Turtle Bay was bustling. Business seemed to be doing well just after opening, when myself and Online Lifestyle Editor Lucy Ronan arrived for our press evening. It’s a students’ dream when you can order absolutely anything off the menu, entirely for free. We overestimated our stomach capacities when we panic ordered 4 cocktails, 2 mains, 3 sides and 2 desserts between us.
The cocktail bar is certainly the centrepiece of the restaurant; the cocktail menu alone boasts 27 options, celebrating 40 types of rum sourced from across the Caribbean. Students will be happy to know that it’s happy hour 2 for 1 7 days a week, available until 7pm and from 10pm-1.30am. Eat your heart out Las Iguanas – at £6.95, the cocktails are £1 cheaper and also a lot better…
Since converting to vegetarianism, I continually face a moral dilemma when I’m at a restaurant press evening: I want to review the best possible thing off the menu – and sometimes that involves meat.
At a speciality Caribbean cuisine restaurant, it’s hard to avoid the jerk grill. The menu boasted a range of dishes from the “jerk pit” which are marinated in herbs and spices and flame grilled over an indoor BBQ. And I’m a sucker for salmon. Having never thought to marinate salmon in coconut flavoured jerk, (I’m usually a lemon-and-garlic salmon kinda gal), I felt obliged to give it a try. The tender and succulent salmon came accompanied with salad, and I matched it with a side of plantain fried in chilli, because plantain is the best vegetable known to man.
For dessert we were both so tempted by the dark chocolate brownie, a little bit of a basic choice, but I asked for it to be served with coconut ice cream and coconut shavings. It’s good to know that the restaurant a very willing to adapt dishes according to preference.
With lunch and dinner main meals ranging in price from £7 to £12.50, this restaurant addition to Exeter is accessible to students, perhaps as a birthday treat or to celebrate a student loan instalment arrival. I wouldn’t order the obscene amount Lucy and I did – it would have been a blow to the wallet and to the stomach.
Win a Meal for 4 at Turtle Bay Exeter
Enter below to win a meal for four (3 courses and a drink per person) at Exeter’s Turtle Bay restaurant. Just submit your details and follow the instructions below. Good luck!
