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McCorquodale's Crocodile's
DINING & ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE - JULY 2004
McCorquodale's Crocodile's
A favourite watering hole
If you?re munching a delicious conch burger at about quarter after six and you hear a mailboat sounding its horn, you?re probably at Croc?s, overlooking Nassau?s busy harbour.
Croc?s, as just about everybody in New Providence knows, is Crocodile?s Waterfront Bar & Grill on East Bay Street, just west of the bridge to Paradise Island. Almost any evening, you?ll be greeted at the dining deck by affable owner and executive chef, David McCorquodale.
McCorquodale, a Nassau-born Bahamian, got started in the restaurant business as a college student when he worked at restaurants and bars to help make ends meet as a student at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
When he wasn?t studying, he worked as a busboy, a waiter and a bartender, finding that he enjoyed meeting, talking with and serving people. When he got back to Nassau in 1978, it seemed a natural thing for him to land a job at Del Prado, a well-known gourmet restaurant in the capital city.
?I started off there as dining room captain. We used to do tableside cooking; made steak Diane, Caesar salad, crêðes Suzette, cherries jubilee ? everything tableside. I worked there two or three years and I really enjoyed it, but I realized that I needed to have a better understanding of the ?back of the house,? the kitchen, which is the heart of any restaurant operation.?
McCorquodale applied and was accepted into the prestigious Culinary Institute of America (CIA) school in New York, one of the finest schools of its type in the world. He took the full two-year programme and developed not only cooking skills but a deep love of the culinary profession. That?s evident in the animated way he talks about food today.
?I worked in Florida for awhile at some restaurants over there and then I came back and worked at the Wyndham Cable Beach. At that time, the Wyndham here was the flagship property of that chain.?
McCorquodale feels he was privileged to work with a legendary chef, Paul Buettiker, who ?taught me a lot in terms of presentation.?
In 1991, McCorquodale branched out into business, opening a restaurant on Village Road called Tamarind Hill.
?It was a small place with a lot of potential and we really set the island on its head with that place, offering affordable gourmet food. We had a really neat colourful Caribbean beach motif, with bright colours and it was wildly successful.?
Next came Sugar Reef, a restaurant on the waterfront. ?Once again, this was a gourmet restaurant, and we had great dishes there. We made grouper with a butter-orange sauce. We did a pork tenderloin, stuffed with sauteed apples and walnuts, and we did lovely desserts there.?
A fire destroyed Sugar Reef, leaving McCorquodale temporarily out of work. He put together some backing and opened Crocodile?s in 1997.
Why the name Crocodile?s? It was a nickname assigned to McCorquodale as a youngster by his peers, who couldn?t pronounce his surname.
At Crocodile?s, ?I wanted to create a nice, tropical, casual dining experience,? he recalls today. ?We put in the benches, the tiki huts ? everything in natural wood. I had experienced upscale and with this I wanted to try something a little down market ? a place where customers would come in one or two times a week for really good food: great burgers, good fresh seafood, salads ? all fresh healthy food.?
Today, Crocodile?s has a loyal following of Nassauvians who make up about 60 per cent of the restaurant?s clientele. The other 40 per cent are tourists, people who drop in from the cruise ships, staff from luxury yachts docked in the harbour and the owners of sailing boats, moored in the harbour, just off Crocodile?s free dinghy dock.
These sailors frequently drop in for a drink at Croc?s lively bar, where Emily, Marie and Lisa dispense colourful tropical drinks.
?We get Americans, Canadians, Europeans? people leave from Croc?s on trans-Atlantic voyages,? McCorquodale laughs. ?There?s always a lot of atmosphere here.?
For the second half of 2004, McCorquodale has ?bumped up the menu a notch or two,? designing some interesting and enticing dishes such as these:
Tempura fried seafood sampler
with honey/soy dipping sauce
(serves 2)
6 med shrimp, cleaned & deveined
4 scallops
4 oz grouper, cut into 2 portions
3 oz calamari, cut into rings
4 oz lobster, cut into 2 portions
Salt & pepper to taste
Kikkoman tempura batter
Coat seafood with tempura batter, fry in hot oil at 375ºÆ until golden brown. Remove from oil and place on paper towels to remove excess oil. Arrange on a plate and serve with dipping sauce.
Dipping sauce
2 oz soy sauce
1 oz honey
pinch toasted sesame seeds
pinch fresh grated ginger
Combine all ingredients, mix well and serve.
Jamaican jerked pork chop
with sweet cassava mash & honey/BBQ sauce
(serves 1)
1 8-oz centre cut pork chop
Jamaican jerk seasoning
1 10-oz cassava
2 oz butter
4 oz milk
Salt and pepper to taste
Season pork chops with jerk seasoning and marinate for several hours or overnight, if possible.
Peel and cube cassava (a white sweet potato) and boil in lightly salted water until soft. Drain, add butter and milk and mash until smooth. Keep warm.
Place pork chops on a hot grill and cook until done (not dry).
On a large plate, place mound of mashed cassava. Lean pork chop (bone up) against the cassava. Drizzle with honey-BBQ sauce and serve.
Honey BBQ sauce
4 oz BBQ sauce
1 oz honey
Tsp salt & pepper
Combine all ingredients, mix well and serve.
Key lime pie with raspberry coulis
Zest from 1 lime
1 can sweetened condensed milk
4 egg yolks
4 oz lime juice
3 oz whipping cream
Mix all ingredients except whipping cream in a large bowl until creamy, then blend in the whipping cream until smooth. Pour mixture into a prepared aluminum pie plate lined with graham cracker crumbs. Float pie in a deep baking pan partially filled with water (to prevent burning). Bake at 275ºÆ for 45 mins, but check often. Allow pie to cool, refrigerate for 24 hours and serve.
Raspberry coulis
Fresh or frozen raspberries
Sugar
Puréå raspberries until smooth and sweeten with sugar. Strain to remove seeds. Drizzle on a desert plate and place a slice of key lime pie on the plate. Garnish with whipped cream and a sprig of mint.
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