Bahamas

WorldEats Country #2: Bahamas (skipped)

Cruise ship stop in Nassau, 2005

Moving south from Canada (and of course, skipping the USA), the next country on our list was the Bahamas. A and I had been to the Bahamas on a cruise together back in 2005, visiting Freeport and Nassau, and I had also gone to Nassau with my family once before. 

We haven't had much exposure in our lives to Bahamian cuisine, but usually when I hear "Bahamas" and think about food, what comes to mind are conch and grouper. We had conch fritters in Freeport and saw lots of street vendors selling them in Nassau. They smelled really good and were pretty tasty, from what I can remember. (Why we have no pictures, I have no idea.) I think there was grouper on the menu on one of the cruises for dinner on the night we left the Bahamas, which was nice but I don't have much memory of it since it was about 10 years ago.  Some internet research tells me that we are correct on conch and grouper being popular in the Bahamas, but that there is also spiny lobster and other dishes that are commonplace there.

Restaurant selling conch in Freeport, 2005 (Picture of the sign but not the fritters...)

I spent a long time looking for Bahamian cuisine in the New York area (or even just Bahamian style conch fritters) but have completely failed at finding anything. Apparently there used to be a Caribbean festival in the fall that would have some Bahamian dishes but I didn't see any notice of the festival last year. After that, the only thing in the area is the chain Bahama Breeze, but we've been to Bahama Breeze before (in Illinois) and that's less Bahamian cuisine and more "island grille" (their menu says their conch fritters are Key West-inspired and they have Asian rice bowls, so not super authentic).

I did manage to locate 1 or 2 Bahamian restaurants in the US but they are in Florida, which is not exactly close to us. Hopefully if we visit Miami sometime we can drop by and explore the Bahamian section of our WorldEats challenge, but until then (and unless they do have that Caribbean festival this year), it's going to have to wait.

Next stop: Cuba!