Traveling with Friends and Conch   

If you are lucky, you have a few good friends that you can do anything with, including going on vacation. My friend Laurie earned a trip with the Pampered Chef to Atlantis in the Bahamas and invited her girlfriends, me, Lynn and Janet, to go along with her. We had a great time and I ate my weight in conch while I was there. Traveling with friends is very different than traveling with family. Your family knows what you like to do on vacation, but perhaps your friends don’t.

My idea of a vacation is getting out and seeing EVERYTHING; trying the local cuisine, beer and cocktails and talking with the locals. I don’t sleep in and I stay up late, just like at home. I like to walk around and eat stuff I can’t get at home. That’s what I do when I vacation with John. Laurie likes to sit on the beach or at the pool. Lynn and Janet both go with the flow. I rarely sit on the beach or, heaven forbid, a public pool. This vacation was a combination of all of that. Atlantis has a huge water park and is close to Nassau so we toured, walked, swam, parasailed, rode the rapids and ate…and ate…and ate.

Fried Conch, Conch Fritters, Conch SandWISHes

Here in Vegas I can get nearly anything, but Bahamian cuisine and lovely fried conch is something that is not readily available. I can get scungilli salad, but fried conch, conch fritters, conch sandWISHes? Good luck! I ate all of that and more while I was away. If you have never had conch, it’s sweet in the way crab is, but toothsome the way calamari is. I prefer it fried, but I’ll eat it in scungilli salad too. One thing I re-learned about Nassau is that I don’t like their beer. At ALL. And we tried “Sky Juice” a bizarre concoction of gin, milk and sweetened condensed milk, that on the surface sounds gross, but somehow it works.

One of the oddest things we did was hire a cab to drive us all around Nassau and point out the interesting things about the city. We had a good driver, Alfred, who showed us the sights. Government buildings, Fort Charlotte, “The Fish Fry” and local flora were all included for the ride. I would highly recommend doing this in any foreign city to get the lay of the land and figure out what you want to visit.

One of the Highlights Was Eating at Oh Andros

For me, the highlights of the trip were parasailing (something I was able to check off my Bucket List) and eating at Oh Andros. Oh Andros is located in “The Fish Fry”, an outdoor mall of sorts, featuring restaurants, bars and shops that serve mostly locals, but tourists are welcome. If you plan to go, just know it’s all cash only, so be prepared. Oh Andros serves authentic Bahamian food and when we arrived the joint was packed with locals. The pics below do not do justice to the food for several reasons, mainly, I had my little camera and you can’t see how big the plates were for scale. Each entrée came with rice with pigeon peas and two other sides. The plate was a standard 10” round. Pile it up 5” high and you get the picture. Everything was properly seasoned and there was WAY too much. If you are in a hotel and not an apartment with ability to reheat leftovers, I recommend sharing a plate with a friend. We had NO IDEA we’d be getting that much food.

Fried Conch and pan fried pork chop.

Fried Conch and pan fried pork chops.

Spicy grilled grouper - there were FIVE filets on this one plate!

Spicy grilled grouper – there were FIVE filets on this one plate!

Slipper tail lobster, cracked and fried

Slipper tail lobster, cracked and fried. No joke, it was an entire lobster!

Fried conch and pan fried whole snapper

Fried conch and pan fried whole snapper. One of the pieces of conch was literally the size of my hand.

You Can’t Go Home Again

Recently, as you know if you follow along on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, I was traveling. When I return to a city where I have found great grub, I feel it is a moral imperative that I revisit those dining locales to relive the good times had there.  Sadly, sometimes the memory is better than reality.

In San Antonio for a wedding (more on that soon) I found myself itching to go to Pappadeaux.  I have had so many great meals there that I went by myself and sat at the bar to enjoy a fantastic lunch. I ordered a local IPA, Crawfish Bisque, and a Seafood Cobb Salad.  I SHOULD have quit after the soup. When I order a SEAFOOD Cobb Salad, I expect the SEAFOOD to be a starring attraction. Sadly this was not the case. There were four pathetic shrimp and two ounces of crab (two ounces if I am being generous). There was however plenty of bacon and egg.  Oddest of all, there were big slices (think lengthwise on a mandoline) of cucumber and “julienned” carrots that were the size of carrot sticks mixed into the greens. Did I just order the wrong thing? Has corporate dining ruined one of my fave chains (and make no mistake, it IS a chain, even if they aren’t nationwide)? Have my expectations changed?  Any or all of these questions can be answered with a YES and be correct.

Crawfish Bisque

Crawfish Bisque

 

On a bright note, my car seemingly on auto-pilot, found the 410 Diner on Broadway in San Antonio and it was EXACTLY as I remembered. Not fancy, but great value for good diner food.

Then it was off to Nassau, The Bahamas.  We three sisters and our spouses took Mom on a cruise to celebrate her 70th Birthday.  All in all a good time was had (barring a tweaked twerk muscle, a pulled hamstring and a thrown out back, and no, I am NOT among the walking wounded). Because we are SO rarely all together (I live in Vegas, everyone else is in FL) any time together is special. I didn’t choose the ship, the itinerary or the port we sailed from, but when I realized Nassau was on the route I was excited.

Several years ago when John and I cruised through the Bahamas, we went in search of authentic Bahamian conch dishes and we found them at Twin Brothers. When we walked in, we were the ONLY tourists in the building, just my style! The conch fritters were crisp and golden on the outside and light as air inside studded with amazing chunks of conch. The conch chowder was fragrant, spicy on the back end and again studded with conch. And don’t even get me started on the mystical wings. Those wings were slightly flavored with coconut and dusted with seasonings after frying so they were both sweet and spicy. And the spice built as you ate wing after wing. I dreamed of them for years and tried to recreate them in my kitchen with little success. Let’s just say those wings are a thing of the past, but the conch dishes were just as good as I remembered. The biggest let down for me is that Trip Advisor (very much like Yelp! for travelers as far as I am concerned) found Twin Brothers, with a proud declaration in the window. There were no locals left, we were surrounded by tourists. While the chowder and fritters were excellent, the wings were bland with no mystique to them and I was surrounded not by the good people of the island with their beautiful lilting speech, but by the very people I was seeking escape from by walking into town. I am happy for THEM and unhappy for me, because one of my fave places is now off limits to me.

Conch Fritters

Conch Fritters

I have to wonder if my recollections are in some fashion flawed or if you really can’t go home again. Am I guilty of memories being better than reality or have things changed THAT much?

Next up? More on Texas, a Hill Country wedding and time spent with friends in bars in Texas.

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