Derriere Limegrove Review: We Went Back for More

Verdict: I ordered the tuna expecting potatoes, it arrived on a bed of rice, and I still gave it full marks. Derriere is the French brasserie on the west coast of Barbados I would book on an ordinary Wednesday with no occasion attached, which is the highest compliment I give a restaurant.

Quick answer: Derriere French Brasserie, on the ground floor of the Limegrove Lifestyle Centre in Holetown, Barbados, is worth booking: across two visits eight days apart the French onion soup, oysters, moules frites, steak frites and tuna were all excellent, service was faultless both nights, and dinner for two ran from BBD $317.78 to BBD $544.45 depending on the wine.

• Where: Limegrove Lifestyle Centre, ground floor, Holetown, Barbados, on the west coast
• Visited: Wednesday 30 September and Thursday 8 October 2026
• Price paid: BBD $317.78 for two on the first visit (USD $160.48) and BBD $544.45 on the second (USD $274.95), both including 12.5% service
• Cheaper option: L'Express Lunch, Monday to Friday, 69 BDS
• Best for: proper French brasserie cooking, long dinners with good service, and anyone who wants to eat in air conditioning that actually works
• Booking: book through OpenTable on the Derriere website, even in the quiet season
• Opening hours: every day, 8am until late, breakfast, lunch and dinner
• Parking: yes, at Limegrove
• Dress code: none
• Self funded. I paid both bills in full. Prices correct at time of visit.

We have been going to Derriere since it opened, so this is not a first impression piece. What it is instead is two dinners inside nine days, which is the better test. The first visit I was under the weather and ordered accordingly. The second I was properly hungry, knew the menu, and had Charlie with me doing what Charlie does, which is order the thing he always orders and refuse to apologise for it. It also happens to be a short walk from the apartment we stay in, which is the kind of detail that quietly decides where you eat on holiday.

The name is the direction. Derriere sits, as the restaurant puts it, hidden derrière the Limegrove Lifestyle Centre in the heart of Holetown: ground floor, round the back, not on the street front. If you are looking for a sign on the Highway 1 side you will walk past it. Park at Limegrove and cut through.

It opens every day of the week from 8am until late, and serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, with brunch from 8am to 3pm on Saturday and Sunday. Booking goes through OpenTable on the restaurant's own site. The telephone numbers are +1 246 233 5112 and +1 246 426 8677, and the email is info@derriererestaurant.com.

We had a drink at the Bearded Rose first, then walked round for a half past seven table. This stretch of Holetown rewards making an evening of it rather than driving straight to your reservation, and The Tides is close by too if you want to compare notes on the neighbourhood.

Very French, and not in a tasteful, restrained way. There are Gainsbourg posters, Edith Piaf prints, quotes, memorabilia and the sort of clutter that only works when someone has actually chosen all of it. First visit we were given the run of the room because it was quiet, and took the bench with the kitchen on our left. I would ask for it again. Second visit we were on table 29 at 7.34pm.

The French onion soup, $40. This was the best starter of the entire holiday and I do not say that lightly. The usual problem with onion soup is that the good bit lasts four spoonfuls and then it is just soup. At Derriere the bread, the cheese and the onions hold out to the last mouthful. We ordered it on both visits, two bowls each time, and I would order it again tomorrow. There is a cheaper soup of the day at $26, and I have no intention of ever finding out what it tastes like.

The oysters, $14 each. Two each on the second visit, thick, creamy and with a bit of heat to them, served with mignonette. Before they arrived, Jamila brought bread, olive oil and balsamic, then came back and asked if we wanted more. Charlie and I have never turned down more bread in our lives.

The moules frites, $80. Charlie's order on the first visit, mussels steamed in white wine and flambéed with Pastis, with hand cut fries. One of his favourite things to eat in any French restaurant anywhere. He cleared the bowl without speaking, which is his version of a five star review.

The steak frites. A 14oz ribeye with maître d'hôtel butter and hand cut fries, ordered medium rare on the second visit. Our bill read $145. The current menu says $155, so check before you order. The plate arrives looking like the steak has pushed the fries out of the way.

