Food Guide for the Grand Bavaro Princess, Punta Cana, D.R.

My family and I just got back from our seven day vacation at the Grand Bavaro Princess. As self proclaimed foodies, I felt I should make this post so other foodies who are coming to the resort can have the best possible experience.

I'm going to break this post down by talking about each restaurant we went to and my experience. I'll start with buffet restaurants, then the A la cartes, and any small restaurants or food stands. At the end, I'm going to provide some general tips to help make your dining experience better.

Buffets

La Hispanola:

La Hispanola is the main buffet up by the lobby. We only ate here once on our last night, but I really enjoyed it. The buffet was huge with tons of different food options. The seating area was also very large so although there were a lot of people, it didn't feel cramped at all.

In terms of food, most of my family had sushi from the sushi bar and they really enjoyed it. I just had some chips and guac and grilled chicken but that was also very good. My favourite part of this buffet was the chocolate fondue fountain for desert.

Trapiche Restaurant:

Trapiche is the beach buffet. This was definitely my least favourite of the buffets. Its right in the middle of the beach and the pool so it is extremely busy at lunch time. In addition to that, the actual buffet section is very small, so there were limited food offerings.

Chopin Restaurant:

Chopin is the platinum buffet. We went to this buffet almost every day for breakfast and I really enjoyed it. It wasn't super large so there wasn't a ton of variety but the options that were available were very good. For breakfast, they had made-to-order crepes and omlettes. For lunch, they had prime rib a couple of times which they would cut a piece off to order. This buffet also had a ton of fresh squeezed juices like pineapple, watermelon, papaya, and cantaloupe.

A la cartes

We went to an a la carte almost every day for supper so we were able to try out a lot of different restaurants.

Tanuki Teppanyaki:

This is one of those Japanese restaurants where you sit in groups of 8 and the chef comes out and cooks the meal in front of everyone. In terms of the experience, we really enjoyed this. I recommend going to this restaurant earlier on in your stay because you might make some friends like we did. The chef was very engaging, at one point he was flinging pieces of egg across the table for us to try and catch in our mouths.

I also really enjoyed the food here. The way it works is they come around with menus that have options for appetizers, and you can pick whatever you want off that list. My family and I tried the egg rolls and the chicken thai salad and I liked them both. While everyone is eating their apps the chef begins to prepare the meal. The main course is the same for everyone, fried rice with vegetables and an assortment of chicken, beef, and seafood. Although, he keeps each of the meats separate until the end so if you don't like seafood, for example, you just decline when he starts dishing out the food. The main meal was pretty good, I wouldn't say it knocked my socks off but I enjoyed it.

Il Tartufo Trattoria:

This was by far the worst meal we had during our stay. Now I want to preface this by saying that no one in my family speaks much of any Spanish, and I do think that contributed to our experience, because there were some items that we just did not realize what we were ordering.

For apps, I got the caprese and my family had the breaded mozzarella. My appetizer was actually quite good, but theirs was so heavily breaded it looked like they had literally wrapped a piece of bread around the mozzarella. Then for mains, I had the brodo tortellini, and my mother had the ravioli with ricotta in a cheese sauce. This is where the miscommunication comes in because I thought that my pasta was a tomato sauce base, but it ended up being this weird broth base and it was basically stuffed pasta ball soup. My mom's pasta was so loaded with cheese she couldn't even eat it, like the ravioli was drowning in cheese sauce. For dessert I had a chocolate lava cake and this was actually quite good. Overall, we ended up having to go to the buffet after our meal because no one could eat their main course.

La Hacienda:

We actually ended up going to this restaurant twice and we enjoyed it both times.

For apps we tried the shrimp aguachile, cheese and chorizo crackling, and the pozole. The pozole was really good, the shrimp was pretty good, and the chorizo I definitely wouldn't get again. For mains we just had tacos, we tried the pastor, chicken tinga, and BBQ. I enjoyed all of them. For dessert, we had to have churros of course, and these were quite good. This restaurant also has a mariachi band that comes around to each table so that was fun.

