EVERY year for the past three years during the Nassau Paradise Island Wine & Food Festival (NPIWFF), I get to hang with my favorite chef, José Andrés. 

Not only is he a fantastic chef with a huge heart and an endless desire to help feed people in need around the world, but he never fails to surprise me with his wit and humor. I’m usually the funny one in an interview, but somehow he always ends up making me laugh.

NPIWFF is a five-day marathon of food, drinks, entertainment, and fun, billed as “the largest culinary extravaganza in Bahamian history.” Proceeds from the festival benefit the Atlantis Blue Project Foundation, which is dedicated to the preservation and conservation of coral reefs, sea turtles, sharks, manatees, cetaceans, and their Bahamian ecosystems. So while you’re fillin’ yer belly, you’re helping a worthy cause.

Earlier this year, when Chef Andrés landed in Nassau for the festival, he told me to meet him for lunch at McKenzie's Conch Shack under the bridge at Potters Cay Dock. When I asked why his first stop had to be there, his answer was simple: “Because the food is always amazing, and I know it’s good because I always see locals here.”

Naturally, he ordered a little bit of everything—conch fritters, traditional conch salad, tropical conch salad, cracked conch, cracked lobster, and even conch fried rice topped with fresh conch salad. He’s always creating something different, like the famous “liquid” conch fritters served at his restaurant, Fish by José Andrés, at Atlantis. Bahamians certainly let me have it when I featured them on my TV show, but I swear they’re amazing. Different from traditional conch fritters, yes—but delicious. And that’s what you get with Chef José Andrés: different and delicious.

Chef Andrés is beloved throughout The Bahamas because of the selfless work of his nonprofit organization, World Central Kitchen, which provides meals in the wake of natural disasters. When Grand Bahama and Abaco were devastated by Hurricane Dorian in 2019, Chef Andrés and his team were among the first to arrive and provide meals to those in desperate need. Together, they served more than 1.5 million meals to residents affected by the storm.

As we devoured the various conch dishes, Chef Andrés began telling me about his latest effort to help preserve the very conch he loves to eat.

“I feel guilty eating so much conch,” he told me, “but if everyone does what they need to do to have conch living and thriving freely in the wild, and we do it sustainably, then tourists like me and locals can enjoy it.”

That passion is what inspired the Longer Tables Fund to award a grant to the Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute to develop a community-based aquaculture facility focused on conservation and restoration of the queen conch on Eleuthera.

Through a strategic partnership with The Island School and its Cape Eleuthera Institute, the Queen Conch Conservancy: A Community-Based Aquaculture Restoration Project aims to help ensure the long-term survival of the species.

The initiative will establish a Queen Conch Mobile Lab capable of raising up to 2,000 juvenile queen conch annually for conservation and restoration efforts. The program will also provide training and educational opportunities for staff and the more than 1,000 students who attend the school each year. Through The Island School’s longstanding community relationships, outreach programs will also engage approximately 10,000 Eleuthera residents with workforce training and education on sustainable fishing practices.

Chef José Andrés never ceases to amaze me. One minute we’re enjoying our usual playful banter as he quizzes me about which Bahama Islands I’ve visited—eventually finding one I’ve never even heard of—and the next minute he has me thinking deeply about the future of one of our most iconic marine species.

After learning more about the Queen Conch initiative, my mind immediately drifted to one of my favorite places in The Bahamas: the Sampson Cay Cut near Staniel Cay in Exuma. The seagrass there is pristine, and the drift diving and snorkeling are magical. Corals, conch, tropical fish, nurse sharks, and even grouper thrive in its crystal-clear waters. It’s the kind of place that should never be overdeveloped, which is why organizations like the Save Exuma Alliance (SEA) are working hard to protect it for future generations.

My new mission is to get Chef Andrés and a Queen Conch Lab down there on Big Sampson Cay. In fact, I’d love to see one on every Bahamian Out Island. But that dream will have to wait for another day because, Chef Andrés suddenly starts dancing, and singing: “Junkanoo!”

And just like that, he surprises me once again.

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