“My restaurant will be called the Rose — for the refinement and beauty it will bring to the island, for its warm color and tender shape, for my mother’s name, for my name. The scent of my cooking will fill it and make it bloom.”

When people arrive on the island, one of the first buildings they spot from the bay is a distant patch of brightness the color of a tea-rose. The Rose, owned and run by Amadeo K. Roselyn is notable not just for its legendary food, but for its unusual hue and shape.

Practically the only brick construction on Drum, it was designed by a Cuban architect to withstand hurricanes, with curved rather than angled corners and roof. As a result, the four-story building appears to have been gently inflated, so that its front bulges slightly outward wards the bay. The Rose’s pale pink color is from both the unusual brick (imported at considerable expense) and the paint used to enhance it.