A couple of new restaurants have recently opened on Bonaire, and being the brave souls that we are, Linda and I checked them out. The first one we visited was the Garden Cafe, which is tucked in behind Kaya Grandi, near where Telbo is located. There's an entrance to the Garden Cafe right near Beefeater and Benzer's Electronics.

The Garden Cafe promotes itself as a middle eastern restaurant, but we also found some Venezuelan dishes on the menu. In either case, both types of cuisines can't be found in any other restaurant on Bonaire. The food we had was authentic and excellent, starting with a vegetable soup and a cucumber yoghurt salad. Main courses were the Pabellon Criollo (the Venezuelan daily special this past Tuesday) and a beef shoarma with a chickpea lemon sauce. Pitas accompanied everything. Dessert were a variety of small pastries, including baklava, prepared (as is proper in middle eastern cooking) with rose water and orange blossom. Prices were very reasonable. They are open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner except for Sundays. Definitely worth a visit.

Last night we had dinner with Newsgroup icon Cheryl Roberts and her husband Dennis at the newly opened Swiss Chalet, which offered a variety of Swiss dishes (and more to come as more equipment and supplies arrive). I'll let Cheryl post details of her meal when she returns from Bonaire, but suffice it to say that we had a great dinner. A large number of dishese had mushrooms in them (which I'm not particularly partial to, but Linda is), so I chose the Beef Strognoff, Swiss style (with pickles in the sauce, BTW) as my main course, accompanied by Rosti (similar to hash browns) and enjoyed it immensely. Prices were in keeping with regular restaurants on Bonaire. Swiss Chalet is located where the old Supercorner used to be, across from Scarlet's Flower shop on Kaya Lidertador Bolivar (same street Telbo and Tourism Corporation Bonaire are on).

Jake