Through The Eyes of a Culinary Artist… Through The Eyes of a Culinary Artist…

By Nikia Wells

Photography Courtesy Of Nikia Wells

In honour of The Bahamas celebrating 50 years of freedom, pride, growth, creativity, evolution, and independence, Chef Emmanuel Gibson was asked to flex his culinary artistry.

The prompt was simple. He was given no rules, no limitations, and no boundaries – the only ask was that he express his patriotism through food and cooking.

Chef Emmanuel is an award-winning culinary veteran who is greatly respected by his peers and diners, alike. Over the years, he rose in the ranks from dishwasher to executive chef, to eventually owning his own restaurant called Mañuelo’s.

Despite his international accolades, Chef Emmanuel is soft-spoken as he skilfully moves around his kitchen while preparing his dishes. Some chefs might have chosen to dive into a bag of tricks or complicated techniques to create their edible works of art, but Chef Emmanuel instead chose the beauty of simple ingredients prepped with a masterful hand.

His first dish, a play on Fish and Chips, utilized produce freshly plucked from Bahamian soil and tended to by hand, as well as a meaty snapper caught by a local fisherman. This was an ode to the Bahamian men and women who sustained themselves from the land and the sea. The humble fried fish was paired with a vibrant assortment of sides – including a crisp salad and tomato salsa – both showing that the humble ingredients that Bahamians have enjoyed for decades are still delicious, powerful, and captivating.

The reimagination of this classic dish is also a fitting choice to represent The Bahamas’ departure from British rule and becoming an independent nation.

For Chef Emmanuel’s second fish, he again looked to the seas and the land, but this time, transformed them into a turbot cake paired with a crisp mango