Frommer's Review
At sundown, everybody in Negril heads toward the lighthouse along the West End strip to Rick's Café, whether they want a meal or not. Of course, the name was inspired by the old watering hole of Bogie's Casablanca. There was once, in the dim consciousness of counter-culture Negril, a real Rick (Richard Hershman), who first opened this bar as a hippy hangout back in 1974, but he's long gone. And his original vision of Rick's was pilfered long ago by big-money, big-time tourism corporations who don't mind trading in on the ganja-based, free-love, Rasta-inspired legends of Negril's yesteryear.
Don't expect anything small scale: The original rickety version of Rick's was blasted to smithereens during the hurricanes of 1998 and 2005, and the newest mostly masonry incarnation has walls thick enough to survive a small atomic bomb. You might be dismayed by the tour buses and minivans that disgorge hundreds of foreign visitors into the overcrowded parking lot of this place throughout the day and early evening, every day and every evening throughout the year. Security guards keep the place sanitized, and there's a heavy-handed emphasis on this site as a venue for the bronzed, the steroid-buffed, the beautiful, and for anyone who wants to be. There are even a phalanx of bikini-clad (male) Jamaican bodybuilders who pose decoratively, for hours, atop rock walls that frame views of the sea, the cliffs, and the setting sun. Management claims that the sunset here is the most glorious in Negril, and after a few fresh-fruit daiquiris, you might agree with them. (Actually, the sunset is just as spectacular at any of the waterfront hangouts in Negril, if nothing is blocking the view, although the view from here is infinitely better accessorized.) Casual dress as you'd expect to see in a shopping mall in central Florida is the order of the day, and recorded reggae and rock comprise the background music. Steps lead down from the clifftops to a rock-ringed swimming area, far below, and often, catamarans float immediately offshore, having disgorged passengers hauled in from resorts nearby. If you're hungry, ask for a menu, which in addition to describing the food, waxes nostalgically about the original role of Rick's as a counter-cultural mecca for refugees from the corporate world. If you want dinner, you can order dishes that include shellfish linguine, jerk chicken pasta, tropical chicken salads, sautéed Caribbean shrimp, smoked pork loin with pineapple glaze, and chicken that's either jerked or barbecue, according to your tastes. The food is rather standard, and expensive for what you get, but that doesn't keep the tour bus crowds away from the sunset party. Everything's a bit too touristy and tacky, we'd say. Neither Bogie nor the original Rick would have tolerated this.
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