We had our serial massages in the afternoon – Adrienne went first, I went second. Afterwards, we headed down for dinner – Brazilian BBQ night at the resort. Dinner started with a traditional Brazilian cocktail that I couldn’t catch the ingredient list on and it was forgettable, so Adrienne had a strawberry margarita and I had a rum slide – dark rum, coffee liqueur, and rum cream topped with a dash of cinnamon.

 

Appetizer was a black bean soup – as I am certain you all know, I am a fan of presentation, and I enjoy a soup that is presented by being poured out into your bowl tableside. Seems silly, but it’s nice.

 

Dinner was a modest helping of mashed potatoes with some roasted veggies (zucchini, yellow squash, and broccoli). By the way, is there an actual difference between zucchini and yellow squash aside from the color? It really should be zucchini and yellow zucchini. After our plates of potatoes and veggies arrived, the servers started coming around with a large metal kebab and pulling meat off for you at tableside. Chicken drumstick, lamb chops, steak, sausage, and fish. I’m sure you all know my rule: when lamb is on the menu, order it. Adrienne said, “no thank you” to the offering of lamb; I should have had her say yes and just taken hers.

 

Typically, Brazilian BBQ uses a signaling system to inform the waiters that you want more and they just keep coming back until you signal you’re done. Here, it was just one round (which was plenty), but it limited how much of something you could get – I would have taken a second helping of the lamb, for sure.

 

At the table, they dropped off two sauces: the first was definitely chimchurri sauce (it was listed on the informational card about the dinner that housekeeping left on our door) and another, dark red, sauce. I like this resort, and this island, I do, but if there’s one thing lacking it’s enunciation. I often have difficulty understanding purely verbal communication but Adrienne never does. This dark red sauce, she was certain, was described by the waiter as a “beetroot sauce” which, given its hue, was reasonable. It took a little bit of time working on the tastes and linguistics, but at this point in time we are reporting that the mystery sauce was a “meat roux”. Typically a meat dripping (making the name redundant) with a little red wine and reduced.

 

For dessert, the waiter told us it was a dulce de leche, after a brief pause, he clarified, “chocolate cake”. Confusing, because I thought dulce de leche was (and it is, I just looked it up, caramel.

 

Our resort is called The Beach House, is all-inclusive, every room is right on the beach, and it’s just wonderful. There are three floors, so the 2nd and 3rd levels have a better view of the beach and water (there’s a slight hill on the beach blocking the water), but ours is on the first floor and we have a back door that leads to the beach and the lunch hut/beach bar. We have chairs and and an outdoor bed for reading or passing the rain outside. Interestingly, this resort’s rooms do not have numbers, they have names – ours is Charming, and they are all “beach zen” names.

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In summary, 1. enunciation is key, 2. have your wife get the lamb, too, then you can have more lamb.