Grand-Case

The village takes its name from a corruption of its old name, "La grande case" — the big house. It grew up on a tombolo, a bar of sand between the hills of Smith and First Stick Hill that separates the sea from three brackish ponds, known simply as the big, middle and small ponds. Salt was the reason people settled here: the families of workers at the salt pans built homes on the beach without title to the land, and many of them came from Anguilla, the island facing the village across the channel. They lived as fishermen and salt-workers.

As the population grew, people too poor to buy land filled in the edges of the ponds to build houses, a practice that shaped local attitudes and that even the municipal council used to find room for public buildings. That history explains why the low-lying village floods easily.

Today the old fishing village is best known as the restaurant centre of the island. Its main street now holds more than two dozen places to eat, and the small airport beside the village was renovated in 2017, with a modernised terminal and a new control tower. Grand-Case is one of the three towns where most of the French side's people live.

Food is the village's identity. Grand-Case presents itself as the gastronomic capital of the French Antilles, and people come from all over the island to eat on its boulevard. The contrast between its upmarket French restaurants and the lolos — open-air Creole grills beside the beach — is part of its character, and both are crowded late into the evening.

In the tourist season a local association runs Les Mardis de Grand-Case, evening street events with craft stalls and local musicians on the main street. Most weekends a live band plays at one of the restaurants with a bar, and the bars along the beach keep a relaxed, Caribbean atmosphere with a French touch.

The village has Methodist and Catholic churches and several Protestant congregations, reflecting the island's mix of English-speaking Caribbean and French traditions, and a youth and cultural centre. English is the everyday language, French the language of school and government, and courtesy follows French habit — a greeting on entering a shop or restaurant.

Grand-Case is one of the main towns on the French side, although it still feels like a village, with one main street, a beach and the ponds behind. It has nursery and primary schools, a post office, the territorial police, and in La Savane the gendarmerie and fire station, along with basketball and football grounds and private dance schools.

The economy runs on restaurants and tourism. Day visitors arrive by car and taxi from the rest of the island and from the cruise ships at Philipsburg. The airport brings regional flights to Guadeloupe and Saint Barthélemy to the edge of the village.

Life has its difficulties. Housing built on filled-in pond land is prone to flooding, and muggings at night are not rare. The rhythm of the day follows the restaurants: the main street fills up in the evening and stays busy late, especially on Tuesdays in season. Many restaurants close on Mondays.

Grand-Case is the island's restaurant street. The upmarket restaurants along the boulevard serve French cooking, seafood and French-Caribbean dishes, some with long wine lists, and many offer a shot of house rum after the meal. The village calls itself the gastronomic capital of the French Antilles.

The lolos are the other half of the story: a group of four or five open-air Creole grills on the beach side of the street, serving grilled meat, fish and traditional Antillean dishes off the barbecue. They are the cheapest food on the boulevard, with generous portions and large menus.

Creole cooking across the French side includes accras, salt-cod fritters; colombo, a curry of chicken or goat; johnnycakes; and locri, the island's one-pot rice dish with meat or fish. Conch, red snapper and curried goat appear on Creole menus in the village. Local rums and guavaberry liqueur, shared with the Dutch side, are the usual drinks.