Dining information

Restaurant:

Longitude, open for breakfast and dinner, occupies an airy, overwater space. This relaxed restaurant serves a generous breakfast buffet (waffles, pancakes, eggs any which way, just-baked croissants, smoothies and so on); twice a week there's an impressive buffet dinner with live cooking stations. Leaf is perched above the organic garden: to get to it, you'll need to walk through the garden, up some stairs and across a rope bridge. Dinner at Leaf has a Mediterranean theme: dishes include baked beetroot with goat cheese and chives salsa and roast lamb with black-olive crust. There's also a Japanese restaurant, Zen, on an upper deck by Chill Bar; its small but comprehensive menu ticks off Japanese classics. Sip Sip rises resplendent from the swimming pool, offering fresh-from-the-oven pizzas, salads, burgers, pasta dishes and desserts – including home-made ice-cream and sorbets.

Top Table:

Some like it hot: if you're one of them, opt for Leaf's Chili Table Dining Experience and sit in the organic garden at a communal table, surrounded by 12 types of chili. Post-meal, stake out Chill Bar's overwater hammocks and drowsily wave-watch.

Last Orders:

Dinner is served until 10pm at Zen; 10.30pm at Leaf and Longitude. Late risers: head down for breakfast before 10.30am or you’ll miss out. Sip Sip opens from 10am to 8pm, and the bar serves drinks until your thirst is quenched (or you fall over).

Room Service:

Order nibbles to your room between 11am and 11.30pm; choose from from Longitude’s menu or pick from the à la carte in-villa-dining menu, which features Mediterranean, Asian and local dishes. Parents can also order salt-free treats for tots.

Hotel Bar:

We love a bar that boasts 14 signature cocktails, especially when they include flirty little libations such as Laamu Beach Party (a muddle of whisky, rum, cranberry, mango and ginger) and Atoll Punch, a raspberry and vodka concoction that honours the local islands. (If you over-indulge and need a cold-water fix, the sea is just beneath you.) Chill Bar's open-air space has big comfy blue day beds overlooking the sea, plenty of wooden furniture and an expert resident DJ who serves up Cinematic Orchestra and the ilk at lunch, jazz in the afternoon and party tunes later on. Wine buffs will love the wine cellar (more a temple to the grape stuff), which towers 6.4m high and houses more than 400 types of wine, as well as a deli offering European cheeses and peppery cold cuts: perfect for picnic provisions. Wine tastings can be arranged. Sip Sip's list of famed cocktails runs like the credits to a boozy film and their original concoctions, made with freshly squeezed juices, are tempting – the Ron Lassie (rum, mango, yoghurt, honey and cinnamon) cools with a kick. The mocktails are equally good.