Marcelle HailwaxYacht charter broker & former yacht chef, DMA Yachting
Whatever your group loves to eat, cooked by a private chef who provisioned the boat specifically for you. Before the charter you fill in a preference sheet: favorites, dislikes, allergies, how adventurous the table should be, and what the bar should hold. The chef builds the whole week’s menus around it. This answer comes from inside the galley: Marcelle cooked aboard charter yachts before joining our broker desk.
Provisioning is the part guests never see and the chef sweats the most. Everything is bought in Nassau before departure, because once you are in the Exumas there are no supermarkets, so a good chef plans seven days of menus, backups included, before the first anchor drops. It is also why the preference sheet matters so much: a forgotten allergy cannot be fixed at a corner store two islands from anywhere.
Expect the Bahamas on the plate: conch salad made fresh on deck, Bahamian lobster in season (August to March), and whatever your group catches if you fish, cooked that evening. Dietary needs are routine, not a complication; vegan, gluten-free, kosher-style, and kids’ menus are everyday work for charter chefs.
On standard charters the food and drinks come out of the APA, and the bar follows the same preference sheet, from house wine to the sunset rum.