The tuna, $85. This is the dish that caused the only confusion of the night. I had the previous menu in my head, which came with new potatoes. What arrived was seared tuna fanned over basmati rice with salmon, micro leaves and two sauces. I asked Jamila and it turned out the kitchen had changed the menu that week. The till still rang it up under the old name at exactly the same price. It is now listed as Tuna Indochine, pan seared, served rare only, with plum and wasabi sauce, and I would not have swapped it for the potatoes. The rice was better than lovely.

The shrimp cocktail, $54. On the first visit I did not want a full main, so I took this from the seafood list as my main course instead. Sensible move: the portions here are generous enough that it works. The prawns were enormous and the Marie Rose sauce was as good as the kitchen's reputation suggests.

What I have not eaten and will be working through: the seared foie gras with brioche and apple cider sauce at $90, the fricassée of snails in creamy mushroom flambéed with cognac at $45, and the flying fish mousse at $35, which is the one properly Bajan thing on a very French menu. If you have come to spend, the Chateaubriand is $185 and the Louis XIV burger, Wagyu with comté, fig chutney and foie gras, is $136.

We did not have dessert on either visit, so I cannot tell you a single thing about the dessert menu. We finished the second dinner with a double espresso and the bill.

First visit we kept it simple with two glasses of the #45 Mâcon-Lugny at BBD $36 a glass. Perfectly good and the sensible order if you want to keep the bill down.

Second visit we used a ChatGPT wine app to choose, which sounds ridiculous and worked perfectly. It landed on the #90 Chardonnay 2023, Indigo Eyes, at BBD $110 a bottle, and it was exactly our thing. If you want the shortcut, order that one.

Our waitress on the second visit introduced herself as Jam. The receipt says Jamila. She was efficient, polite, on top of every table she had, and she never once forgot anything, including the second round of bread she offered before we could ask. Faultless, and the quiet kind of faultless, where you notice the service only because nothing goes wrong.

The first visit was the same story with a different cast. A young woman greeted us and let us pick our table, and Jermaine looked after us for the evening, immaculate in the uniform. The staff here talk about the restaurant like they want to be there, which does not happen by accident. At the end of that first dinner Jules, one of the three owners, came in and ate his own dinner in the dining room. That tells you something.

Derriere is the work of three French friends who describe themselves as passionate professionals, food maniacs and Barbados lovers: chefs Daniel Echasseriau and Jean Jacques Carquillat, and Jules Gualdoni.

Daniel was born in Saint Nazaire on the west coast of France and has cooked in France, England, Africa, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, French Polynesia and the British Virgin Islands, including Midsummer House in Cambridge and the Hilton Bora Bora Nui. He first came to Barbados in 1995, working at Royal Westmoreland, La Maison, the Fairmont Royal Pavilion and Glitter Bay, went off to St Lucia and Antigua, came back in 2014 for St Peter's Bay, Port Ferdinand and Nikki Beach, and settled here in 2022 as head of food and beverage for the Hilton group.

Jean Jacques was born in Chamonix, in the French Alps, into the trade: his grandmother cooked at a local hotel for forty seven years and his father owned a restaurant and club called Le Ratelier. He left for Paris at fifteen to assist the pastry chef at Gaston Lenotre, then Fauchon, La Mirabelle in London, the Ritz Carlton in Lisbon, and La Reserve and Le Bernardin in New York. He opened his own French bistro, Le Canard Enchaine, in Kingston, New York in 1996, and Le Shack in Barbados with his wife in 2022, having holidayed here for twenty years first.

Jules spent about a decade launching bars and nightclubs in central London, around Portobello Road and Dover Street, before moving to a rum focused life in the Caribbean. He set up the cocktail lounge at The Cliff, then built his own rustic rum shack, La Cabane, in 2017.

Three Frenchmen doing French food in the Caribbean sets expectations high. They meet them.

