In the town of Gustavia on the French Caribbean island of St. Barts, there is a popular pub-grub dive bar called Le Select. Founded in 1949 by a local named Marius Stakelburough, he wanted something to do on the island at night since there was not yet electricity. Opening a bar seemed like a good diversion. The bar that he and friends created is famous as St. Bart’s oldest.
That, however, is not what the place is most famous for. Yellowed newspaper clippings on the wall tell about a former burger flipper who had worked there as a young man and who had since risen to prominence in the states. His name was Jimmy Buffett.
Buffett would maintain contact with Le Select. No American singer would be more identified with the Caribbean than him.
Stakelburough and the Le Select regulars were proud of their association with Buffett who, when in town, could often be seen outdoors sitting under his favorite tree which he described as “his office.” On at least three occasions he even staged a free concert to celebrate a Le Select anniversary. But what really caused excitement was in 1978 when Buffett recorded a song called “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” It was as cleverly written as it was upbeat, beginning with the memorable line:
Tried to amend my carnivorous habit
Made it nearly 70 days
Losing weight without speed, eating sunflower seeds
Drinking lots of carrot juice and soaking up rays.
That song was influenced by an actual mishap when a boat he was sailing in was damaged. He and the crew survived off of only canned food and peanut butter. Eventually the craft made it to a larger island where there was a burger joint. He relished a cheeseburger, (presumably one served with relish).
As the song became more popular so did the cheeseburger in every beach bar in the world. However, the question remained, what was the island that Buffett was singing about. “Le Select” certainly had the right to claim to be the bar of origin. Afterall no other burger joint where coconut trees sway to the sea’s breeze was visited more often by Buffett.
Although St. Barts was not the island of his recovery, Buffett reportedly allowed Stakelbourough to use the Cheeseburger slogan in return for an open tab for all his future visits. The deal was done.
I have had my own theory of the place he was singing about, and it had nothing to do with recovery on the sea but arrival on a neutral ground. And obviously it isn’t in the Caribbean.
Buffett was a big fan of New Orleans. He once told of visiting a girlfriend at Tulane and getting there on a streetcar. One of his favorite stops in the neighborhood was the Camellia Grill noted for, among many items, its burgers.
Uptown with its palm trees and canopies of oaks can be someone’s vision of paradise. So, couldn›t it be that the place he was talking about was the Camellia Grill? It made sense to me.
In 2017 New Orleans magazine’s Persona section, written by editor Ashley McLellan, interviewed Buffett on the occasion of the opening of a biographical musical called, “Escape to Margaritaville.” Among the questions Buffett was asked was if New Orleans and the Camellia Grill were what inspired the song.
“I love the Camelia Grill cheeseburger,” Buffett answered, “but no, it is not accurate. The inspiration came down in the British Virgin Islands at the end of a not so glamorous sailing passage, and we found a waterfront bar with cheeseburgers.”
Subsequently the landing has been identified as the Virgin Island of Tortola and the village of Roadtown.
Yet, New Orleans deserves credit. If it was not the location of the burger in the song, it is a paradise with a burger place that Jimmy Buffett himself said he loved.
It remains an ideal place though hardly for shunning “carnivorous ways.”
