• Jump to the best places to stay in St. Barts.

THE PHRASE “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere” should be updated to “Someone’s dancing on a table in St. Barts right now,” I think to myself as I watch a middle-aged man hoist himself onto his table to dance to an upbeat electronic song playing during lunch at La Cabane in St. Barts. It’s 1 p.m. on a weekday, the stylish beachfront restaurant on the island’s west coast is busy, and the music is bumping as guests sip rosé and servers zoom through the open-air dining room.

In most places a man atop a dining table would be cause for concern, but in St. Barts, c’est normal. No one bats an eye. After a few days on this tiny Caribbean island (less than 10 square miles), it’s become clear that in St. Barts, if you feel like dancing on a table, then you dance on a table. A similar spirit of exploration and celebratory exhibitionism moves through the island’s gastronomy like a tropical breeze, stirring up a sense of extravagance and freedom that can be felt while dining here.

If there are any doubts about being in the Caribbean or France, they are erased once I open the drapes in my room at Hotel Christopher — a handsome, 42-room, minimalist hotel with three villas — and take in the panorama. Perched at the edge of the quiet Pointe Milou neighborhood on the island’s northwestern side, I am greeted by the sound of crashing waves and a view of the island, complete with planes taking off from Saint Barthélemy Rémy de Haenen airport’s notoriously short runway. I have planned my day around exploring the island. But most other hotel guests have two goals: camping out on the comfortable, sun-drenched pool loungers and eating Mediterranean-inspired dishes by Chef Arnaud Faye, such as smoked eggplant caviar, crudo made from local fish, and lobster rolls courtesy of American pop-up Homer. I longingly look at their tropical drinks and order a coffee, scrambled eggs, and croissant before heading out for the day.

Driving through the charming town of St. Jean, a parade of boulangeries, patisseries, and wine caves punctuate the boutiques and shops that line both sides of the streets. The infamous Nikki Beach (where table dancing is all but required) is surrounded by a bevy of Mini Coopers, luxury cars, and four-wheelers people use to get around the island. An afternoon of bar hopping with an ocean soundtrack in the background feels like being in St. Tropez. And even in conversation with locals and drivers, France always seems to come up: Paris, St. Tropez, Brittany, Lyon — it feels like St. Barts is a part of those places, although it is very far away.

“St. Barts is not the Caribbean; it’s Europe,” Eddy Stakelborough, owner of the famous Eddy’s Ghetto, tells me bluntly in his restaurant’s garden one morning. His restaurant, Eddy’s Ghetto, has been open since 1989, serving homey French dishes with Caribbean inflections, such as the menu’s two curries: a shrimp curry, yellow with turmeric and thick with coconut milk; and the goat curry, spiced with scotch bonnets, rich with beef broth and roasted vegetables.

Stakelborough grew up in Gustavia, one of nine children, the son of a restaurant owner (the famous Le Select) who was the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to the island. “The success of my restaurant is because I watched my dad,” he explains. On his menu, he always leaves space for what he calls classic St. Barts dishes, including sausage made from conch with accra fritters: a mixture of salted cod (an ingredient that — during the days before refrigeration — could last the long journeys across the Atlantic and not spoil) and pantry staples, such as flour, an egg or two, and baking powder. Those dishes speak to the ways in which St. Barts’ residents had to make do with what was around them before the island became a posh vacation destination. “People come to St. Barts to see the beauty and the culture. The new thing is it being known as a place to party,” he says.

The ride from Cheval Blanc resort on Flamands Beach to Grand Cul de Sac Beach on the eastern part of the island is, at times, a vertical climb as you head uphill and downhill across the island. After 20 minutes, my car turns down a dirt road and arrives at La Main Verte, a local garden that supplies Cheval Blanc’s restaurants with some of their herbs and produce. Moussa Konaté, the chef at the hotel’s fine-dining restaurant La Case, makes several weekly trips here to pick fresh herbs that will be incorporated into dishes. Opened after 2017’s devastating Hurricane Irma, La Main Verte is focused on preserving plants that are indigenous to the island and region. Konaté leads a tour through the garden’s thyme, basil, mustard greens, tomatoes, aloe, and more, taking time to explain which plants he likes using the most, offering tastes of raw greens and herbs.

Later that evening at La Case, I’m presented with a shallow bowl of delicate, verdant green gnocchi in a pool of basil pureed with lemon and sea salt, reminiscent of pistou, topped with fresh baby mustard greens and parmesan crisps. Chef Konaté has transformed the haul from our trip earlier in the day into this dish of some of the best pasta I’ve ever had. “I’m not Caribbean, but I can make plates that blend the ingredients here with my travels,” he explains to me the next day. He says he sees similarities in Caribbean cooking with his family’s dishes from Mali. Later in the meal, branzino roasted in banana leaves served with roasted plantains and a confit of onions and ginger also reminds me that I’m in the Caribbean, along with the salt spray hanging in the air and on my lips.

I find a similar ethos of incorporating the island’s natural bounty the next day at Hotel Manapany on windy Anse des Caye, where surfers can be seen riding the bay’s steady waves. Chef Anthony Martell uses ingredients from the property to create dishes at both Sandy Beach, the hotel’s casual lunch restaurant, and Rockies, its fine-dining option. “The most important thing to know is it’s Caribbean French, not Italian with the French way or something else,” he clarifies for me on the beach over a lunch of local wahoo ceviche with citrus gel, coconut, and a sauce made from local wood sourced on the property. A plate of grilled octopus, its tentacles lightly blackened by char, alongside electric, orange-colored sweet potato slices, steamed and turned into delicate wheels on the plate, sat in between us as well. When I ask him why he’s stayed on the island, he shrugs: “I stay here because I like the values.”

Those St. Barts values feel like a mixture of different influences from the Mediterranean to the Americas. Despite the numerous times locals told me St. Barts is “different from the rest of the Caribbean” because it’s “safe and clean” (a description that raised my eyebrows), it’s actually quite in line with the rest of the region. That’s because of how hard it tries to hold onto itself while still being subject to the influences of the larger world around the island and those who come here.

Le Toiny, an all-villa hotel facing the easternmost part of the island, has the atmosphere and menu of a high-end French or Italian restaurant: tortellini with crab or quail with seared foie gras are appetizer options, while entrees focus on grilled meats coming off the restaurant’s wood-burning grill in its open-air kitchen. The evening I visit, the special is grilled prawns from Mozambique, a long way away from the Caribbean Sea that lies before us over the hotel’s infinity pool. It is delicious but leaves me wondering how many miles there are between St. Barts and Mozambique.

But the same could be said of the copious amounts of Champagne I see poured into mouths on tabletops at Bagatelle at midnight, or the full tin of caviar a guest enjoys at Bonito in downtown Gustavia, or even the flavored rums offered at the end of meals since sugarcane has never been grown on the island (a rarity in the Caribbean). The cuisine of St. Barts is about having the best of everywhere and bringing it here for exhilarating, decadent enjoyment.

I spend one of my exploration days with Donald Gumbs, a driver who takes me to his favorite vantage point on the island, requiring a hike through private property onto the side of one of the highest points in St. Barts. Looking down at the island, I see the beaches on its west side as well as St. Martin in the distance. Dancing on tables did not happen during my trip, but this is just as thrilling and leaves me with the sense of having found my own peace on this island, and a piece of it, creating a world of my own despite there being others on the outside looking in. I step back and sigh. The view is spectacular.