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Well folks, I am very excited to tell you that a great new spot is set to open in Coral Bay next week. And it’s being opened by some familiar faces we all know and love. 🙂

Richard Baranowski, Dylan Buchalter and Miguel Hernandez recently took over the Oasis restaurant in Coral Bay, which is located directly across from the bay and beside Salty Mongoose. They are transforming it into a Caribbean-inspired barbecue spot, which will ultimately be called Johnny Lime. Richard and Chelsea Baranowski own Lime Inn in Cruz Bay, one of my favorite restaurants on island. Richard and Dylan also own the wildly popular Lime Out floating taco bar in Coral Bay, along with Chelsea and a few of their childhood friends.

The Oasis/Johnny Lime restaurant will serve lunch and dinner Mondays through Fridays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., or until they sell out. They’re planning a soft opening for this Monday, November 14th at 11 a.m. Exciting!

The menu will feature Caribbean-inspired BBQ and will include an array of spices found in traditional Caribbean dishes. They will serve a smoked jerk chicken with guava and tamarind barbecue sauces, and rice and peas, for example. Local juices will also be on the menu, including a favorite of mine, soursop.

“We want to do as much local products as we can,” Richard told me earlier this week.

The restaurant will have a full bar, and will serve a variety of frozen and craft cocktails, as well as beer and wine. And in keeping with the local concept, they will prominently feature local brews and seltzers from St. John Brewers, as well as Leatherback Brewing and Mutiny Island vodka out of St. Croix. They’re even going to serve draft beer! It’s the little things in life, folks. 🙂

“We want the velocity of money to stay in the Virgin Islands,” Richard said, “and we want to support businesses that are in the Virgin Islands. That allows us all to have a better living standard on St. John.”

I could not agree more!

The Oasis spot will remain a community space for residents, and Saturdays will be reserved for an array of activities including early morning yoga and art classes for the kids. They plan to hold a weekly community day on Saturdays, and they will offer a donation-based lunch every Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. They will continue to hold trivia, which supports a different charity each week, every Wednesday night.

I don’t know about you, but I am very excited about this. That’s all for today, folks. Have a great one!

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Reminder: Our raffle ends this Sunday, November 13th at 9 p.m. AST. For just $25, you can enter to win a St. John vacation, including a week-long stay at Livin’ the Dream at Grande Bay in Cruz Bay. Proceeds will support the Animal Care Center of St. John. Visit www.islandtidbits.com/raffle for complete details & to buy tickets securely online.

Hello everyone, and happy Wednesday! I think it’s about time to post our very first, but certainly not our last, Island Tidbits island update!

Ok, so I have to start with the obvious… We have had SO MUCH rain lately. Our cisterns are full, and the island is super green and lush. Enough already Mother Nature, you can stop now. We need our blue skies to return on the regular please.

For those of you who are new to island life, the majority of us here on St. John live off of collected rainwater. Those living right in Cruz Bay are the exception. The rest of us, however, rely on the rain to collect water for our homes. The rainwater is then funneled through a gutter system and into a cistern, which can be likened to a basement in a way. But rather than be living space, it’s typically a big ole’ concrete room (most of the time – some people have plastic ones beside their homes) that holds our water. And when we run out of water, which happens from time to time, but certainly is not happening for anyone right now, we call the water truck to fill us up.

And when it rains like this, we often get runoff into some of our bays and onto our beautiful beaches. Check out this brown water we saw at Maho Bay earlier this week. When you see water like this, you do not want to swim nearby.

Want to know what I think are the best sites to monitor our weather? Click this link to check that out. You can also check out our webcam page at www.IslandTidbits.com/webcams to see what’s happening live on island.

Ok, so now back to the positive stuff. Nearly everything has reopened on island at this point (after being closed for slow season). The island is starting to fill up again, but it is in no way super busy. It’s still relatively easy to get a parking spot at the beach or a reservation at a restaurant that requires one. (You also have time to book an island tour!)

For those of you planning to stay at the Westin over the next month or so, you are very lucky because the sun is setting, once again, directly in front of Great Cruz Bay. This is also great for the folks staying in parts of Chocolate Hole, Virgin Grand Estates and areas on Gifft Hill as, you too, will have a direct view of the sunset. And as we get closer to Christmas, you will even have the opportunity to see the sun set over the water which means one thing… the potential for a green flash! Exciting stuff.

Now can we talk about the butterflies? There is an insane amount on island right now. I chatted with my friend Charles, the gardener up at Annaberg, and he said we have so many butterflies because the island is so green. Makes total sense. But seriously, if you are currently on island (lucky you!) or if you have a trip coming up soon, you are going to be absolutely stunned by the amount of butterflies here right now.

And lastly, I truly want to thank each and every one of you for reading Island Tidbits. When I sold News of St. John back in 2020, I never thought I’d write about the island again. I missed it tremendously, and I am so happy to have the ability to share all of these fun stories with all of you again! If there is anything you’d like to know more about, please feel free to email me at anytime at jenn@explorestj.com.

That’s it for today, folks! Tomorrow is my birthday, so I may or may not post. Let’s see how much fun I have tonight. 😉

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Island Tidbits would like to introduce you all to our latest advertiser Mystical Mermaid vacation rental. Mystical Mermaid is one of my favorite St John vacation rentals. It is ultra private, and located in a very quiet section of Fish Bay. The home has two bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, and very generous indoor & outdoor living spaces. Click this link to learn more.

Did you know there is a tree on St. John’s East End that can kill you? It’s true! Introducing today’s island tidbit…

If you have driven down Centerline Road (Route 10 on the map), you probably noticed a large warning sign beside the road at Haulover Bay. The sign is there to alert passersby of the nearby manchineel tree, the most poisonous tree in the world.

The manchineel tree is poisonous in many ways, so you should really keep a good distance from it. Its small fruits resemble an apple, however eating one can be very problematic, even fatal. The name “manchineel” (sometimes written “manchioneel”) as well as the specific epithet mancinella, is from Spanish manzanilla meaning little apple, according to snaplant.com. A present-day Spanish name for the manchineel tree is manzanilla de la muerte or “little apple of death.”

I actually had an island tour guest earlier this year who mistakenly ate a bite of a manchineel while on vacation on another Caribbean island. She said its first bite was sweet, but then she had a very peppery taste in her mouth. She soon felt an intense burning and tightness in her throat. Fortunately she only had one small bite, and she recovered.

The manchineel’s milky white sap is incredibly caustic as well. This is definitely one tree that you do not want to stand under during a rainstorm! Even one drop can cause skin blisters, swelling or burns. Even its bark is poisonous. Burning it releases a smoke that can cause temporary or even permanent blindness. So in a nutshell, stay far away from this one. There is a reason it holds the Guinness record for world’s most dangerous tree.

Now you may be wondering why the tree is still standing in the Virgin Islands National Park. It’s because it’s on the endangered species list.

Here is an up close pic of the leaves and the fruit just so you 100 percent do not go near it…

We had a second marked manchineel tree on the road to Annaberg prior to Hurricane Irma in 2017. That presumably blew away during the storm.

Want to see just how close this tree is to the road and also to Haulover South? Check out this quick video we took below…

Pretty interesting stuff, right? I hope you are enjoying our Island Tidbits! Have a great day!

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Island Tidbits would like to introduce you all to our latest advertiser Villa Bonita vacation rental. Villa Bonita is a beautiful three bedroom, 3.5 bath vacation home located in the quiet Fish Bay neighborhood. The villa is located on one level, and has water views, a pool and central air throughout. Click this link to learn more.