Perfect in everyway. The hotel has wonderful staff, is set in a lovely location and is totally elegant and relaxing.

We stayed for 7 nights at the Calabash in Feb 2008. The service was both friendly and excellent, the atmosphere was very relaxing, and the food was excellent too. Yes if you have researched the hotel you will see that it is expensive but for high season in an upper market Carribean hotel they are competitive with the rest. The afternoon tea, included in rate, was a nice touch, as were the excellent canapes served to your room at 6pm and breakfast on your own terrace at a time of your choosing. We had a problem with our room first night, and without prompting we were upgraded to a room with a pool for the following 6 nights. It is not, at least in high season, a young persons hotel, more older/retired... but if you want a calm, relaxing break in nice surroundings we would highly recommend you look closely at the Calabash.

The Calabash is in a lovely setting on Prickley Bay, with pretty grounds leading down to the sea. We had two adjoining villas. The food was excellent and cannot be faulted, although the service at dinner was frustratingly slow on a couple of nights when the restaurant was overly busy. The children's menu is the best I have seen, and breakfast was served on our balcony. Afternoon tea was delightful. However, lunch was only available at the beach bar, where service was often slow and the staff need to smile a bit more! The bar has the potential to be a real hub for the hotel. One of the beach bar staff was charming and friendly but the other barman was decidely po-faced. With a little bit of effort, and a gregarious barman, this could be a real magnet for residents, with a great atmosphere, eg.at sunset.
We had the New Year's Eve dinner there; again, the food was oustanding. However, the restaurant had taken a lot of extra bookings and as a result, the tables were squashed very close together, such that I lost count of the number of times my seat was knocked by other diners squeezing past on their way to the buffet. After a while that lost its novelty!

A niggle: we noticed that one of the beach barmen in particular would use one can of coke to fill a tall glass with ice, then keep any unused remainder of that can for use with the next order. (if a couple ordered 'two cokes', which they presumably paid for, this order would be made up from one can only, plus a lot of ice!) Call me unreasonable, but if I have asked and paid for for a can of coke, then I expect to be given a complete, newly opened can, ie. to have my glass filled and then to be given the can to 'top up' my glass with what is left as I go along. At one point I noticed that someone who had ordered a coke was getting it made up from the remains of three previously opened coke cans that were sitting there. When I queried this at reception, i was told this was the hotel policy! But it strikes me as unhygienic - you run the risk of ending up with coke from previously opened cans (that in effect someone else has paid for) which has been standing around for a while, at best is flat and warm, and at worst might have sand-flies inside the can. Surely the hotel is not so hard-up that it needs to do this? Bizarre. (Or was someone being 'entrepreneurial'?!!)

That aside, this hotel is definitely for couples, or those with young babies or toddlers. There is no dedicated play area and unfortunately nothing much for teenagers . The pool is small (more suited to a villa?) and some way from the beach, beach bar, etc.

We were unlucky enough to arrive with a suitcase missing. Given that we were only there for 6 days, the two days it took us to sort this out with our local agent, UK travel agent, the airline, insurance company, and then get a cab to a local mall for replacement items, was a big chunk out of the week. We thought someone from the management might have made contact with us to see if there was anything they could do to help, as a gesture really, as the reception staff were well aware of our circumstances.
For other fliers from the UK: if BA tag your luggage all the way through to Grenada, check when you change planes in Barbados that your bags haven't been taken off by the ground staff and wrongly put on the carousel there. That is what happened to us. Luckily a sixth sense told us to wait and see if our cases showed up on the Barbados carousel, which they did. This meant we had to collect them, clear customs with them in Barbados and check them back in again for the LIAT flight to Grenada. We only just made the connection. When we got to Grenada, one piece had gone missing. LIAT airlines were no use at all and we cannot recommend them - they couldn't have organised their way out of a paper bag!
Also, make sure your taxi driver is fit to drive. The one we were given at the airport was under the influence of who knows what - he was weaving all over the road, nearly crashed about six times and almost knocked down a pedestrian. It was the scariest ride of our lives. To be fair, we received an apology from the Taxi Operators Association later but it wasn't the best introduction to the island.
Two final points: we were unable to book any excursions until our last day, because these were all taken up with bookings from the cruise ships that were in harbour. A small island like Grenada obviously doesn't have enough resources to cope with cruise ship tourists plus local visitors. The cruise ships had first choice for excursions/ trips, which seemed rather unfair, albeit commercially understandable. We felt rather like second-class citizens. The one trip we did manage to book, but only as soon as the last ship had sailed, was with River Rush river tubing tour, operated by Fun Sun (G) Inc. We cannot recommend this - my husband and two boys did this with another family. He said it was incredibly dangerous - no protective headgear - and it must be only a matter of time before someone is dashed against a rock suffering head injury, or else it is closed down for health and safety reasons. The pictures we saw on some leaflets showed people in headgear, but this was not available on the tour we took, which struck us as an amateurish operation. The mini-van which took us had no seat-belts - these were deliberately tied away with plastic ties to stop them being used!
All in all, if you seek a relaxing beach holiday with superb food, the Calabash will fit the bill, but it may be let down by suboptimal services on the island itself - airline, taxi, and the availability and quality of excursions.

Ok, you could go cheaper in Grenada, but for absolute relaxation and luxury you could not find a better antidote than the Calabash.

With breakfast served on your terrace each morning and little touches like the morning fruit plate, afternoon tea and sandwiches, canapés and the weekly cocktail party you are well looked after. You can choose to take the fully inclusive options but we felt that we would like some independence. The Rhodes restaurant is top quality and Stella Artois expensive, but we also used several local restaurants like The Aquarium (top lobster) and The Beach House.

I can confirm other reviews here that the rooms are excellent, especially the pool room we had.

What made the Calabash was the quality and friendliness of the people who run it, particular thanks to Noreen, Bernard, Michael and Elsa.

This was our honeymoon, however, the hotel is the perfect place to organise your wedding on the beach, we saw only one in the whole 2 weeks we were there, unlike the conveyer belt weddings other resorts specialise in.