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There are beaches where you bring a cooler. Beaches where you order from a waiter under an umbrella. And then there is Pinney’s Beach in Nevis, where a walk through the sand can turn into an afternoon of rum punches, grilled fish, lobster, cold Carib beers and conversations with the people pouring them.
Beach bars are serious business here.
Pinney’s runs for about four miles along the western side of Nevis, with St. Kitts across the water and the green bulk of Nevis Peak behind you. Along one portion of the beach, bars appear one after another, each with its own drinks, food, regulars and personality. This year’s Mango Festival bar crawl included seven Pinney’s stops: Sunshine’s Bar & Grill, Weekendz Bar & Grill, Turtle Time Beach Bar & Grill, Chill Beach Bar & Grill, Zanzi Bar & Restaurant, Rock On Come Inn Bar and the Cabanas at Lime Beach Bar.
Seven bars on an official crawl tells you something.
You could come to Pinney’s for the beach and spend most of the afternoon in the water. You could also arrive hungry, order a rum punch, start talking to somebody at the next table and discover several hours later that you have barely gone 200 yards.
On Nevis, both are perfectly reasonable plans.
Start With The Killer Bee
Any serious conversation about Pinney’s starts at Sunshine’s Beach Bar & Grill.
Sunshine’s is one of those Caribbean bars whose name has traveled much farther than the bar itself. The painted signs, bright colors, open-air tables and famous Killer Bee have become part of the Nevis vacation lexicon.
Order the jerk chicken. Get the fish. Lobster is another good idea when it is available.
Then get the Killer Bee.
Sunshine’s recipe remains its own closely held secret, which is probably part of the fun. The drink arrives sweet, fruity and very easy to drink. The rum catches up soon enough. One is an introduction. A second requires considerably more respect.
There are rum punches all over the Caribbean. Some are excellent. Some taste primarily like juice. The Killer Bee belongs to a different category because the drink has become inseparable from a particular beach and a particular man.
If you tell someone who knows Nevis that you spent the afternoon at Sunshine’s, the next question will probably involve the Killer Bee.
Then Keep Walking
Here is where Pinney’s becomes interesting.
Sunshine’s would be enough to give the beach credibility by itself. Instead, it is one stop among a whole collection of independent places.
You leave one bar, walk through the sand and find another.
Then another. Then another.
Chill Beach Bar & Grill has the straightforward formula a beach bar should have: shade, drinks, casual food and the beach a few steps from your chair.
Weekendz Bar & Grill adds another stop to the same Pinney’s run, while Rock On Come Inn Bar gives the beach another independent watering hole. Their inclusion on this summer’s official Pinney’s Beach Bar Crawl shows how extensive the current lineup has become.
The great Caribbean beach-bar districts usually develop organically. One successful place attracts another entrepreneur. A cook opens a grill. Somebody starts pouring a house rum punch. Music gets added. Friends become regulars. Visitors return the next year and head straight toward the same bar stool.
Pinney’s has been developing its version for years.
The result is a beach where choosing a bar becomes part of the pleasure.
Turtle Time Has Its Own Following
Keep going and you reach Turtle Time Beach Bar & Grill, another Pinney’s favorite.
You come here for mahi mahi, a cold drink and a table facing the beach, for the food, cocktails and west-facing views, and the the mahi mahi sandwiches and rum punch.
There is a useful rule when exploring beach bars in the Caribbean: watch the people who come back.
A great beach bar rarely depends on décor. Its real currency is repetition. People return because they remember the bartender, the fish sandwich, the drink they ordered last time or the table where they spent three hours talking with somebody they had just met.
Turtle Time has plenty of those people.
Order lunch, stay for another drink and look across toward St. Kitts. Pinney’s faces west, which gives this whole collection of bars one major advantage as the afternoon gets later.
No reservation. No jacket. No ceremony.
Just another round.
Lime Brings Cabanas And A Serious Cocktail List
Then there is the Cabanas at Lime, one of the more developed versions of the Pinney’s formula.
Lime gives you a beach club, a restaurant and private cabanas, along with a cocktail list featuring drinks such as the Beach Bellini and Snake in the Grass rum punch. Caribbean and Mexican dishes share the menu,.
The cabanas make Lime particularly useful when you want to turn a quick beach-bar stop into a longer afternoon.
Get a drink. Order something from the kitchen. Put your phone away.
Then reconsider whichever bar you planned to visit next.
Pinney’s has a habit of destroying ambitious itineraries.
The official story of Lime is also tied directly to the beach-bar culture here. Owner Randy Jeffers learned hospitality at Sunshine’s before creating Lime on Pinney’s after a hurricane.
One bar helped produce another.
Very Nevis.
Zanzi Adds Indian Food To The Crawl
The great surprise on Pinney’s may be Zanzi Bar.
Because after jerk chicken, grilled seafood and rum punches, you suddenly encounter an Indian restaurant and bar on the beach.
Zanzi serves Indian dishes alongside cocktails and nighttime entertainment.
It adds another reason to treat Pinney’s as more than a place for a single famous drink.
You could have a Killer Bee at Sunshine’s, stop for another cocktail farther down the sand and finish with Indian food at Zanzi.
Try finding another Caribbean beach where the progression feels quite like this.
Even The Four Seasons Gets Into The Beach-Bar Game
Pinney’s also happens to be home to the Four Seasons Resort Nevis, one of the Caribbean’s best-known luxury resorts.
And even here, the beach-bar idea survives.
Kastawey Beach Bar brings the toes-in-the-sand concept inside the resort, with a Japanese-inspired menu and sushi served right by Pinney’s. The resort also has Crowned Monkey Rum Bar, where the emphasis turns toward a broader collection of Caribbean and international rums and spirits, and the great rum bar led by Kendie Williams at Mango.
You could therefore spend part of the day under a Four Seasons umbrella, have sushi near the sand, then head down Pinney’s and finish with a Killer Bee.
Luxury resort and independent beach shack coexist remarkably well on Nevis.
The common denominator is rum.
And sand.
Why Does Pinney’s Have So Many Beach Bars?
Perhaps the better question is why more Caribbean beaches do not.
Pinney’s has the essential ingredients: a long strand of sand, calm swimming conditions, nearby hotels and villas, a strong local following and enough visitors to keep independent operators busy.
Nobody needs to turn the whole beach into one giant beach club. The pleasure comes from walking between individual places and deciding where to order the next drink.
It also gives you a particularly good way to understand Nevis.
This is an island famous for historic plantation inns, stone ruins, tiny villages, green hills and one of the Caribbean’s great luxury resorts. Yet some of the best hours here require very little planning.
A chair. Something off the grill. A drink made with rum. Someone nearby who has a story.
The Pinney’s Beach Bar Crawl
You do not need an official event to create your own Pinney’s crawl.
Start somewhere around Sunshine’s and let appetite determine the rest. Have lunch at one bar. Order a house cocktail at the next. Try the Killer Bee if you have never had one. Get a local beer somewhere else. Save room for another plate later.
This has been beach-bar country for a long time. Caribbean Journal was writing about the extraordinary concentration of bars here more than a decade ago, when Sunshine’s, Lime and a collection of other independent spots were already making this stretch one of the region’s most intriguing places for a drink in the sand.
The names have changed in places. New bars have joined the lineup. Others have disappeared.
Come to Nevis. Find Pinney’s. Walk onto the sand.
Then follow the sound of a shaker and order something with rum.
The post How One Caribbean Beach Became a Haven for Rum Punches, Seafood, and Toes-in-the-Sand Bars appeared first on Caribbean Journal.
