The Beach Club at Calabash

Local fish at the pass

Nicholas Pena Alvarez sets local fish at the pass as Chef of The Beach Club at Calabash in St. George's, Grenada, where the work begins with the island rather than with a fixed idea of beach food. Born and raised in Vancouver, he took the Executive Chef role at Calabash Hotel in 2024, carrying a kitchen brief that asks the menu to read directly from Grenada: the catch, the fruit, the vegetables, the soups, the heat in the seasoning, the ease of eating near the water without letting the cooking become casual in its thinking.

Nicholas Pena Alvarez gives fish and seafood particular weight here. The house speaks plainly about a heavy emphasis on locally and sustainably caught product, and that emphasis matters at a restaurant set on Lance aux Epines, facing Prickly Bay. His cooking has to hold two disciplines at once: the lightness expected from a beachside room and the cultural charge of Grenadian flavour. The menu is not presented as a chef's autobiography. It is a station for island ingredients, handled with enough restraint that the product keeps its own accent.

Catch, corn tortillas, callaloo

The Beach Club's program is built in the register of lunch by the sea, but the method gives it structure. Fresh daily catch can arrive as tempura, grilled into house-made corn tortilla tacos, or set beside the Signature Beach Club salad. That range matters because it shows the kitchen working across texture rather than simply changing garnish: batter and oil for lift, grill for smoke and char, salad for snap and cooling acidity. The same table can move from tapas to salads to large plates without leaving the local frame.

House-made juices come from the family farm, a detail that keeps the bar and kitchen in the same agricultural conversation. Callaloo soup and curry goat sit in the broader register of Caribbean cooking rather than as ornamental references. The discipline is in keeping those dishes legible in a hotel beach club, where the room can easily soften the food around it. Alvarez's task is to let Grenada stay present on the plate: fish from nearby waters, fruit with its own sugar and acid, cooking that does not need distance from the island to feel composed.

The room beside Prickly Bay

The room sits within Calabash Hotel at L'Anse Aux Epines, on the southern tip of Grenada, with the beach close enough to set the pace of service. Tables look toward calm water and white sand; the counter and pass answer to that openness, but the kitchen still has to move with restaurant discipline. Plates leave for guests who may be coming in from the beach or settling into a longer meal, and the cooking has to meet both without splitting its character.

On Tuesday evenings the grill takes on more of the work, with steel pan music in the air. Thursday brings the beach bistro format and a jazz band. Those nights change the texture of the room, not the center of the craft. The kitchen treats the catch, the soup, the roti skin, the goat, the fruit. Alvarez keeps closest to the pass the fresh daily catch with the Signature Beach Club salad.