The first thing to know about conch is that it is really just a giant snail in a really pretty shell.
But not quite the same kind of teeny round brown escargot the French eat. A full grown conch can be seven, eight, or more or more inches long. Technically, it’s a marine gastropod mollusk. Just so you know.
The second thing? It’s delicious.
Conch is found throughout the Caribbean, but nowhere as enthusiastically as on the multi-island nation of Turks and Caicos (which is, to be accurate not IN the Caribbean but just north of it, in the same geographical no-man’s land as the Bahamas.)
In Your Bucket Because…
- You swore you’d never eat a snail, but this is starting to sound mighty good.
- It’s a traditional local food that is garnering attention from international chefs.
- Good for: Anyone who likes to eat! Because with everything from conch ceviche to conch burgers, there’s bound to be a conch for you.
Ocean Club Resorts: Have Your Conch and Eat it Too
Conch is also an eminently flexible food, as I learned when I sat down at the Cabana Bar and Grill, an informal restaurant at Ocean Club East, the condominium community where I was staying on Grace Bay. (If Grace Bay sounds familiar, it’s probably because Conde Nast, the World Travel Awards, and TripAdviser are just some of the media that have put it on their “best beach in the world” lists, and Ocean Club Resorts itself has appeared in Travel and Leisure‘s “World’s Best” list.)
As for the conch, well, how do you want it? Ocean Club Resorts has two locations and several restaurants, including a new Conch Bar at Ocean Club’s West’s Seaside Cafe. You can’t accuse them of choosing a misleading name: The menu includes a conch for every palette: conch burger, conch salad, conch ceviche, conch chowder, cracked conch, conch fritters, conch fingers, and conch Creole. And the other restaurants have a variety of conch choices, as well.
Well, when in Rome: At the Cabana Bar and Grill I had conch fingers followed by conch salad. And later, at the more upscale Opus restaurant, I indulged in the Caicos red conch chowder. (With all this talk of conch, I should note that all the restaurants also have plenty of non-mollusk selections, too.)
And by the way, it’s pronounced “conk,” not “conch.”
The World’s Only Conch Farm
So what’s the story with a snail that can be cooked a dozen different ways? To find out, I went on a tour of the world’s only commercial Conch Farm, located a few minute’s taxi ride from Grace Bay. The facility, a sprawling hub of onshore tanks and pools and off-shore seabeds, was opened 20 years ago. Wind Trade Industries saw a business opportunity that would address local economic development as well as the conservation issue of overfishing, which had depleted the stock of wild conch to the point that commercial conch is now listed as endangered by CITES (the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna). While conch has been a staple food in the West Indian for more than a thousand years, supplies have now reached a critical level.
The farm is an attempt to develop a mari-culture facility to help restore the conch population, provide reasonably priced locally grown seafood for locals and tourists, create jobs, and export conch for business. Visitors can see the entire conch lifecycle from larval blob to the dinner plate: I started my tour in the visitors’ reception area, a simple room with a few items for sale (conch shells, conch postcards, conch T-shirts, conch jewelery). Local guides lead the tours, beginning with some basic conch biology and going on to explain the different stages of development, from the pin-head-sized veliger (larvae), which are nursed in small protected larval pools to some two million juveniles, who are coddled in protected on-shore enclosures, to the full-sized queen conchs, which live in the seabeds and release more eggs to become the next generation before being harvested.
Want to see more? You can even get up close and personal, holding and examining the personal parts (this is, after all, part biology lesson) of a couple of long-time residents who have escaped the soup bowl in the name of visitor relations.
Da Conch Shack and Rum Bar: A Turks and Caicos Classic
But even after 2 million conchs, I wasn’t done: Next on the agenda was da Conch Shack and Rum Bar, located about 30 minutes from Grace Bay by car, back past the airport. The trek is well worth the time and expense. An unprepossessing open-air place, da Conch Shack is, well, kind of a shack — the type of ramshackle beachside restaurant you could come to wearing a bathing suit and a wrap. But despite its beachfront-shabby appearance, it’s garnered an impressive array of rave reviews from TripAdviser (“best beach bar in the world”) the Travel Channel (“one of the world’s sexiest beach bars”), CNN, and even the New York Times.
And talk about fresh! You can watch your conch being prepared from harvesting (a hole is made near the front of the shell, the muscle that holds the shell and the conch together is cut, and the meat can then be pulled out of the shell) to dinner plate. Other seafood comes straight from the ocean via local fishing boats. And for landlubbers, there’s an excellent version of another island specialty, jerk chicken. All washed down, of course, with da Conch Shack’s signature rum drinks.
Practicalities
- Turks and Caicos’s Annual Conch Festival is held every November at the Three Queen’s Bar/Restaurant in Blue Hills. You’ll get to taste conch creations from restaurateurs all over the island, and the competition is judged by a ream of international chefs. The restaurants bring samples for everyone, making this a popular gathering spot for locals and tourist alike.
- The Conch Farm is open 9 weekdays 9 – 4 and Saturdays 9 – 2. In addition the the conchs, there’s also a sea turtle pen, set aside to take care of endangered baby sea turtles until they are large enough to survive in the wild.
- Taxi rates from Grace Bay to da Conch Shack vary by number of people and the driver. My driver told me $60 each way for a group of 5; I’ve heard higher and lower quotes from other travelers. Another option is to rent a car for a day and make the excursion part of a sightseeing day trip.
- Ocean Club Resorts: U.S. Reservations directly at (800) 457-8787 or visit www.oceanclubresorts.com.
