The Crane in Saint Philip on Barbados’s southeast coast is the island’s oldest hotel — operational in some form since 1887 — and the beach it sits above is repeatedly voted one of the most beautiful in the world. The Crane Beach Bar takes that setting and does something sensible with it: delivers cold Banks beer, rum punches, and fresh island food to people who have made the smart decision to park themselves on a spectacular sweep of pink-tinged sand with Atlantic surf rolling in behind them. The dramatic cliffside setting means you’re looking down at the beach from above, which gives the whole experience a cinematic quality that’s hard to manufacture. This is old Barbados — elegant without being fussy, beautiful without being showy — and the bar has absorbed those qualities naturally over well over a century of operation.