Here are both bills in full, two people, in Barbados dollars.

Wednesday 30 September 2026

• Mâcon-Lugny, two glasses: $72.00
• Moules frites: $80.00
• Onion soup, two: $80.00
• Shrimp cocktail: $54.00
• Service charge at 12.5%: $31.78
• Total: $317.78, with VAT at 10% and a 2.5% levy included, shown as USD $160.48

Thursday 8 October 2026

• Chardonnay 2023 Indigo Eyes, bottle: $110.00
• Espresso: $14.00
• Onion soup, two: $80.00
• Oysters, four: $56.00
• Steak frites, medium rare: $145.00
• Tuna: $85.00
• Service charge at 12.5%: $54.44
• Total: $544.45, with VAT at 10% and a 2.5% levy included, shown as USD $274.95

The gap between those two nights is almost entirely wine and a second course. That is a west coast Barbados price and nobody is pretending otherwise, but it does show you the lever. Order the onion soup, drink by the glass and treat the seafood list as your main course, and two of you eat very well for a shade over BBD $300.

If the dinner prices make you wince, the weekday answer is L'Express Lunch, Monday to Friday, 69 BDS. For a kitchen with this pedigree that is the single best value I found on the west coast, and I say that having not yet eaten it. Every Sunday they run bœuf bourguignon, and the doors open at 8am for breakfast every day of the week, which makes Derriere one of the few places here you could plausibly use three times in one day.

I had tuna at Champers earlier in the same trip and enjoyed that meal a great deal. The tuna at Derriere matched it and possibly beat it, which surprised me. Champers has the view. Derriere has the room, the bar and the air conditioning, and it is the one I would pick for a dinner where the food is the point.

• Book through OpenTable even in the quiet season, and ask for the bench seat near the kitchen
• There is no dress code, so wear whatever you like, and bring something for your shoulders because the air conditioning is serious
• Park at Limegrove, have a drink at the Bearded Rose first, and make an evening of it
• Say yes to the second bread
• Check whether the menu has changed recently, or do what I did and order the wrong thing by accident
• Come back on a weekday for the 69 BDS express lunch and spend the difference on wine

Worth it. Derriere is for anyone who wants French brasserie cooking done by people who grew up with it, served by a team who are good at their jobs, in a room with actual personality. Skip it if you want a sea view with your dinner, because this is a shopping centre address and the view is the restaurant itself.

We went back once already and it climbed in my estimation, which is rarer than it sounds. Next time I am ordering dessert so I can finish the job, I am having the flying fish mousse to see what the French do with the national fish, and I would stick to wine by the glass unless we are celebrating.

Find it: Derriere on Google Maps

Derriere takes bookings through OpenTable on its own website, and I would use it even in the quiet season. We booked both visits, one at 7pm on a Wednesday and one at 7.34pm on a Thursday, and the restaurant was calm rather than full. Booking also helps the team staff the floor properly.

Dinner for two at Derriere cost BBD $317.78 on our first visit and BBD $544.45 on our second, both including 12.5% service. The difference was a bottle of wine and an extra course. The weekday Express Lunch runs at 69 BDS if you want this kitchen for less.

Derriere has no dress code. The air conditioning is among the best on the island, so this is the Barbados restaurant where you can wear long sleeves or trousers without regret. I found it a little cold at points, so take something for your shoulders if you feel the chill.

Derriere sits on the ground floor of the Limegrove Lifestyle Centre in Holetown, on the west coast of Barbados, round the back rather than on the street front, and you can park at Limegrove. It opens every day from 8am until late and serves breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Order the French onion soup at Derriere, which is $40 and keeps bread, cheese and onion in every spoonful to the last one. Oysters are $14 each, the moules frites is $80, and the Tuna Indochine comes with basmati rice rather than the potatoes I was expecting.

Next, read the rest of the west coast eating in my Barbados guide, where the rest of this trip is going up restaurant by restaurant. And if you want the reviews before they hit the site, join The Chic List. I only send it when I have something worth your time.