Anyone who has been to the Bahamas, the Turks, and Caicos or even Key West knows the word Conch. Pronounced “konk,” the name has become widely popular thanks to Jimmy Buffet songs and wild crazy Key West visits. Residents of Key West (known as the Conch Republic) are called conchs, the streets are lined with conch houses, and tourists can ride the conch train. Go further south into the Bahamas where the term “conchy joe” is used to refer to Bahamians of mixed race.

All the slang aside, this beautiful and delicious marine mollusk has gone through a roller coaster of existence over the last 20 or so years.

In my early 20s, fresh out of culinary and looking for adventure, I took a job charter boat cooking in the Virgin Islands. What great fun it was to dive off the boat for conch, filling up a net bag with as many as we could before our lungs exploded, surfacing to hear the ooh’s and ahh’s of the guests onboard at the sight of these magnificent conch!

Learning from the locals that rather than smash a shell for the meat, an hour or so in the freezer was most effective at driving the conch out, leaving a fully intact shell for someone to take home as a souvenir. Running this tough hunk of muscle through a hand crank meat grinder produced a perfect textured meat for creating my version of some local dishes.

Conch incidentally is higher in protein than most seafood and second to salmon in omega-3 fatty acids. It’s pretty much a “perfect seafood.” On a trip to St. Thomas a couple years back, I was told that diving for conch would be nothing more than an exercise in holding my breath. They are few and far between in those waters.

The queen conch (the one in that beautiful big white shell with the pale pink interior) is most commonly used in all conch recipes from conch fritters to conch chowder. In the early ’80s, the queen conch population was starting to collapse. Florida banned its harvest and it was banned from the Bahamas down to Haiti and Honduras. It was being seriously overfished and facing depletion. The industrious Bahamians sanctioned a 176 square mile area of Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park as a no-take fishery zone. Since then the park has become a major source for the replenishment of queen conch. Florida jumped on the wagon and began operating a conch hatchery in the Keys in 1991 to help conch stocks recover.

As recently as 2005, there was only one commercial conch farm in the world. Owned by an American on the Island of Provo in the Turks and Caicos, this underwater pasture of 260 acres raises millions of conch annually for export. Conch is gaining its place in the seafood repertoire of some of this country’s top chefs. My interest in conch sparked further research which is now leading to partnering with a group in the Bahamas to set up a small manufacturing facility to produce (you guessed it) value added conch products for export. From Lobster Stew to Conch Chowder—here we go!

The following recipe was given to me by my good friend McKenzie, a true Bahamian gentleman.

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