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.
