The Domino Club
Home of the Beer Drinking Pig
St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands • Since 1971
Plan Your VisitPhoto from Domino Club Facebook
Home of the Beer Drinking Pig
St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands • Since 1971
Plan Your VisitPhoto from Domino Club Facebook
Welcome
Tucked into the hills of St. Croix's lush rainforest, the Mt. Pellier Hut Domino Club is one of the Caribbean's most beloved gathering places. An open-air jungle bar where locals and visitors sit side by side under a thatched roof of bamboo and coconut fronds, cold drinks in hand, domino tiles slamming on painted tables.
The food runs out when it's gone. Closing time is listed simply as "UNTIL." Roosters strut through the bar. License plates from all 50 states hang from the ceiling. The walls are covered in hand-painted pig art, heartfelt poems, and signs that say things like "Life in the Left Lane." Everyone is entitled to a hug.
Photos from Domino Club Facebook
The Full Story
The story begins in the 1950s, on a hilltop deep in St. Croix's rainforest. Rufus George owned a pig farm on Mahogany Road, and neighbors would drift up through the canopy to sit, play dominoes, and drink whatever Rufus was brewing. No sign on the road. No menu. Just a clearing in the trees, a table, a set of tiles, and some homemade hooch.
Word spread the way it does on an island — slowly, then all at once. What started as a few neighbors became a weekend crowd. People came for the dominoes, stayed for the rum, and kept coming back for the company. It was the kind of place that didn't need a name because everyone already knew what it was.
The crowd grew so large that eventually the government came up the hill and told Rufus he was going to need a liquor license. So around 1971, the Mt. Pellier Hut Domino Club became official. A sign went up. A license went on the wall. But the spirit never changed.
Over the decades, the Club survived hurricanes, economic downturns, and the passing of its founders. It was rebuilt after Hurricane Hugo in 1989, rebuilt again after Hurricane Marilyn in 1995, and rebuilt once more after the devastating one-two punch of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. Each time, the community showed up with hammers, nails, and thatch to put the place back together.
The Domino Club is a community institution. It has hosted fundraisers, holiday celebrations, and memorial gatherings. Norma George personally funded community fireworks for years. The Club supports the Queen Louise Home for Children and the St. Croix Animal Welfare Center. It is a place where tourists become regulars, where cruise ship passengers make lifelong friends, and where St. Croix shows you its soul.
Photos from Domino Club Facebook
Photo from Domino Club Facebook
In Loving Memory
The soul of the Domino Club was Norma George — born in Trinidad, loved in St. Croix, remembered everywhere. Known as "Ms. Norma" or simply "Mama," she ran the Domino Club for nearly 30 years with big dreams, a big personality, and a heart even bigger.
She remembered every patron's name, even if she hadn't seen them in years. She personally paid for community fireworks on holidays. She supported the Queen Louise Home for Children and the St. Croix Animal Welfare Center. She was honored as grand marshal of the Christiansted St. Patrick's Day Parade.
Norma passed on June 7, 2021. Hundreds of tributes poured in from around the world. Today, the Club carries on under the care of longtime friends Nico and Jill Cherubin — keeping Norma's recipes, her spirit, and her legacy alive.
The Main Attraction
The Domino Club's world-famous tradition started by accident. When Rufus and Norma George downsized their pig herd, they kept two as pets — Ms. Piggy and Buster Pig. One day a visitor walked past holding a beer, and Buster snatched it and drank the whole thing. A legend was born.
Today, visitors can buy a can of non-alcoholic beer and watch the pigs crush the can with their powerful jaws and guzzle the contents. The pigs are treated like family pets: well-fed, well-loved, and never forced to perform. Each pig has its own named pen and its own personality.
Photos from Domino Club Facebook
A Crucian Tradition
St. Croix's St. Patrick's Day Parade is one of the island's biggest annual celebrations — and the Domino Club has been a fixture of it for years. Every March, the crew builds a massive float, drapes it in green, and rolls through Christiansted with pig-themed artwork, balloons, palm fronds, and domino imagery. Norma George herself served as grand marshal of the parade.
The float panels are hand-painted works of art — cartoon pigs playing saxophones, pig-octopus hybrids drinking beer, pig-mermaids swimming through turquoise seas. It's whimsical, joyful, and totally Domino Club. The whole crew turns out in matching green shirts, and the community celebrates with drinks that would make Norma proud.
Photos from Domino Club Facebook
The Secret Recipe
Norma George's legendary creation — a closely guarded blend of rum, honey, roots, herbs, and secret spices, rooted in the Caribbean "bush rum" tradition where spirits are infused with medicinal plants passed down through generations of African, Indigenous, and European folk knowledge.
MamaWanna became so beloved it was bottled and sold commercially. Local craft brewery Leatherback Brewing Co. even collaborated on a "Mama Wanna Imperial Stout." You can take a bottle home — visitors have been known to carry it through airport security as their most prized souvenir.
The Club also makes its own hot sauces — "Honey Hot" and "Hot Hot" — under the Mt. Pellier Hut label. Between the bush rum, the hot sauce, and the stickers, there's plenty to bring home.
Photo from Domino Club Facebook
Photos from Domino Club Facebook
The Experience
The Domino Club isn't just a place — it's a feeling. Visitors come for the pigs but stay for everything else. The hand-painted signs, the bamboo walls, the rum punch, the dominoes, the roosters, and the company of strangers who don't stay strangers for long.
Photos from Domino Club Facebook
Plan Your Trip
The Domino Club sits on a hilltop in St. Croix's rainforest, in the Frederiksted district. It's a drive through dense tropical canopy on winding roads — and absolutely worth it.
49 Mahogany Road (Route 76)
Frederiksted, St. Croix
USVI 00840
Get Directions
Tuesday – Sunday
8:00 AM to "UNTIL"
Pig Feeding: 10 AM – 5 PM
Cash only — no ATM on site.
Pig admission: $1–2. Beer for pigs: $2–4.
Stay Connected
Find Us Online
Follow the Domino Club for updates, events, and plenty of pig content.