Where We Eat on St. Croix: 5 of Our Favorites

Ask five people on St. Croix to name their favorite restaurants and you’re likely to get five different answers. The island has a surprisingly diverse dining scene, from sophisticated restaurants in centuries-old Christiansted buildings to beach bars where you can walk in sandy and order whatever came off the boat that morning.

So this isn't our attempt to name the five “best” restaurants on St. Croix.

These are five places we actually eat—restaurants we return to again and again, each for a different reason. Some are special-occasion destinations. Some are casual enough for flip-flops. One is where we stop before we even make it home from the airport.

If friends were staying at Oceans and asked us where they should eat, these are five of the places we'd send them.

AMA at Cane Bay — Our Favorite Restaurant on St. Croix

Just a four-minute walk from Oceans, AMA is our favorite restaurant on St. Croix—and one we return to again and again. Reservations are a must, particularly during high season, and if you can, ask for a table in the grotto.

It’s a spectacular setting. The tables sit alongside a natural tide pool where waves splash over the rocks and actual sea life—moray eels and colorful tropical fish—swim below you. Time your reservation around sunset and it’s hard to imagine a prettier place for dinner.

AMA takes its cocktails seriously, with excellent craft cocktails and frequently changing daily specials. The kitchen does the same. The chef regularly offers specials based on what’s fresh, and our rule is simple: if there’s a tuna special, order it. The tuna comes straight off the boat, and the preparations tend to be creative, beautifully plated and different each time.

There are a few menu dishes we return to as well. The beef filet, served with a rich wine reduction, is perfectly tender and every bit as good as what we’ve had at excellent mainland steakhouses. And we rarely visit without ordering the smoked Caesar salad. It’s a clever take on an old favorite, with an addictive smoky dressing that makes it something entirely different. The wine list is excellent, too.

Dessert is the one course we usually skip. Instead, we have a very St. Croix solution: walk a little farther down the road to The Landing Beach Bar and have a slice of one of their excellent rum cakes.

There’s another side to AMA that's worth experiencing. Sunday brunch has an entirely different daytime feel. There are plenty of creative breakfast dishes, but we often ignore them and order the smoked Caesar topped with whatever the grilled catch happens to be that day. The portion of fresh fish is remarkably generous.

AMA also has a more casual sibling right next door, Sunset Bar VI. No reservations are needed, and it offers a limited selection from AMA’s menu along with food prepared on the bar’s own grill on certain days. It’s an easy option when you want the setting and sunset without planning ahead.

Hamilton’s — Sophisticated Island Dining in Christiansted

Hamilton’s is intriguing before you even walk through the door. Its exterior features striking blue-and-black portraits of Alexander Hamilton, who spent part of his youth on St. Croix, and David Hamilton Jackson, the influential Crucian labor-rights advocate.

Inside, the restaurant is beautiful, with a sophisticated island feel—rich mahogany furniture and trim, dramatic artwork and a lively bar immediately to the left as you enter. In fact, we’d be perfectly happy settling in at the bar for dinner.

The menu offers polished interpretations of classics such as bouillabaisse and filet mignon, often incorporating Caribbean flavors and ingredients. On our most recent visit, we started with mussels in a yellow coconut-curry cream sauce. The sauce was delicious, although an unusually large number of the mussel shells arrived cracked. We pointed it out to our server, who apologized, but nothing further was done about it. It was a disappointing note in an otherwise excellent meal.

Then came the mahi.

A staple on the menu, it’s topped with mango chutney and served with coconut-curry couscous and broccoli. It was quite simply the most perfectly cooked mahi we’ve ever had. Mahi can so easily become dry when it’s even slightly overcooked; this was moist, tender and absolutely spot-on.

That dish alone reminded us why Hamilton’s belongs on our list. Come for the beautiful room and sophisticated island atmosphere, have a cocktail at that inviting bar—and if you like mahi, this is one we wholeheartedly recommend.

1756 Grotto — History, Atmosphere and a Chef Who Loves What He Does

Executive Chef Aaron Bradshaw has been leading the kitchen at 1756 Grotto since March 2026, bringing an inventive, globally influenced approach to one of Christiansted’s most atmospheric restaurants.

And what an atmosphere it is.

The restaurant takes its name from the year its Danish colonial building was constructed, making it one of the oldest buildings on St. Croix. Within a decade, a young Alexander Hamilton would have been walking this same street between the office where he worked and the Christiansted docks.

If it’s a beautiful evening, ask to sit outside. The restaurant’s al fresco grotto, surrounded by lush tropical foliage and accented with Asian-inspired touches, feels peaceful and tucked away from the world.

The menu is equally distinctive: globally inspired food incorporating local ingredients, with dishes such as Goat Bolognese, Island Fried Chicken and Local Fish & Chips with yucca fries. On our last visit, Chef Bradshaw was showing off his New Orleans roots with shrimp and grits that were packed with flavor.

