Da Waterhole — Restaurant in Île des Terres Basses

If you’re American please read this:

Yes, they take cards but please be sure to tell the server b4 checkout that you’d like to add a tip. Unlike America, it doesn’t automatically print this section in the receipt. You must tell the server how much you’d like to add before you swipe… or please tip in cash. These people are so friendly and hard working & deserve to be tipped ❤️

Listen. This is the best food I had in St. Maarten. I’d had been eating on the French side eating lifeless, salt less food and this place restored all hope in life again. This food also restored me!! I was on that hot mullet bay beach low on nutrients & water. The non alcoholic slushy I had & This food though!! Let’s give the break down.

The blazing chicken: so flavorful. I didn’t need to add any salt or pepper. No extra anything. It was juicy. Well cooked. Well marinated. I loved it.

Rice and peas: this is the best rice and peas I ever had. No lie. It was moist not dry but had great flavor to it. A spice to it. I could’ve ate this alone and did ! I’m coming back to Sint Maarten after just leaving and this is my non negotiable spot to go to. BEST FOOD ON THE ISLAND. I haven’t had to taste every spot on the island to say that. I feel it in my spirit that this is the one. I can still taste this food til this day!!

I did order more vegetables as you see these are skimpy but they were fresh vegetables. Nothing frozen. Steamed well. Loved ittttt.

Go here! And...

The food, timeliness of the food, cocktail, and atmosphere was outstanding. What ruined it for us is the man serving us was incredibly rude. We came between 4:30 and 5:00 when they transition to dinner and told him we wanted to order drinks and food - dinner. He didn’t want to seat us, asked if we were only going to order French fries, threw the menus down on the table, got mad when one of us used the restroom and didn’t immediately know what we wanted to order when we returned even though the menu hadn’t even been looked at yet. He kept tapping his watch like we were wasting his time - I think perhaps he thought we wanted to order off the lunch menu when it was transitioning to dinner - but we didn’t and he didn’t even ask. I said again we wanted drinks and dinner and he said oh you want dinner? And gave me different menus. Honestly, it was absolutely uncalled for. I recommended we eat here because I saw a video on TikTok about it. I’m incredibly disappointed. I thought locals were supposed to be kind here, but our waiter was incredibly mean and rude and no matter how kind I was to him - it didn’t matter. I even still gave him a 20% tip on top of the surcharge because I appreciate people in the service industry, but he didn’t at all deserve it. Maybe he’ll have a better night now but he ruined part of ours. I’m sad it was one of the first places we ate during our visit and we experienced...

Rude waitress and bartender lied to us. You have to pay to use the bathroom and get WiFi. Pretty much nothing is complementary. My girlfriend and I wanted WiFi because we don’t get any internet on the island and I needed to call my bank. When I asked for the password, I was told I had to buy food first. I bought food and asked again. THEN I was told that I had to pay for my tab and get a receipt to get the WiFi password. So I paid. Then we asked for the password again and then ignored us for 5 minutes until we had to ask again. This time we were told that it was broken. We knew that was probably BS so we asked to get the password anyway and the bartender asked the waitress to come help us. She came over and told us that we needed to have a tab open EVEN THOUGH we were just told we had to pay. So they lied about needing a receipt, then they lied about it being broken and then they called us rude and said they didn’t have to serve us but we did absolutely nothing wrong. We only asked questions and she had this smug smile like she was above us due to the power she holds over the WiFi. I wish I could give you their names so that you too can avoid this issue. The beach was beautiful though. One of the prettiest beaches...