Bahamas

Island
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GUIDES

Where to Find Benny Cake and Other Vanishing Bahamian Treats

Benny cake doesn’t look like much — a flat, sesame seed brittle that snaps cleanly in half. But one bite into that caramelized crunch and you’re tasting generations of Bahamian confectionary tradition. And it’s getting harder to find. Mortimer Candies, a Nassau institution on E Hill Street, holds a 4.5-star rating across 167 reviews — proof that old-fashioned candy-making still draws a crowd. Emily’s Take You’ll find Benny cake and other vanishing Bahamian treats at a handful of local shops and bakeries, but Mortimer Candies in Nassau is the most reliable spot. Go early — many bakeries sell out

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A Guide to Andros Island’s Best Crab and Rice

Andros spans 2,300 square miles and is known as “The Land of Crabs” — a nickname that comes with an annual crab festival and a signature dish that defines the island’s culinary identity. Andros is the largest island in the Bahamas, covering 2,300 square miles, and hosts an annual crab festival that celebrates its most famous ingredient. Emily’s Take Andros crab and rice is the dish you travel for — rich with coconut oil, land crab, and pigeon peas — but you’ll need to seek out local spots rather than tourist hubs to find the real thing. The best

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Where to Find the Best Crawfish Season Dinners in the Bahamas

The 2024 crawfish season was the best ever, with an average price of $12 per pound. — Keith Carroll, President, National Fisheries Association August through March is crawfish season in the Bahamas, and if you’re planning a trip to Nassau during those months, you’ve picked the right window. The 2024 season set records — the National Fisheries Association called it the best ever, with RBDF patrols cutting poaching and divers bringing in hauls that sometimes filled their anchors to capacity. For anyone who loves spiny lobster, that translates to fresh, local crawfish on menus across the island at prices

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Peas and Rice Is the Dish That Explains Bahamian Cooking

Walk into any Bahamian kitchen around midday, and chances are you’ll catch the scent of pigeon peas simmering with thyme, tomato, and a bit of salted pork. That aroma — earthy, savoury, faintly sweet — belongs to peas and rice, the side dish that shows up beside fried fish, stewed chicken, and conch fritters at nearly every local table in the Bahamas. Peas n’ Rice is a staple Bahamian side dish served alongside fish, meat, or chicken — a constant on the island plate since the late nineteenth century. Emily’s Take Bahamian peas and rice isn’t just a side

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A Beginner’s Guide to Ordering Crack Conch the Right Way

Conch salad costs $10–12 at local spots; anything above $25 signals a tourist tax. The entrance to Potter’s Cay sits 50 yards before the Paradise Island bridge on East Bay Street. Beneath the Sir Sidney Poitier Bridge, roughly 40 weather-beaten stalls have been selling fresh conch and fish since the 1960s. It’s where Nassau’s construction crews, taxi drivers, and hotel staff go for lunch — which is how you know the food is real. If you’re new to conch, the menu can feel overwhelming. Conch salad, conch fritters, cracked conch, scorched conch, conch chowder — they’re all made from

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The Bahamian Belief in the Healing Power of Sea Air

The Bahamian belief in the healing power of sea air is not a marketing slogan or a vague sense that beaches feel nice. It is a specific, culturally grounded conviction with roots stretching back before Columbus, reshaped by slavery, Christianity, and the persistence of African-derived spiritual practices. Understanding where this belief comes from — and how it lives today — means untangling several layers of island history that most visitors never see. Over 96 percent of Bahamians identify as Christian, yet the belief in sea air as medicine persists across religious lines — a quiet testament to older ways

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Why Sunday Still Shuts Down Much of the Out Islands

Sunday in the Out Islands of the Bahamas follows a rhythm that feels older than the power lines strung across the cays. On Cat Island in June 2026, that rhythm was broken not by a change in custom but by a turbocharger failure on an engine at the local power station. The resulting blackout lasted nearly 22 hours, forcing the cancellation of the closing night of the Rake & Scrape Festival — a loss felt well beyond the island’s 1,500 permanent residents. That single event captures the question this article explores: why does Sunday still shut down so much

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Why Out Island Funerals Are Community Events, Not Private Ones

By December 29, 2020, The Bahamas had confirmed 7,857 COVID-19 cases and 170 deaths. Funeral homes on New Providence and the Out Islands stored bodies for months as families postponed services, hoping to hold the community funerals their traditions demand. When Gwendolyn Merlene Hanna’s family held a private committal service on Friday, April 3, 2020, they did so hours before Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis announced a complete weekend lockdown. It was a practical decision during a crisis. But for many other Bahamians, especially those from the Out Islands, the choice was harder: hold a private service immediately or

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The Bahamian Tradition of Naming Storms After They Pass

In the Bahamas, a hurricane doesn’t arrive with a name already assigned by a committee in Geneva. It earns one afterward—something descriptive, often funny, sometimes biting—based on what it actually did. A storm that stripped every coconut palm on a particular cay might be remembered as “Coconut Cutter.” Another that flooded the goat pen becomes “Nanny’s Revenge.” This is not a tourist attraction or a marketing gimmick. It is a living oral tradition, one that sits alongside the archipelago’s deep storytelling culture—a culture that folklorists Zora Neale Hurston and Elsie Cleo Parsons spent years documenting in the early twentieth

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Inside the World of Competitive Bahamian Sailing Families

In the 2025 National Family Island Regatta, the A-Class sloop Tida Wave was running second when Legend from Long Island collided with it, tearing a massive hole in the mainsail. The captain later told reporters he didn’t see the tear at first — his eyes were on Legend. Nobody on the boat suggested stopping. Two crew members grabbed the shredded canvas and held it together by hand, creating a makeshift sail on the fly, and the boat crossed the finish line for third place. That kind of resolve doesn’t come from a playbook. It comes from families who have

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