While Hurricane Sandy passed by, I decided it was a good time to do some organization of my files. While working through various drawers, cabinets, and boxes, I discovered a few trinkets. One of them was this casino chip from the Hyatt in Aruba.
$1 chip from the Hyatt in Aruba.
This chip has to be about 10 years old. I haven’t gambled in a casino for that many years. Not sure why I saved it, probably as a reminder that casinos aren’t built by the winners. Hey, good luck!
A couple of airplanes were intentionally sunk in Aruba to make scuba diving sites. My friends Kent, Stuart, and Kat are avid snorkelers and divers as you know from reading The Bent Page. They were courteous enough to provide some footage so all of us who don’t breathe well under water could have a look. Check it out:
In all my years of reef building, I never sank any airplanes. Still, they make an interesting dive site, something completely different from the usual assortment of shipwrecks and such. More to come, so stay tuned.
Here’s another video from the departing flight taking me from Aruba to Miami. I can never get enough of this stuff, the view from way up there. Take a look:
It was a great flight. Looking forward to heading back to Aruba. In the mean time, check in here at The Bent Page for more videos and other stuff.
Amuse Bistro in Aruba serves up inspired food as I discovered last night. So, let’s get right to it because there’s a lot of eye-candy here for you foodies. We sat down with a couple of generously-poured glasses of wine and along comes a little treat from the chef, a shot glass size sample of the potato soup. This was a great little palette teaser. Perusing the menu (which is shown at the end of this post) you’ll see there are many choices here. Well, we started with escargots as seen below:
Amuse Bistro, Aruba, escargots
Those little buggers were tasty and backed up by neatly sliced bread in an inventive way. There was also a chicken salad topped by a slice of crispy pancetta as seen in the next photo:
And then there was this inventive dish: Goat cheese with red bell pepper atop a puff pastry with sugared black olives. Check it out.
Yeah, that’s a chef who knows what he’s doing. Right? Of course! Now, let’s move on to the main course. I decided to go with appetizer size portions for the main course to save room for dessert. Here we go with a roast pork loin cooked EXACTLY right as you see here:
Amuse Bistro, Aruba, roast pork loin.
When I say that was cooked exactly right, I mean that you could cut it with a fork and each bite was full of flavor. Speaking of flavor, take a look at the shrimp and lobster linguine in the next picture:
Amuse Bistro, lobster/shrimp linguine (appetizer portion)
That was a nice combination as well. Moving along you see the scallops plated beautifully:
Amuse Bistro, Aruba, scallops.
Another work of culinary art there, eh? Absolutely. At last we get to dessert, which was a brownie with red wine ice-cream. Here you go:
Amuse Bistro, Aruba, brownie with red wine ice-cream.
All in all, a very fine meal, served by a staff that is highly professional. In fact, the staff was as much a pleasure as the food. They described the dishes, offered suggestions, and kept things moving at the perfect pace. Here I post the menu so you can see the very fair prices and options currently offered.
Amuse Bistro, Aruba, current menu.
Perhaps what I liked most about this (and there is A LOT to like) was the option to have appetizer size portions for entrees. These days I like to eat a variety of dishes and by having smaller portions I was able to make it through to dessert. In fact, next time I go to Amuse, which will be soon, I’m thinking about ordering several different appetizer to start and several more for the main courses and sharing them across the table like a family-style meal. There are lots of choices here and every one is good. Why hold back? Bon dia.
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