Chef Kareem's Unbelizable Lunch Caye Caulker — Restaurant in South Caye Caulker

The first day had a pretty good experience, just got on the island and got a order of jerk chicken and bbq chicken. Second day got back from snorkeling and showed up about half an hour before it closed. The chef handed me the menu and I immediately new I wanted the snapper, they were out, no problem I’ll do the barracuda steak, they were out and out of all seafood. Okay understandable I’ll do the coconut curry chicken. Had to wait a little longer because the people prepping the sides had put everything away already and I had to listen to the chef argue with them. Not the biggest deal in the world.

Now the next day I got there at 12:30 to ensure they still had snapper. Ordered the snapper which is 20 balizean. Was told no problem and immediately after another guy turned to the chef and said they didn’t have it but had grouper. Okay, grouper is 35 balizean and I only had 15 usd so I said I’d have to be back but the chef told me they take card. Okay cool, I did the grouper then. Took about 15 minutes for the food to cook, no issue, it comes out and I go to hand the chef the card and he says to hold on so I stood there for about 3 minutes before he told another guy to ring me up.

He then walked me to the local market and I handed my card to the cashier and then the guy who walked me down told the cashier it was 45 balizean. But the cashier rang me up for 49.50 balizean because I had to pay the fee for using a card. I don’t mind but let me know ahead of time at the very least.

I was definitely more bothered by the extra 10 balizean charge that was randomly talked on. The food wasn’t bad but for the price and no extra convenience I would have gone somewhere else, even the stands directly next to this restaurant which I had been to with good service and food...

Some average food was massively overshadowed by the extremely awful service.

As we sat down I realised this place doesn't serve drinks so I checked with the owner if it'd be okay to go buy one at a local store and bring it to our table. He said no problem so I started walking, and almost instantly one of the staff skips over to my side and says he'll walk me there.

He proceeded to follow me into this shop and begins picking things off the shelves and telling me all about how it was his birthday recently. We get to the counter and of course he drops all of his stuff next to my one bottle of water and gives a spiel about "supporting the local community". He then tries to force me to buy some pastries from a local girls basket. We get back to the grill and I can see him laughing and handing out his drinks to the other staff that he intimidated me into buying.

During our meal, the same staff were also harassing women as they passed by. Asking them to be their girlfriend and the usual creepy comments from men like this.

Surprised they didn't try to scam us again while paying, overall terrible experience that we keep coming across on this island. If the locals are only interested in ripping people off, I can only recommend other tourists...

Chef kareem took our order and went to get change at the store as we gave him $20usd, the meal was $15usd for our lobster. We were asked to take a seat and we waited about 10mins before I saw Kareem come back asking our order again and that we needed to pay. I told him we already did pay him and we were waiting for our change. He played dumb and side stepped our table and never came back. The lobster was very rubbery although the seasoning was great our experience was not. I would encourage to not sit down till you receive your change or pay in exact amounts or you will get ripped off and they will steal your money. Places with much more trustworthy people and WAYYY better food is "Cafe by the sea" the jerk chicken is fantastic! or 3 blocks down south off "middle road" there are places with much better food and better prices. Good luck!

Tip: If you do go here, get it to go. The seating is the trashest part of the entire island we saw for food. Straw dogs walking around begging for scraps. And trash and lobster tails everywhere you walk. So unless you have a rabies shot dont sit...