Where should I eat in Nassau, and which local food or drink is worth trying?

Conch is the national ingredient and the one dish that defines Bahamian cooking. Conch salad is prepared raw to order, diced with onion, sweet pepper, tomato and goat pepper and dressed with sour orange and lime, which cures it in the bowl while you wait. Cracked conch is pounded flat, battered and deep fried. Conch fritters arrive as spiced batter balls with a dipping sauce. Conch chowder is the stewed version. The Government of The Bahamas records a Conch Festival each October at Mars Bay on Andros, which is a measure of the ingredient's standing across the islands.

Around it sits a repertoire built on fish and pork. Boil fish is grouper simmered with lime, onion and potato, traditionally a breakfast dish. Souse is a clear, sharp broth of chicken, sheep tongue or pig's feet with lime. Johnnycake is a dense pan bread served alongside. Peas and rice uses pigeon peas. Guava duff — a rolled steamed pudding with guava and a sweet sauce — is the dessert worth ordering. Sky juice, gin with coconut water and condensed milk, is the local drink to try once.

The seasonal rule you must know concerns grouper. The Department of Marine Resources closes the Nassau grouper season annually from December 1 through the end of February; during the closure, taking, landing, processing, selling or offering Nassau grouper for sale is prohibited except by written approval of the Director of Marine Resources for scientific or educational purposes, and any grouper landed must have head, tail and skin intact. That is why boil fish and grouper dishes change or disappear from menus over the winter — exactly the months most visitors come.

Paying is simple: the Bahamian dollar is pegged one-to-one with the US dollar, and US notes circulate interchangeably.

The conch shacks are open-sided wooden stands on the water, and the shells are opened in front of you — the discarded pink shells pile up behind the stands in heaps that are part of the scenery along the harbor.

Because CBP inspects US-bound passengers at Lynden Pindling International Airport in Nassau before departure rather than on arrival, anything you intend to carry home — including food — is examined in The Bahamas, inside the facility's 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. operating window. Plan the last meal and the last purchase around that, not around the flight time. Note also that the closed-season rule applies to selling as well as catching, so a restaurant offering Nassau grouper in January is not operating within the published rule.

• Breakfast — Boil fish with johnnycake, or souse; both are morning dishes in The Bahamas and are hard to find after midday.
• Lunch — Conch salad made to order at a waterfront shack, with a cold drink; the fritters travel better if you are walking.
• Evening — Cracked conch and peas and rice, with guava duff to finish; the fish shacks stay busy well after dark.

Conch stocks are under pressure across the region and portion sizes vary; the closed grouper season between December 1 and the end of February removes one of the staples for a quarter of the year. Currency and negotiable instruments of $10,000 or more must be declared entering and leaving the country. Marijuana and its derivatives, including CBD and THC products, are illegal in The Bahamas. The Atlantic hurricane season from June 1 to November 30 can interrupt the fishing fleet and close waterfront stands for days at a time.

For the months when the conch shacks are busiest and the weather is driest, see the Nassau when-to-visit question in this group; the things-to-do question sets out the Bay Street and harbor route the fish shacks sit along.