There is a new restaurant/winebar/cafe in St. Lucia that is throwing everything you know about dining out and date nights out the window.
Located at the Baywalk Mall, Rodney Bay, Rawr is St. Lucia’s first original fondue restaurant – a place where eating out has become a whole new experience, particularly for local diners. It is run by directors Kim Noel and Rowald Derrick. When Kim and Rowald established Rawr, their vision was to create a fun, relaxed and entertaining atmosphere where guests can enjoy an interactive dining experience and varied cooking styles, and share memorable moments with family and friends.
Additionally, the Rawr experience starts with an all- day breakfast menu; “signature” or “make ur own” salads and wraps; hot food station for lunch and ends in dinner – fondue. Alongside this, you can also enjoy the best coffees, Asian loose teas, fruit, bubble and iced teas and sweet desserts mainstream. It is an extension of FellyBelly where we offer a wider food menu with the “make your own concept”. We offer an all-day breakfast menu; salads and wraps; hot food menu (changed daily) and a dinner menu which offers fondue style cooking – cheese; meats and chocolate fondue; make your own pasta.
Dazzle: What sort of restaurant is it?
Kim: It is a fondue-style restaurant where the tables are equipped with induction cookers that enables live cooking, We do have a fondue menu. Basically, anything that we prepare in the kitchen, can be done outside on the tables. It’s a fun, interactive way to eat, as your meal is prepared in front of you. The menu basically is “make your own”, so you can make your own combination of a meal based on the ingredients available. We encourage customers to “make your own pasta, make your own soups…”The fondue menu includes cheeses, meat as well, and chocolate fondues.
Added to that, the trend now is about healthy eating. Our lunches includes sides of rice – basmati, jasmine or brown; quinoa or cous cous; gluten free rice noodles; vegetables; beans or peas; tubers; greens; and grilled chicken or fish. At Rawr, we, too, want you to stay with the current trend of healthy eating but in a fun way. So instead of having the same salad everyday, you can change it up to suit your mode, every time. Same goes for the pasta etc. The chef brings out the meats, sauces and pastas of your choice and its prepared on your table. Every table is equipped with an induction hob and the chef will instruct you how long each food should be cooked if you chose to cook yourself. Basically helpful instructions are provided for you. There’s also a wine section for those who choose to indulge while having a chat with friends. What we also want to introduce is a variety teas, fruit, iced and bubble.
Dazzle: What was the inspiration behind the opening of a restaurant like this?
Kim: It has always been one of our passions to have an extension of Felly Belly but to do more of the food stuff. Felly Belly is more fun, healthy drinks, smoothies, juice with a few paninis and some loaves and stuff. We wanted to do something that combines healthy eating with fun eating – Fun do. The difference would not only be in the cooking style but also the experience.
Also, travelling a lot allowed us to learn from different cultures. For example, in Asia hot pot is an Asian style of cooking, and the induction plates that we introduced sort of stems from that. We had to learn how to adapt it to our culture.
Dazzle: Who are your target audience?
Kim:The millennials for sure. That’s where the market is now. The concept of “making your own” attracts them. We also cater to those who are very health conscious. We want to capture the more mature too, and middle-aged persons; those at the age where they’re more careful about what, and how they eat, and so on. We think that we cater for a wide clientele. We want to encourage more variety creating salads breaking away from the traditional signature salads and have fun creating your own, as well as trying different homemade dressings.
Dazzle: Being a fairly new concept, what type of experience can one look forward to when dining at Rawr?
Kim: First of all we want patrons to enjoy eating healthy. You create the experience that makes it fun. The novelty of the concept alone should really drive people with a curiosity to see what’s going on. All the tables have cut outs to fit the induction hobs. We did a dry run outside and people were clearly intrigued. We want you to be very relaxed, family like. We also offer a hot food station, geared towards lunchtime diners who are on the go.
It’s not a hard and fast menu, if there’s a dish you like prepared and we have the ingredients, then we make it for you. Saturdays are Rawrking. We will introduce Caribbean flavors “Rawr like a Trini/Lucian/Vinci/ Grenadian/” so each Saturday alternates.
Dazzle: What are the opening hours?
Kim: 7:30 am to 9:00 pm, Monday to Thursday. On Fridays and Saturdays we go up till 10:00 pm.
Dazzle: Are you planning to make any improvements or additions to the restaurant?
Kim: We would love to expand with more tables for diners.
Dazzle: What if I can’t cook?
Kim: You don’t need to know how to cook. The chef/ server provides you with your ingredients and basic instructions, like how much time is required for each meal to cook, boil, etc. All of this is part of a new fun experience for people who aren’t experienced in cooking.
Go on and Rawr when you visit Rodney Bay, you’re gonna have a blast!
