It all began with a quick stop for some Medalla Light beers and some appetizers, but after taking a look at the menu and seeing the food our fellow customers were eating, it became apparent that Bananas in Esperanza would become our dinner that night in Vieques. Bananas, like Duffy’s from the night before, is kind of like a beach bar with mainland American influence.

But again, it all began with some appetizers. The first was their Mofongo Spring Rolls, which were basically a spring roll shell filled with mashed plantains, manchego cheese, bacon and caramelized onions with a horseradish sauce. We didn’t order without the onions, because, well, travel and fortunately the taste was nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, the bacon was pretty tough to find as well and these ended up just kind of tasting like fried plantains with cheese. Not a bad thing, but not as good as they could have been either. But we also ordered the Jerk Chicken Rangoons, which were basically dumplings filled with jerk chicken and some mango ginger chutney for dipping. These also sounded much better than they tasted, with much less flavor than I had hoped for, but enough to give me hope for the main course.

And the main course was truly something. I ordered the Tripleta Burger and while I know you may be getting upset at me for once again not getting something truly local, I have to explain to you what comes in the Tripleta. It begins with a really solid (and perfectly medium-rare cooked) beef patty that certainly seemed to be made in-house. Then it is topped with roast ham, pulled pork, swiss cheese and fried plantains. The pulled pork was surprisingly amazing, which made up for the fact that the fried plantains were just plantain chips. Moreover, it all just worked perfectly as a burger, especially with the great BBQ sauce it came with (that tasted weirdly similar to Kansas City’s Gate’s Hot BBQ Sauce).

If you’re looking for a good burger in Esperanza, Bananas is far superior to Duffy’s. It’s a little more costly, but definitely worth it. As for the appetizers, they’re good for getting in touch with the Puerto Rican side of the restaurant, but otherwise it’s best to just skip to the main course.

A few miles off of the coast of mainland Puerto Rico is Vieques Island. It’s reasonably small, but still supports a couple of towns, one of which is Esperanza, which caters to tourists a bit more than elsewhere. It was there that we found Duffy’s, a bar and grill with food you could probably find anywhere in the rest of the US, but with a distinct island vibe to it.

Part of that island vibe came to us in their specials. From the list of specials (written on strategic chalkboards throughout the restaurant to be carried around by the waitstaff) we picked out some Lemon Shark Bites to start off the meal. Lemon Shark, by the way, is an actual type of shark and not the flavor of the shark. Well, sort of, because these fried up bites definitely had a citrus kick to them and were delicious in the sauce they came in. It definitely felt good to be doing the biting than the reverse (and don’t worry, Lemon Sharks aren’t endangered so eating them doesn’t screw up the ecosystem like shark fin soup does).

I chose the Texas Burger as my main course, which didn’t appear to have any resemblance to Texas, but did come topped with cheddar and jalapenos (and lettuce and tomato and all that nonsense, but I ordered mine without). I ordered medium-rare, but on island time I didn’t know what to expect. The result was not something medium-rare, but a pretty decent patty of beef.It was weirdly topped with shredded cheese, which made me fell like I was getting less cheese, but at least it was melted. The jalapenos were, well, jalapenos. Perhaps most impressive, though, was that it came with a choice of waffle fries and these were spectacular.

For typical bar food, Duffy’s does a pretty decent job without disappointing or impressing too much (aside from those waffle fries!). The shark bites were pretty awesome, though, and at least made me feel like I was dining on a small island instead of just at a sports bar in anywhereland.