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Fresh seafood
DINING & ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE - JAN 2007
Fresh seafood
Staple of the Bahamian diet
Bahamians have been enjoying fresh seafood from their bountiful sea for more than three centuries; ever since the first settlers arrived in the mid-1600s.
Indeed, Lucayans, the original inhabitants who had been living on these islands for eight hundred years before Christopher Columbus was born, depended on seafood for their very lives.
According to archaeologists who have studied middens around the archipelago, the Lucayans dined regularly on reef fish, turtle and conch.
The clear, sparkling waters around the Bahamian islands are a national treasure. They are free of pollution and there is a wide choice, from margate, sea bass and wahoo to jack, grunt and goggle-eye.
Modern-day favourites are lobster, grouper, mahimahi, snapper and, of course, that ageless staple of the Bahamian diet: conch.
Ubiquitous conch
All Bahamian restaurants have conch on their menus, and innovative chefs have incorporated the meaty mollusc into foreign cuisines, including those from China, France, Italy, India and Greece.
Whether you are popping hot conch fritters at a harbourside bar or enjoying an elegant conch soup with carrots and a touch of curry at a fancy restaurant, you can be sure that the conch, like all seafood in The Bahamas, is as fresh as fresh can be.
If you go to fish markets at Potter?s Cay or Montagu Bay, for example, you?re buying seafood that was caught earlier that day. Fishmongers scale, clean and fillet the customer?s choice, making it ready for the frying pan, the pot or the oven.
Bahamians savour fish at any meal, including breakfast. In fact, boil? fish (simmered in a thin broth with potatoes and onions) is perhaps the most popular breakfast around the islands. Served with a slab of warm johnny cake, it?s Bahamian comfort food, a nutritious and delicious start to your day. If you?re a bit squeamish, though, specify ?no head? when you order boil? fish in a restaurant or you might see your breakfast looking back at you. Fans of boil? fish say the head is the best part of the meal.
Scorn for frozen fish
Unless they are serving non-indigenous seafood, such as shrimp or Dover sole, restaurateurs around the islands scorn frozen seafood.
?Why would anyone even think of eating frozen seafood when you can have it fresh from the sea?? asks an incredulous Frederic Lightbourn, part owner and manager of The Poop Deck restaurant at Sandyport and Columbus Tavern on Paradise Island. Lightbourn cautions that ?if fish smells even slightly ?fishy,? it?s just not fresh.?
The Poop Deck?s boast is that its daily specials are ?never more than 24 hours from net to plate.?
For Lightbourn, the perfect fish platter is grilled yellow tail snapper: ?crispy on the outside and very rare in the middle.?
Fresh as a raindrop
Many restaurants around Nassau and Paradise Island have contracts with individual fishermen to ensure they have first choice of the day?s catch and a steady supply of really fresh seafood.
Anthony?s Grill on Paradise Island is one of these and the restaurant makes an interesting offer: ?Catch your own fish, bring it to us, and we?ll cook it for you,? says general manager Michael Wicky.
?We?ll suggest an appropriate way of cooking it? Have it your way: sautéåd, baked, pan fried, grilled or blackened.?
Asked to name his favourite seafood dinner, Wicky quickly replies: ??Grouper Fillet My Way.? I take fresh grouper and marinate it in a combination of citrus juices and seasonings. Then I dip it in flour followed by an egg wash and quickly pan fry and complete the cooking in the oven.? To complete the dish he tops it with a touch of lightly browned butter and a sprinkle of citrus pieces.
Enormous variety
?These waters are filled with an enormous variety of superb fish and seafood,? says Chef Wayne Moncur, Atlantis? executive sous chef for culinary.
?I personally recommend the margate fish,? says Moncur. ?It is an under-utilized Bahamian species. It has a great consistency and can easily be used in an array of international seafood dishes. It has a good, delicate and meaty balance.? The margate is a member of the grunt family, which is plentiful in The Bahamas.
On the menu
Local chefs say the most requested dishes are grouper, lobster, conch and red snapper, but there are many others, including members of the jack family (yellow jack, blue runners, pompano and permit).
Still others include fish sought after by the sportsfishing community: wahoo, kingfish, tuna, sailfish and the national fish which is featured on the nation?s coat of arms along with a flamingo, the blue marlin.
Concentrating on lesser-known fish species has a positive benefit for the future of fresh seafood in The Bahamas. Today?s demand for grouper, conch and other well-known species, for example, has put a strain on stocks.
?I feel that the local chefs should make it a mandate to popularize the underutilized species and incorporate them into the Bahamian cuisine,? says Moncur. This would ease pressure on the most popular species.
To guarantee sustainability, the government has launched strict conservation measures in recent years to protect the nation?s sea life. Fishing seasons have been created and no-take zones have been established in sensitive areas and the hospitality industry supports these efforts.
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