Le Gaiac regularly appears on “Best Restaurants in the Caribbean” lists in all the mags that care to care.
It’s even more fun when it rains when they lower down the security walls and the restaurant becomes a Panic Room filled with nothing but deliciousness and pretty Parisian co-eds temping on staff looking to get into the hospitality biz (the smart ones, anyway).
Ease: It’s hard to find a less-stressful pocket of globe than St. Barts (save for when you’re landing on that itty-bitty airstrip), yet Le Toiny’s Serenity Spa Cottage is likely where you’ll find yourself.
And why not: New on its menu is its “blossom treatment” — 60 minutes of calendula flowers exorcizing all the demons from your body and soul courtesy of their petal-to-the-metal flavonoids ($199).
Just do your masseuse a favor and hose yourself down first in the outdoor shower out back.
Escape: As much as you’ll want to stay and hammock-a-thon, you have to leave the property at some point (especially since there’s no real beach onsite). Arrange for an Easy Time island tour with Hélène Bernier, who’s as sassy and joke-cracking as she is native, French-accented and sunkissed — which is to say: a lot. She also happens to know the island like the back of her cigarette-holding hand. She’ll take you on a fun-fact-jammed, three-hour trip, rain or shine, for 60 euro. Beach and baby goat-peeping stops are her specialty. She also offers hikes of St. Barts’ many, many hills. Go to herwebsite and arrange for her to pick-up you up.
And once you’ve gotten your fill of all the your Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis, Fendi Fendi, Prada fix around Gustavia Harbor, head over to Blue Escape on the Yacht Club dock. After living in French Polynesia for over a decade — tough life! — Stephane Hamon transplanted his fam to St. Barts in 2011. Ever since, he’s been taking tourists and locals out on boat and snorkeling tours around the island with lots of help from his first mate, Eddy. An animal lover par excellence, there will be turtle sightings galore (their heads stick out of the sea like little scaly periscopes). Also, beer. Pack a lunch and board his 41-foot Riviera 4000 Offshore boat, which has A/C and a bathroom.
Info: Spring rates from $1,226.
By Chris Bunting
April 7, 2014 | 6:43pm
Modal Trigger
LAST time I washed up on St. Barts, I went against the grain and crashed at one of its rare, now possibly extinct 100-ish euro-a-night “motels” — condescendingly known ‘round the island as “the projects” — just to be different.
I saw myself as a rebel with a cause. A revolutionary. A troublemaker.
I’ll never make that mistake again! This time around I happily played sell-out conformist and wound up bedding at Hotel Le Toiny, a 15-bungalow five-star enveloped by well-libated vegetation on 3½ dozen acres of the island’s far-eastern coast.
Just mind the hermit crabs that scoff at your villa’s “do not disturb” flag as they scamper up and down the steps — they enjoy the good life, too.
Enjoy: Once you procure your room key from the why-isn’t-she-modeling Hungarian blonde at the front desk, you’ll come face to face with an entirely private, open-aired villa (ranging in sizes from a 720-square-foot Junior to a 1,215-square-foot La Villa master), complete with private plunge pools (best cannon-balled at night when its lights turn it alternating shades of neon colors), Nespresso coffee makers (home to the occasional anthropod), not one but at least two satellite-equipped HDTVs and giant poolside hammocks that are a hate crime not to use.
Eat: Chef Sylvain Révélant just took over Le Toiny’s prized open-air restaurant, Le Gaiac, in July — Marie Hue co-pilots as Pastry Chef (both have several Michelin-starred resorts on their CV). While your eyes gobble up Gaiac’s cliffside ocean views, your stomach should slowly but surely digest starters like Caribbean lobster and passion fruit in jelly, green apple, celery with foie gras and lobster consommé.
Then you’re sucking down seafood entrees like “big eye” fish, braised sea bass and poached monkfish in olive oil; four-legged dishes of suckling piglet and sauteed beef filets; or fly-no-more bird dishes of duck and Guinea fowl breast. Le Gaiac regularly appears on “Best Restaurants in the Caribbean” lists in all the mags that care to care.
It’s even more fun when it rains when they lower down the security walls and the restaurant becomes a Panic Room filled with nothing but deliciousness and pretty Parisian co-eds temping on staff looking to get into the hospitality biz (the smart ones, anyway).
Ease: It’s hard to find a less-stressful pocket of globe than St. Barts (save for when you’re landing on that itty-bitty airstrip), yet Le Toiny’s Serenity Spa Cottage is likely where you’ll find yourself.
And why not: New on its menu is its “blossom treatment” — 60 minutes of calendula flowers exorcizing all the demons from your body and soul courtesy of their petal-to-the-metal flavonoids ($199).
Just do your masseuse a favor and hose yourself down first in the outdoor shower out back.
Escape: As much as you’ll want to stay and hammock-a-thon, you have to leave the property at some point (especially since there’s no real beach onsite). Arrange for an Easy Time island tour with Hélène Bernier, who’s as sassy and joke-cracking as she is native, French-accented and sunkissed — which is to say: a lot. She also happens to know the island like the back of her cigarette-holding hand. She’ll take you on a fun-fact-jammed, three-hour trip, rain or shine, for 60 euro. Beach and baby goat-peeping stops are her specialty. She also offers hikes of St. Barts’ many, many hills. Go to herwebsite and arrange for her to pick-up you up.
And once you’ve gotten your fill of all the your Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis, Fendi Fendi, Prada fix around Gustavia Harbor, head over to Blue Escape on the Yacht Club dock. After living in French Polynesia for over a decade — tough life! — Stephane Hamon transplanted his fam to St. Barts in 2011. Ever since, he’s been taking tourists and locals out on boat and snorkeling tours around the island with lots of help from his first mate, Eddy. An animal lover par excellence, there will be turtle sightings galore (their heads stick out of the sea like little scaly periscopes). Also, beer. Pack a lunch and board his 41-foot Riviera 4000 Offshore boat, which has A/C and a bathroom.
Info: Spring rates from $1,226.
