Tru Bahamian
Food Tours
Nassau, The Bahamas
Nassau has a table for you.
Alanna Rodgers built a business around the idea that a place reveals itself through its food, and through the people who know why it matters.
The macaroni arrives in a square.
Macaroni and cheese is a useful place to begin this story.
A visitor may arrive with firm opinions about what those words mean. Tru Bahamian Food Tours’ account of Bahamian macaroni describes a baked dish that cools before being cut into squares. Cheddar, eggs and evaporated milk help give it its richness and structure. It belongs beside the other food at Sunday meals and family celebrations.
Same familiar name. Another place’s way of making it. Suddenly, there is something to ask.
That is a lovely opening for a travel experience. Curiosity does not always require something entirely unfamiliar. Sometimes it begins when a thing you thought you knew asks you to pay closer attention.
Tru Bahamian puts that kind of introduction at the center of its work in Nassau. A tasting can lead to a recipe, a cook, a family occasion or a story about another island. The food has a life before the visitor arrives.
A local idea with a wider view
Alanna wanted people to meet the place through its cooks.
The company dates its founding to 2012. Reporting from 2013 describes the tours beginning that January.
Nassau-born Alanna Rodgers had traveled widely before building Tru Bahamian. In the company’s founding account, that travel sharpened her appreciation of how food expresses a country’s character. She wanted visitors to encounter the cooking of her own home and the people behind it.
By September 2013, contemporary reporting described a young business preparing to hire more guides after months of strong demand. It also noted an earlier part of Alanna’s work: she had founded Hands for Hunger, a Bahamian nonprofit addressing hunger and food waste.
Those are distinct undertakings. Still, it is striking to find food at the center of both. In one, the question concerns getting it to people who need it. In the other, it concerns helping people recognize the knowledge and culture carried by the meal in front of them.
The tourism business also creates a role for an introduction. The cook already has a skill. The restaurant already has a life. A guide can help a visitor understand where they have arrived and whose work they are enjoying.
I admire the choice to build around that relationship. It puts the local business into the visitor’s memory by name. The destination becomes more particular: a person made this, here, and there is a reason it tastes this way.
What a guide brings to the table
For Murray, crab and rice brings back Andros.
One of the richest pieces on Tru Bahamian’s website is its published interview with a guide named Murray. Asked about food, he remembers trips to the family islands, slow cooking over a wood fire, and catching crabs in Andros with an old sack.
He also explains that he learned to cook at twelve when his mother went on a cooking strike. The first meal was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. That is an unusually memorable beginning to a culinary education, and a reminder that family food traditions occasionally include a family member deciding to take the evening off.
His recollections give the food somewhere to come from. The dish carries a landscape and a younger version of the person describing it. A visitor cannot inherit that memory, but can be invited to understand why the meal carries so much feeling.
That is a form of generosity I value in a guide. A fact can be repeated by anybody who has learned it. A personal memory belongs to the person willing to share it. The distinction gives the conversation its warmth.
“Meeting new people, connecting with them and telling stories.”Murray, on what he enjoys about leading food tours, in Tru Bahamian’s published interview
A company with more than one voice
The introduction changes with the person making it.
The current team includes Ron, known as Captain Ron, an operations manager and guide from the Abaco Islands. The company also introduces Princess as a storyteller, percussionist and performance artist. Its people bring different experiences to the same work.
That variety is part of the appeal. A country does not speak in a single voice, and a food tradition does not belong to one definitive narrator. A guide’s knowledge, preferences and way of telling a story can leave room for somebody else’s version.
The Bahamas’ official tourism listing describes a cultural walking experience through downtown Nassau, combining tastings with history and architecture. The movement between places matters to the idea. Food stays connected to the city where people make and eat it.
So does the relationship with the businesses along the way. A restaurant is doing its own work while becoming part of someone’s introduction to Nassau. The guide helps connect those two experiences. Done with care, the guest learns enough to ask a better question and remembers enough to recognize the place again.
This is why I find the company more interesting than a list of things to taste. The work involves judgment about what to explain, whom to introduce and when to let the food, or the person who made it, have the visitor’s full attention.
A meal can change what a place means to you.
There is a difference between remembering that you ate well and remembering who helped you understand what you were eating.
Alanna’s idea makes room for the second kind of memory. The visitor can leave with a restaurant’s name, a cook’s explanation or a guide’s family story attached to the taste. Nassau becomes harder to reduce to a view from the water.
I like the possibility of the next encounter, too. A guest might recognize a dish on another menu, ask about somebody’s recipe or go back to a business for a full meal. Those are possibilities opened by a good introduction. They belong to the visitor to pursue.
The first step can be small. A familiar dish turns up in an unfamiliar shape. Someone explains why it belongs at the family table. You listen, take a bite and discover you have another question.
Rob Urban
The story, in context
Food, people and the tour.
Who founded Tru Bahamian Food Tours?
Nassau-born Alanna Rodgers founded Tru Bahamian Food Tours. The company dates its founding to 2012; contemporary reporting describes tours launching in January 2013.
What is the idea behind Bites of Nassau?
Bites of Nassau combines food tastings with a guided walk through downtown Nassau. Its purpose is to introduce visitors to Bahamian cooking, local food businesses, history and culture.
What makes Bahamian macaroni different?
The company’s food guide describes a baked dish that is cooled and cut into squares. It commonly includes cheddar, eggs and evaporated milk, with vegetables and seasonings, and has a place at family meals and celebrations.
Where should I check current tour arrangements?
Use Tru Bahamian Food Tours’ official tour and FAQ pages for current meeting points, availability, walking requirements and dietary arrangements. Confirm individual needs with the operator before booking.