Bahamas
Conch every possible way, washed down with an ice-cold Kalik at the Fish Fry.
In the Bahamas, the day revolves around conch — pronounced 'konk', and something close to a national obsession. Watch it cleaned straight from the shell at a roadside stand, then eaten a dozen ways: scorched conch scored raw and dressed with lime and bird pepper, cracked conch battered and fried gold, or diced ceviche-style into conch salad with tomato and sweet pepper. Across 700 low-lying islands the sea sets the menu — grouper, snapper and spiny lobster over any meat.
The spiritual home of it all is the Fish Fry at Arawak Cay in Nassau, a strip of open-air shacks where locals gather over fried fish, peas 'n' rice and cold Kalik, 'the beer of the Bahamas'. Order a sky juice — gin, coconut water and sweet milk, said to have been improvised here during Prohibition — and let a slow, salt-air lunch stretch out.
- Cracked conch
- Conch salad
- Scorched conch
- Rock lobster (crawfish)
- Peas 'n' rice
- Johnnycake
- Guava duff (guava-filled pudding)
