Alanna has promised authentic, off-the-beaten-path Bahamian food, and she delivers on this four-hour tour that winds its way through downtown Nassau, largely eschewing tourist-thick Bay Street in favor of side roads and family-run eateries.īefore we set off, Alanna fills us in on a bit of history, because the story of Bahamian food is laced with colonialism, piracy and slavery.įor years, the Bahamian islands were deserted, or nearly so, after Christopher Columbus arrived and the Spaniards decimated the native Lucayan people with disease and slavery. Millions of people visit the Bahamas every year, but few of them will actually taste authentic island cuisine, Alanna says. The chowder is delicious, and finally, thankfully, so is the conch.īy now, a couple of hours into the food tour, it should come as no surprise that the conch chowder here is wonderful. Van Breugel’s conch chowder is indeed spicy, but delicately so, with a coconut-curry broth and hints of sweet Thai basil, instead of the dish’s traditional tomato base. “This is for the baby!” she exclaims with a lilting accent and a big smile, plopping a massive bowl of vanilla ice cream, topped with hot fudge and a cherry, down on the table in front of Chloe’s face. “No, no, no! This will be too spicy for her!” she says, giving a bowl of chowder to everyone but Chloe. The waitress brings us the restaurant’s take on conch chowder, and she seems to read my mind when I wonder whether Chloe will like it. The 11 of us on the tour, including my husband, Brian, and 5-year-old daughter, Chloe, are gathered around a long wooden table upstairs at Van Breugel’s Restaurant & Bistro, a power-lunch kind of place popular with politicians, lawyers and offshore bankers. We’re at a stop on the “Bites of Nassau” tour when Alanna tells us that the rubber-band factor is a sign of how adept a Bahamian chef is with conch. Otherwise, it’s like chewing rubber,” says Alanna Rodgers, founder of Tru Bahamian Food Tours. “Conch has to be tenderized before you work with it. Yuck.Īnd then, a couple of days later, I find out why. The conch salad, especially, always seems so promising: A fresh, cold, ceviche-style salad tossed in a light lime-and-orange-juice dressing with fresh tomatoes and chilies. With the exception of the fritters, in which the conch is minced or pulverized, the conch in every dish has been tough and tasteless, like choking down rubber bands.
Chocolatier 3 haggling cracked#
I’ve had conch salad, conch fritters, cracked conch and conch chowder.
And naturally, like so many culturally important foods, it’s also considered an aphrodisiac. The exotic-sounding conch, with its ostentatiously horned, pink-fluted shell, is the national dish of this beautiful chain of islands. It’s Day 3 of our family vacation in the Bahamas, and so far, I’m not impressed by the conch.
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