Back To Barbados

Its High-society Heyday May Be Over, but the Caribbean Island Once Dubbed “Little England” Has Become. A Much More Interesting Place to Visit.

- Horacio Silva

IT’S BARELY 6 P.M. on a Friday night, and already there’s a line forming at Oistins. To the uninitiated, the cheerful outdoor fish fry in this sleepy south coast village might resemble an overflowing beer garden. But since the mid-90's, the knockabout local institution first popularized by fishermen and wind surfers has functioned as a tropical Studio 54 of sorts, a riotously diverse melting pot of deep-pocketed voluptuaries and flip-flop-wearing locals and action-seekers. The ruddy man in cargo shorts next to you, waiting for his mahimahi and macaroni pie, is just as likely to be a German tourist from the all-inclusive down the beach as he is the British billionaire Lord Bamford (he of the 204-foot yacht, Sikorsky helicopter, and $25 million Heron Bay estate), who is evidently not above queuing like everybody else to eat dinner out of a plastic container.

“My grandmother’s house is literally up the street, so I’ve been coming here all my life,” says André Parris, a chatty 25-year-old radio personality, his voice barely audible above the din of steel drums. Parris, it transpires over a Mount Gay or two, is one of the most in-demand DJs in the Caribbean, used to island-hopping with the likes of British Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton and Barbados’s most notorious international export after rum, Rihanna. But not on Friday nights. “If you are out early and wondering why everywhere [else] is empty, it’s because they’re all here,” Parris tells me. “It’s a little scrappy, but you always have fun.”