TURNED TURTLE BAR AND RESTAURANT AT LITTLE CORN ISLAND BEACH AND BUNGALOW BEACH FRONT BOUTIQUE RESORT.
Serving breakfast, lunch, a 5 item rotating “breakfast specials” and an appetizer menu (10am to 5:30pm). Open 7 days a week at 7:15am (coffee bar), serving breakfast all day 8am to 5:30pm and Brunch (Lobster, seafood, Ribs, Burgers, Nachos and more) from 10am to 5:30pm.
View menus at the links right above the picture below (and at the “link” under the “turned turtle” to the right).
Open daily 7:15AM to 5:30PM, reception and bar open until 6:30 PM. Restaurant customers receive complimentary internet access while dining and in the restaurant.
View our full menus: Breakfast Menu | Lunch Menu | Daily Special
Here are a few quick facts about the Turned Turtle Restaurant and Bar on Little Corn Island:
- We offer a warm, friendly and casual dining experience
- Beach front, toes in the sand dining available
- We do not consider ourselves a fine dining establishment
- We are more of a “no shoes, no shirt, no problem” kind of place
- We do not require reservations
- We have separate menus for breakfast and lunch
- Home of the delicious “Seafood Omelet”
- Every day is “Brunch Day”, last order is taken at 5:30PM, bar is open until 6:30PM
- Kid menus available for lunch
- Semi famous Pina Coladas and Margaritas available all day long (virgin pina coladas available)
- We offer rum drinks, the best margaritas, wine & beer “right here” on Little Corn Island
- Dairy Intolerant/Gluten Free guests are welcome as we do our best to accommodate you
- Vegetarians are welcome as we do our best to accommodate you
- Vegans are welcome as we do our best to accommodate you
For more information, view our Turned Turtle Bar and Restaurant FAQs here
The Turned Turtle Bar and Restaurant is unlike any other on Little Corn Island. With a bistro style and beach setting, we offer some of the most mouth watering fare on the island. Our quality service, consistently great tasting food and unique beach atmosphere we hope will make you want to dine with us again and again.
With a unique, carefully thought out atmosphere (music, beach atmosphere, etc.), the Turned Turtle Bar and Restaurant has the feel of an expensive restaurant without the high prices. Comfortably lit, with a friendly atmosphere our bamboo dining tables sit on either the restaurant deck three feet above the beach, on the beach below or right on the water’s edge for a toes in the sand dining experience.
Our goal is to have North American quality food, timeliness, cleanliness and service that puts The Turned Turtle in a class by itself on Little Corn Island. You can expect quality service, excellent food and a friendly greeting from one of our Nicaraguan service staff. In fact, our all Nicaraguan staff go out of their way to show you island hospitality and serve up tasty food all in half the time (or less) of the typical island restaurant.
Please don’t get the wrong impression! We are still on a remote tropical island, dealing with a long supply line and a myriad of issues and challenges that can have an impact on our guests’ experience (both good and bad). Even with the numerous challenges of running a restaurant on an isolated tropical island, we offer a dynamic menu with fresh, high quality food prepared and cooked with love.
We work diligently with our Nicaraguan staff (no North American restaurant professionals or chefs here) to provide the freshest and highest quality food with friendly service that is always delivered in a consistent manner and at a fair price, every meal, every day.
Please do drop by the Turned Turtle Bar and Restaurant (no we don’t serve turtle!) on Little Corn Island and give us a try.
If you staying with us, be sure to check out our “Room, Activities, Dining and Drinks” RADDeal package to experience the very best of the Turned Turtle Restaurant and Little Corn Island Beach and Bungalow Boutique Hotel and beach front resort while saving money!
Turned Turtle Restaurant FAQs
I like to eat healthy, what kind of options do you have at the Turned Turtle Restaurant?
We seem to have a few people that have made comments that our food is not very healthy. We are not sure where they get this impression. Little of our food choices are fried, all of our food is grilled. Breakfast options include fruit plates and cups, pancakes, yogurt with fruit and granola and eggs served a number of ways and our house made rice and beans and frijoles. We offer fruit smoothies and fresh juice all day long.
Lunch offers a choice of salad or fruit if fries or onion rings are not your style and our menu includes fish tacos made with fresh locally caught fish, cashew pesto, 2 bean arugula hummus and grilled sandwiches. We have a daily lunch specials.
