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La Bastide

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ext212
ext212
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3 out of 5
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1
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4
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La Bastide

  • February 27, 2007
  • Rated 3 of 5 by ext212 from New York, New York
La Bastide

If you're a couple staying in one of the 15 bungalows at Morgan's Rock, your $225 per person fee per night includes three meals and all the local beers and homemade rum you can drink.

La Bastide is the name of the restaurant inside Morgan's Rock Hacienda and Ecolodge. Throughout our entire stay in Nicaragua, we never ate food made of fresh produce like we did at Morgan's Rock.

A lot of their products are organically grown. A farm inside the hacienda provides the fruits and vegetables plus all dairy needs to the guests. If they do not have the items inside, they buy them from local producers in nearby San Juan del Sur and Rivas. This way, the hacienda not only supports their employees, but also the local farmers in the country.

The restaurant staff are by no means trained by a chef, but we appreciated them for trying to offer fancy food. We loved their chilled cucumber soup drowned in garlic, but some of the meals were incorrectly named. I expected a tomato-based seafood soup when I ordered the bouillabaisse one evening, but it came with coconut milk, lime juice and cilantro. Calling it coconut-lime shrimp soup would have been better.

They have their own shrimp farm so order anything with shrimps from their menu. They tasted so fresh even if they were slathered with mayonnaise. At least, they came on a bed of fresh mesclun.

Like most of Central America, La Bastide doesn't really care for medium-rare meat. I ordered a steak sandwich for lunch one day and it was chewy and rubbery because the meat was well done. (And I still ate it because it had some merits.) When I ordered duck for dinner, they noted that I wanted it medium-rare, but the dish turned out to be baked in a ramekin filled with cheese that it didn't matter if the meat was overdone. (I also ate it because my mother taught me not waste food, especially while at Morgan's Rock!)

Breakfast is served until 9am so you have to wait until lunch time if you're a late riser. The night before, though, you can sign up to have coffee delivered to your room. When we woke up, a thermos with freshly-brewed coffee (from their own coffee farm somewhere else in Nicaragua) waited outside our door. It was one of our favorite things about Morgan's Rock. We drank coffee on our porch every morning while the howler monkeys made noise from afar.

The staff ask their guests for their dinner order during lunch time. They only cook what's been ordered. This way, no food is wasted.

On the plus side, they make their own Morgan's Rock Rum and it's included in your bill. They have so many locally-grown fruits that I managed to taste all of them during our stay: passion fruit, mango, tamarind, banana-flavored juices, all spiked with rum, of course.

From journal Luxury with Responsibility at Bahia Majagual

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