Life on a Dessert Island

I wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to food on Hamilton Island. Turns out that like most places it’s a mixed bag

... just more expensive.

Here were some of the more memorable experiences:

Breakfast

We stayed at the Reef View Hotel and the buffet was up there with the best I’ve ever seen (and devoured). There were so many things on offer that despite having three courses each day I still discovered new things to scoff each morning. My favourites were the bircher muesli, poached eggs cooked-to-order and hollandaise sauce on standby, and pancakes with maple syrup and mixed berries - which looked like this:

Lunch

This meal didn’t get much of a look in due to the aforementioned over indulgence at breakfast… but an all-day H20 Cruise adventure included a great lunch: rolls, cold meats and salads.

Snacks

These were mainly in liquid form: Gentleman’s Affair (see picture below - you drink it warm); Espresso Martini; Dirty Martini – shaken not stirred. Got a decent (expensive) ice-cream too.

Dinner

This was where the mixed bag really came in. The seafood buffet (dangerous, really, these buffets) on the Denison evening cruise was great. They laid out everything that had ever swam, crawled or slithered under the sea. And I ate most of them. That was good.

We ordered a pizza to be delivered from Manta Ray Cafe that was not cooked properly. Raw dough is gross. That was bad.

We had pasta dishes at Romano’s that were so tasty I thought the pasta really might be ‘home-made’. That was good.

At the Mariners we had sashimi (see pic below) as an entree, which was nice but only one kind of fish (salmon) so a little uninspiring. Then ordered mussels and a seafood pasta for mains after they told us what we really wanted (coral reef fish) was no longer available. It all tasted nice, but I threw it up later. That was bad.