El Gaucho Steakhouse:

Our food at El Gaucho was simple but good. For an app, I had the princess salad which was good. For a main, I had the filet mignon which was also very good. I got it medium rare and it was well cooked.

SOHO:

SOHO is one of the platinum restaurants. Overall, our apps were really good but everyone was quite underwhelmed by their mains. I had the beef tartare for my app and it was really good. For my main, I had the stuffed chicken and it was not quite as good. The sauce was sort of like a hollandaise but it was very bland. The chicken itself was also bland and very dry. Personally, I would opt for the Platinum Beach Grill as the go-to platinum dining option.

Platinum Beach Grill:

This was probably my favourite restaurant at the resort and what made the platinum upgrade worth it to me. We never got here for supper but we went multiple times for lunch and once for breakfast. Generally, I will say the service here was quite slow in comparison to the other restaurants, especially at breakfast time. I also found the breakfast options to be pretty much the same as the buffet which is why we only went once for breakfast. For lunch though I really enjoyed this restaurant. I had the chicken burger which was pretty basic but still good. The star of the show was the grilled chicken. I had it multiple times with rice and grilled vegetables. The chicken was juicy and the rice was really flavourful. It was also a bonus that the Beach Grill had outdoor seating so you could still enjoy the sun while having lunch.

Other Restaurants

24 Hour Sports Bar:

We ate at the sports bar a couple of times. The sports bar has a small 24 hour buffet which is mostly just snack type items and then you can order off the menu as well. The buffet was very small and basic, the sports bar was also very busy so the buffet section was very messy.

From the menu I had chicken wings and chicken nuggets. The chicken nuggets were really bad. They were very dry and just different from a North American chicken nugget in a way that I can't explain. The wings however, were quite good.

Food Trucks:

Beside the beach buffet, there are food trucks. There were two trucks and one food stand. The one truck made salads. I had a salad and it was okay but they went quite overkill on the dressing. The other food truck had burgers, hotdogs, and fries. I didn't have a chance to try a burger or hot dog but the fries were good.

I went to the food stand once and they were serving paella. I thought the paella was okay, nothing too special but I ate it all. I will say I was watching them make it and it was definitely not authentic paella, not that I expected that but I felt it was important to mention.

Tips

So now I want to share some general tips that I think will help elevate your experience. One of the main takeaways I had from this resort was that some food items were really good, and some were really bad, so hopefully these tips will help you to avoid the bad options.

Beware of the cheese:

I'm not sure exactly what it is, but the cheese was very different from what I personally am used to in Canada. There would often be platters of cheese laid out at the buffets and it had this artificial look to it. My recommendation would be to avoid foods where cheese is a main component. I definitely had food that had cheese in it during my stay and it was completely fine, but anything that I ate where cheese was a main component of the dish was quite bad. I'm talking about stuff like pizza and cheesy pastas. My recommendation would be to limit the amount of cheese you eat. There's definitely no need to avoid it completely, but I do think this is one way to decrease your chance of ordering a bad dish.

Be cautious of the seafood:

The seafood was another thing that I found to be very different from what I'm used to. I grew up and currently live on the East Coast of Canada, which is known for its great seafood, so I'm spoiled this way. Someone about the seafood at the resort was very different than what I'm used to, the few times I tried seafood, it had a very fishy taste.

Stick to the basics:

I love trying new things, so this one pains me a bit to say, but in my experience, the resort was just better at doing the basic things when it came to food. I found the resort's attempts at foods that were extravagant or maybe not as common in the region were usually poor. For example, as I mentioned above, the grilled chicken and other grilled meats were super good. I also enjoyed a lot of other more basic foods like the fries, rice and tacos. Some of the foods and cuisines that I presume would be the least familiar to them were the ones I had the poorest experience with, an example being some of the Italian dishes.

Conclusion

Overall, I think the food at Grand Bavaro Princess is above average for resorts in Punta Cana in this price range. Additionally, knowing what to expect and which foods you may enjoy best will help elevate your dining experience during your stay even more.