The Best New Restaurant in The Bahamas
It’s no secret that Nassau Paradise Island has become the Caribbean’s most dynamic culinary destination in the last few years.
From longtime standouts like the country’s premier dining destination, Graycliff, to local favorites like Cafe Matisse and Sapodilla to new entries from chefs like Daniel Boulud and Marcus Samuelsson, the Bahamian capital has become a hub of a new gastronomic movement.
That’s been particularly true at the Atlantis Paradise Island resort, which has always had an impressive dining offering but has been taking things to another level of late: the reimagined Cafe Martinique, the first-ever Shake Shack in the Caribbean, Jose Andres’ only Caribbean outpost.
Now there’s another new eatery, and it’s instantly become the best new restaurant in The Bahamas.
It’s called Paranza, and it’s the brainchild of Chef Michael White, who has earned six Michelin stars in New York alone with restaurants like Marea, Osteria Morini and Ai Fiori.
The new Paranza is set in a sleek, modern space in a corner of The Cove luxury resort, and the focus is on Italian regional cooking with as much Bahamian sourcing as possible. The result? An exquisite culinary experience.
The latter includes some truly spectacular Italian expressions of Bahamian seafood, from red snapper crude with Ligurian olive tapenade and fingerlike to a remarkable brioche-crusted, “strawberry” grouper with cipollini, fennel and saffron.
The wine list is excellent: a great portfolio of interesting wines by the glass, and a rather impressive curation of bottles, both Old and New World. (There are also some creative cocktails on offer).
The service is outstanding — the perfect blend of focused attention and laid-back respect; and the look is a bright, breezy, elegant aesthetic that is at place at the edges of one of the Caribbean’s most beautiful hotel lobbies.
It’s a reminder that Atlantis is home to eateries by three Michelin-starred Chefs (Andres and Nobu Matsuhisa are the others), and has quietly become a foodie destination in its own right.
Paranza isn’t just the best new restaurant in The Bahamas: it’s almost certainly the best new restaurant to debut in the Caribbean so far this year.
For more, visit Paranza.
Alexander Britell is the founder and editor-in-chief of Caribbean Journal and one of the top experts on Caribbean travel worldwide, with decades of on-the-ground travel to the region and comprehensive knowledge of the entire Caribbean Basin.