But the dish we still talk about is one of the simplest.

The Roasted Garlic starter pairs warm Brie with an entire head of roasted garlic, gooseberry jam and focaccia toast. The idea is to build your own perfect bite: spread some melting Brie on the toast, add a soft, almost gooey clove of roasted garlic, and finish it with a little jam. It’s one of those dishes that's somehow much greater than the sum of its parts—simple and absolutely delicious.

Chef Bradshaw also genuinely seems to enjoy engaging with the people eating his food. When he comes out to talk with diners, his enthusiasm is infectious. You get the sense that these aren't simply dishes coming out of a kitchen; they're creations he’s excited for you to experience.

The Landing Beach Bar — Our Go-To

Some restaurants are for special occasions. The Landing is where we simply go.

In fact, it has become part of our arrival ritual on St. Croix. On the drive home from the airport, we stop at The Landing, head to the takeout end of the bar and order two bush teas to go. Only then does it feel like we're really back on the island.

Directly across the road from Cane Bay Beach and about a ten-minute walk from Oceans, The Landing is about as casual as it gets. Come straight from the beach in your cover-up and flip-flops. It’s open for lunch and dinner every day except Tuesday, and Monday’s popular $10 Burger Day draws plenty of regulars.

Fresh lobster, tuna and other local catch arrive straight from the boats, and the first thing we look at is the huge, hand-drawn specials board. That's where you'll find what’s fresh that day and all the ways the kitchen is preparing it—perhaps a whole lobster platter, lobster tacos, fresh tuna over a salad, tuna poke or whatever else they've dreamed up that day.

We're particularly partial to the lobster tacos: lobster meat sautéed in butter and tucked into three tacos with cheese, black beans and pico de gallo. They're ridiculously good. Our favorite side is the beans and rice, made from a Puerto Rican recipe flavored with culantro, also known as recao. It's deeply savory and one of those humble side dishes we find ourselves craving when we're away. The seared tuna bites are another favorite starter.

The cocktails are good, too—especially the Painkillers—but whatever you do, save room for rum cake. Owner Win makes them herself, with several flavors usually available. Vanilla pistachio is our favorite, although butterscotch brownie gives it serious competition. We haven't found a better rum cake on St. Croix.

What really makes The Landing, though, is the feeling of the place. Win treats her customers and staff like family—and some of the staff actually are family. It's friendly, unfussy and genuinely local. You can walk in sandy from Cane Bay, settle in with a cocktail and some lobster tacos, and feel completely at home.

AMA may be our favorite restaurant on St. Croix. The Landing is our neighborhood place.

Z Café — Our Christiansted Lunch Spot

As you stroll down King Street in Christiansted, keep an eye out for a brick archway. Peek through and you’ll discover one of our favorite little dining spots in town: a charming courtyard filled with trees and lush tropical greenery, umbrella-shaded tables and a pretty fountain.

This is Z Café, tucked into the courtyard of the historic Pentheny Building. Open weekdays for lunch, it draws plenty of locals who work downtown—and it's where we like to eat when we're exploring or shopping in Christiansted.

The menu is a globally inspired collection of salads, bowls and handhelds, with fresh shrimp, fish or short ribs available to add as a protein. When we feel as though we need a healthy-food fix, this is where we go.

We particularly love the Roasted Cauliflower Bowl: harissa-marinated cauliflower with hummus, quinoa, peppers, arugula and corn, finished with a roasted-pepper vinaigrette. Check the specials board out front, too, because there's usually something interesting that isn't on the regular menu.

But don't get so virtuous that you skip dessert.

If bread pudding appears on the specials board, order it. It's Z Café's signature dessert and, in our opinion, better than any bread pudding we've had on the mainland. The flavors rotate—triple chocolate, mocha almond crunch, coconut and chocolate pecan are among the possibilities—so you never quite know what you'll find.

Z Café is also a good example of why we like getting away from the most obvious tourist spots. For lunch in Christiansted, we find the food here considerably better than at many of the restaurants directly on the harbor—and the hidden courtyard is part of the pleasure.

Chef Jamey Hughson also offers elegant private-chef services, including dinners prepared right at your villa. So if you fall in love with his food at Z Café, there's another way to experience it without leaving Oceans.

Five Favorites — Not a Top-Five List

St. Croix has far more than five restaurants worth trying, and this isn't meant to be a ranking. In fact, there are plenty of other places we enjoy and will undoubtedly write about another time.

These five simply tell you something about the way we eat when we're here.

We’ll walk down the road for a special dinner at AMA. Stop at The Landing before we've even unpacked our suitcases. Head into Christiansted for a sophisticated dinner at Hamilton’s or an evening in the garden at 1756 Grotto. And when we're shopping or wandering around town at lunchtime, there's a good chance you'll find us tucked into the courtyard at Z Café.

They're very different restaurants.

And that's precisely why they're five of our favorites.