Pinchos Grill & Bar, Aruba

• Location, location, location – literally atop the crystal-clear Aruban water
• Al fresco dining at its finest
• Superb food in just-right portions
• Very attentive wait staff
• Owners always on premises

• If it rains, you have to move under the bar roof
• The restaurant is near the end of the airport runway, so dinner may be punctuated by jet engines
• Aruba is windy, so outside dining means quickly cooling food. Eat up and hold onto your napkin

• Address: L.G. Smith Blvd., #7, Oranjestad, Aruba
• Phone: 297-583-2666
• Price range: from $3.75-$25.65
• Hours: Daily, 5 p.m. to midnight (except Mondays); Friday, Saturday, 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.
• Seating: 13 tables, total seating of 62 at lounge tables with love seats or regular dining tables
• Live entertainment Friday-Sunday
• Happy hour daily (except Mondays)

You know all those exotic, sexy locations where they shoot “The Bachelor?” Well, Pinchos was one. Charlie the bachelor did his televised wining and dining here in an episode of the hit series that aired in 2005. There’s a reason producers chose Pinchos: built on a pier off shore at Surfside Marina, the atmosphere is as romantic as romantic gets. You don’t just see the sea outside a window, you’re on it. Any closer, you’d get wet.

Owners Robby V. Peterson and Anabela Peterson deSousa have more than 40 years of combined hospitality experience, and it shows. They opened in February of 2004 to rave reviews for equal parts food -- Pinchos means ‘skewers’ in Spanish, and most of the grilled food on the menu is impaled on one -- and location. Sunsets are explosively glorious here and the perfect accompaniment to the terrific cuisine.

Blue lights abound around and on the sides of the open yet cozy structure, so you can look down through the floorboards and be entranced by the sexy hot shimmer of the waters dancing blue beneath your feet. The building itself was designed by Robby Peterson and is solidly constructed of dark, moody Basralocus wood, imported from Surinam.

Oh, the food. Yes, it is spectacular, up to and including the locally made chourico, a Portuguese sausage. It is simply the best I have ever had –- smoky, tangy and perfectly cooked -- and I hail from near New Bedford, Mass., where the best chourico in America is made. We also went with a sample appetizer platter of pork, steak and shrimp, cooked on skewers served sticking out of a pineapple half. Give the grouper a try, too: the local fish is pan-seared and succulent and served with an apricot and ginger dipping sauce.

Don’t forget dessert, if you have room. And get it even if you don’t: A location this exquisite you’ll want to linger in as long as you possibly can.

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