Almost all the food we serve is non processed food. Locally sourced too
Our Parmesan crusting used on some fish and chicken dishes is basically Parmesan cheese and seasonings. We add only enough salt to flavor the food, we leave adding more to our guests taste.
We do make daily our delicious sauces with real butter but instead of dairy cream we us coconut milk and you can certainly order the sauces on the side if you wish or just request “no sauce”.
If you are a vegetarian, our breakfast, lunch (including a vegan friendly vegetarian burger) menus offer over multiple options to satisfy those so predisposed.
One thought though, if you are a vegan the choices not only at our restaurant but around Little Corn Island become pretty limited.
I am allergic to gluten and/or dairy. Does the Turned Turtle Restaurant have options for me?
We have over 20 choices for vegetarians on our menu, but unfortunately, our selection for “gluten free” and “dairy intolerant” folks is more limited (we do have a special breakfast and lunch menu for DI and GF folks though).
Not all but most of our recipes use dairy products or products made from wheat. We make all of our sauces and some dishes fresh daily and because of this it is a real challenge to alter a recipe for an individual serving.
Our wait staff is not overly familiar (although they try to learn as much as they can) with what goes in to our recipes. Our kitchen staff use that time honored tradition of doing the same thing over and over again and doing it very well. We do however have an ongoing training program in special needs diets and allergies and we are seeing gradual improvement in our staffs ability to understand these issues and respond appropriately.
Small changes believe it or not can really have a negative impact on the whole paradigm and every diners experience.
Be sure to ask when you dine with us about vegan, vegatarian, gluten free and dairy intolerant options.
The price of your meal does not change with requested omissions. You can however substitute something you omit with an equally priced side, make a substitution that may result in a higher price or order additional food off the “sides” menu at the regular price.
Please be empathetic too when you are sharing your special dietary needs with our staff as they have never been faced with not only the concept of allergies to foods but have no previous life experience with what “gluten” or “dairy” allergies are. We guarantee that they will do their best and we teach then to get someone with more knowledge to help them with your needs. Again, we train continually to help educate or staff on these and other unfamiliar (to them) circumstances.
Overall, for these types of allergies there may or may not be better choices on the island for most of your dining. We would especially warn our hotel guest that our RADD Deal may not be for them with these kind of dietary restrictions.
Did I read somewhere that the Turned Turtle Restaurant charges for a glass of water? What is up with that?
Village water from the tap is free but we highly recommend that you do not drink it.
If you are dining with us, you get a complimentary purified water with your meal. Little Corn Beach and Bungalow has created a unique program to the island which we call our “Purified Water Refill Program”. Available to any island visitor or resident our program saves the visitor cash and the island some bothersome trash by attempting to encourage people to keep their water bottle and refill it with our purified water for a charge less than buying a new bottle.
MIT (yep, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) while surveying the serious problem of water bottle refuse on the island noted that our trash contained over 70% less water bottle trash than other island business. They attribute this to our “Refill program” and note it’s positive impact on the islands environment. Refills for non hotel guests are inexpensive and far more environmentaly friendly.
The alternative at other places on the island is to buy a small plastic bottle of purified water for $1, you spend more and leave behind more plastic trash when this happens. The proceeds from our program go to fund our island projects like our free spay and neuter clinics, beach cleanup programs, recycling and trash removal, reading house construction, etc.
WHAT IS “BRUNCH SATURDAY”?
Currently, every day is Brunch at the Turned Turtle Restaurant, a unique day for island eateries. Our self serve coffee bar opens at 7:30 AM and our extensive and tasty breakfast menu is available from 8 AM to 5 PM. We also offer our uniquely crafted Seafood Omelet, it’s delicious, one of a kind and as one guest said, “Really . . . really . . . really good” be sure to drop by and give it a try. We also feature a daily Breakfast special. Guest favorites like Island Benedict, Skillet Breakfasts, our southwest Breakfast Burritos and Little Island Waffles to name a few. Also available at 10 AM to 5 PM is our full lunch menu with 10 daily specials and apetizers as well. Guests love specials like perfectly steamed Lobster, Grilled Shrimp, Grilled Fish Filet and our delicious and o’ so tender Dry Rubbed Pork Ribs. Come join us!