Korner SXM
Grand Case- Saint Martin
True evil in the middle of paradise? Well, it's either one of the beginning chapters of the Old Testament or it's an apocalyptic sign about one of the worst restaurants in all of Saint Martin.
Grand Case, Saint Martin, restaurant row, on the water. It exemplifies beauty, pristine water, glorious sunsets, and views I never even imagined existed.
Whatever your God is, whether traditional or a Pokémon, someone had a great day when they created this. Yet for all its splendor of location, there is a small restaurant on the water that I happened upon. Walking in, it is set back and not as easy to see from the street, which normally I love. Our first encounter was a sour, miserable, all human hating French man who despised his own life and most likely everything else in the universe. But when in Rome, you shrug it off and say let's see what this experience will be about. Once we sat, I made it my personal mission to be so saccharine, sweet, and kind that he could not help but wipe that miserable scowl off his face. To my credit, and to his, by the end of the disastrous evening, IF we had seen him again, he probably had a every so slight grin.
The wine list, short, ridiculous, and meaningless, offered a Sauvignon Blanc as one of the choices. Apparently, as amazing as Saint Martin is, if you crave bubbles, as i do daily, you are either drinking Perrier Jouet or absolute shit prosecco. They haven't quite figured out that there are incredible wineries where you can offer a bottle at $40 or $50 and still have a lovely glass in front of you. I asked politely if the Sauvignon Blanc was a Sancerre or from a different region, and with all his astute knowledge, this blundering bully told me those are two completely different wines. Sancerre is Sancerre and Sauvignon Blanc is Sauvignon Blanc. While doing my absolute best to contain my laughter at his idiocy, I smiled and said I'll have a bottle. Sidenote for the record, since we're only talking white wine here: Sancerre is Sauvignon Blanc grown in a specific corner of the Loire Valley. All white Sancerre is Sauvignon Blanc, but not all Sauvignon Blanc is Sancerre, since it's a regional distinction, not a grape distinction. The man was arguing geography against grape and lost on both counts.
So after an incredibly long, awkward wait, we were finally presented with one glass of wine, when of course we had ordered a bottle. We giggled, drank the glass, and when he finally came back over, we said he might have misunderstood, we actually wanted an entire bottle. To this he stated that's all we have, the bottles are gone. That was the last of it.
And the hits kept coming. We ordered a couple more glasses of wine and figured it couldn't get much worse. The setting again is on the water, and it's beautiful. The place itself is rundown, shack like, without any of the polished design gestures you'd find at a Campos cafe just a few steps away. Tables rickety and propped against the deck railing, chairs the antithesis of comfortable, non cushioned, cheap, as visually appealing as everything else. I could be off slightly, but our flight on JetBlue to the island took a shorter amount of time than it did to get our meals. What finally arrived was a semi respectable locally caught lobster ravioli. It wasn't heinous. It wasn't spectacular. It was okay. The appetizer was of the same quality, meh, not horrible. The food could pass muster at any local dive or neighborhood eatery. What was so offensive about the Korner wasn't that the woman in the back lacked advanced culinary skills. It was the absolute disdain for hospitality, the lack of attention to detail, the badly arranged decor, the flat unavailability to order more even IF we wanted to.
Just the banality and the lack of effort this mom and pop shop put into their business was harder to forgive than if they'd poorly cooked the dishes we ordered. It wasn't below average. It wasn't going to make us sick. It was just beyond plebeian.
The dessert was fine. The appetizer was fine. The food was such that no one in a million years would ever go back for it, but also nobody's headed to the emergency room over its effect on the system.
This restaurant exists for one reason. It sucks off the teat of the real establishments within a beach pebble's throw away. Grand Case can get incredibly busy, and not everyone wants to wait 30 to 45 minutes, so this vulture of an establishment scoops up the unsuspecting overflow from real restaurants, lures them into an oceanfront location, and serves average at best food with service this indefensible. I wish there was a separate rating system to acknowledge their deceitfulness.
After a meal one can only laugh about, we waited 20 minutes for the bill, then walked up to the bar to ask someone to take our money and waited another 10, merely to pay a grossly overpriced fee for average food, disgusting service, and horrible owners.
Yes, dear reader, sometimes a snake does appear in Eden. Hopefully you'll be wise enough to keep your eye on the real prizes and not succumb to the only appeal of the Korner, which is the view and the location. They have absolutely nothing to do with either.
“I cook. I write. So that you don’t have to settle for mediocre”.