Tim's post takes me back to early days
. . . as Tim describes, a special memory of island history -- when Albert's "prescription" for me, if I didn't feel well, always was linguini in garlic & oil! Nearly every time it cured the ailment!
Other places
. . . I've spent many squalls in the dining room of Le Sereno (& earlier, "El Sereno" -- especially when Boubou's music didn't stop!) . . . including an August hurricane in 2010 ("Earl"?) with the then host (Jean Pierre), then-chef (Jean-Luc), and Julien Tatin (Wall House was closed). Jean-Luc had gas at the stove so produced one amuse-bouche after another, with champagne giving the sense that we were impervious to the storm!
. . . at our "publishing party" in 2003 when a torrential downpour washed through Maya's, hardly disturbing the reverie of guests dancing to "Y-M-C-A," until water running down the hillside shorted-out the disc jockey's equipment (see Ellen's great recollection of the evening --
http://www.st-barths.com/editorials/ellen/ellen_nov2003.html).
. . . in 2011, I believe it was Hurricane Irene -- late August. Eddy's last night of the season . . . we dined around a table in front of the kitchen, no one else in the house, 'til the electricity went off. Then, with candlelight and a few Ti punches before work started to bring outdoor chairs inside (tables are too heavy to move), we closed the metal storm doors and generally battened down the hatches. The ride home over Lurin still stands out in my mind . . . reminiscent of my first visit to SBH, when the only nighttime lights were candles in villa windows, where shutters hadn't been closed, and a few passing cars.
. . . and in a nod to Mike's suggestion to stay inside and whip up a dinner -- there was a hurricane evening where respite was found at The Normandie, when I unexpectedly found myself as proprietor to a houseful of guests. I had planned to leave earlier in the day, when it still was possible to do so, but our manager was away from the island, and the assistant manager bailed-out because she wanted to be in the "safety" of her own house for the storm. Having not prepared to be "host," I found myself being genial with 12 or so people . . . and very little supplies. We, however, did have a lot of wine and some pork chops . . . and a guest, a professional chef, who prepared them -- albeit with gas, but no electricity. Dividing the pork chops and a few veggies among the crew. it was a time not unlike Luke's parable of the fishes & loaves. The next day, as the storm abated, we were reduced to cheese and a few apples . . . as guests huddled in the salon, quietly reading and listening to old Beatles songs from the iPad of some British guests, I periodically passed paper-thin slices of cheese & apple (that's all we had in house!) to accompany prodigious quantities of wine & coffee! (A lovely young couple from Texas, by the way, later wrote to tell me that their newborn son was conceived that evening . . . I hold the thought that he was named "Norman!")
There are, thus, many possibilities for windy, rainy days . . . and the worse it gets, the better the adventure will be!
