Nassau for first-time visitors

Best restaurants

Nassau eats the way a port city eats: the harbour brings in one thing, the Family Islands another, and the diaspora; Bahamian, Jamaican, Greek, Levantine, Chinese, Indian; fills the rest of the table. This is not a fine-dining capital and it never pretended to be. The good rooms here decided a long time ago what they wanted to cook and stopped negotiating with the cruise crowd. What follows is a working list for a visitor who has three or four dinners and a lunch to spend, and who would rather sit in a room a resident chose than one a shore-excursion desk booked. It leans away from the Bay Street strip on purpose. A few names on Bay Street earn their place; most do not. The rest follows East Street, Carmichael Road, Coral Harbour, the quieter corners west of downtown, and the Marathon Mall side, because that is where the cooks are cooking for the neighbours who will be back next Tuesday.