Lunching at Cara Suites

By Anne Hilton

It was unlucky for Cara Suites Hotel and Conference Centre, and unfortunate for me and friend Mark, that the one day we chose to venture down South to lunch for Newsday’s Good Living should be the day when the kitchen staff was catering for a conference, leaving guests like ourselves to help ourselves from the buffet table in the main dining room.

However, never let it be said that local dishes aren’t a part of the Good Living experience. Living and, on the whole eating alone means I don’t make Oil Down for myself at home. The Oil Down of the Cara Suites buffet was a real treat. Fattening it may be – but so are many gourmet foods – I reckon this local dish deserves a place in international cookbooks the world over. As for Callalloo – that superb soup, as made by certain chefs in Tobago to my certain knowledge, has earned a place in the “Relais de Champagne”; it is one of the world’s great soups.

Lentil soup was our lot that lunchtime, however. Humidity due to the coming squall that ripped off roofs in San Fernando made it impossible to add a little salt to our soup and, although nicely served in a basket and covered in blue linen napkins, the rolls had either been in the microwave a second or three too long, or …

At the buffet table I helped myself to a spoonful of fluffy rice, restrained the impulse to pile on the Oil Down to leave room for a few steamed vegetables and the black beans, which are other favourites of mine. Each one of the portions of baked chicken on the buffet table consisted of a wing, the wishbone and a quarter of the breast. I could, of course, have helped myself to two portions but decided against it in favour of a fillet of Mahi Mahi.

The chicken was a bit of a challenge to knives and forks, but once prised apart from the wing, the breast was moist and tender and succulent with the Oriental sauce. Kept warm in a serving dish, the Mahi Mahi might have been tough – but it wasn’t; it flaked just as it should, melting in the mouth, complimented by the sauce.

Wine-loving readers of Good Living may be disappointed to learn that with the drive back to Port-of-Spain in pouring rain in mind, we sent back the wine list and ordered a cold Stag each to drink with our meal – and very welcome it was, too.

With memories of real whipped cream in chocolate eclairs in the Canadian High Commission the previous Sunday, we wished – at least I wished – the fluffy whipped topping on the Strawberry Marble Cheesecake was real cream, too; however, the cheesecake itself made up for it, and the fresh fruit salad was indeed fresh.

We ended our meal with coffee which wasn’t the best I’ve ever drunk, but it wasn’t the worst either. At less that three hundred dollars for the two of us including beer, coffee and gratuities, we reckoned our lunch was very reasonably priced. The service was attentive yet unobtrusive. A bonus, so far as we were concerned, was the magnificent view from the hotel terrace: the pool with lounging chairs, the well-kept grounds and the view of the Gulf tempted us to linger in the lobby with its comfortable overstuffed couches, the bar with another view of the bay, the soothing sound of the fountain in the small pool, the copper murals of Carnival and Pan. You’d never think you were but a stone’s throw from the giant (for Trinidad) Trinidad Cement Limited.

Cara Suites (formerly the Farrell House) is a haven of peace and quiet, of good local food for our lunch and, as the menu for lunches and dinners on other days showed, good food local and otherwise when there are no conferences to monopolise the kitchen.

Citizens of San Fernando probably know Cara Suites already; for us, it was a refreshing surprise that, in future, may tempt us off the highway at Forres Park to Claxton Bay where you turn left (we turned right, and soon realised our mistake) and keep a sharp look out for this hotel on the right, on a hill between you and the sea…