Marv “Marvelous Marv” Cunningham doesn’t drink. He tastes. That’s a distinction the Nassau mixologist, known by many as Mr. Mix, makes carefully — and very purposely.
“If you do have a favorite spirit, you’re going to be biased,” he says. For nearly three decades, Cunningham has kept his palate free of spirit preferences, so that every cocktail he creates, judges or teaches can be evaluated on its own terms.
That discipline propelled him from barback to bartender in just a few months at Club 601 in Nassau in 1998. Entering the industry without formal training or a mentor, he relied on one book — Cocktail: The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century — to master both the classics as well as the staples found on cocktail menus today. But those books didn’t know a thing about Nassau.
“When you look at all these bartending books, you’re not seeing ingredients that you see every day here in The Bahamas,” Cunningham says. “Ingredients that are growing in your yard, that you see in your local market; ingredients that your mom, your grandma … what they’re cooking with.” Ingredients like tamarind, guava, mango, soursop and juju, also known as jujube, a small date-like fruit that tastes of apple when green and deepens in flavor as it ripens. Cunningham noticed all of this sitting in Bahamian kitchens, seemingly destined for pastries and nothing more, and that bothered him. “I’ve got to change this,” he remembers thinking. So, he spent the early 2010s teaching himself to turn those staples into syrups, shrubs (sweet-and-sour syrups) and infusions, entering every competition he could find to prove it could be done. Some of his best breakthroughs came from mistakes, like the time he was working on a watermelon simple syrup and ended up discovering clarification instead, with the juice separating clean from the pulp.
The awards quickly followed: “Caribbean Bartender of the Year” at the Taste of the Caribbean back-to-back in 2015 and 2016; induction into the competition’s Hall of Fame; and the Hennessy Master Mixologist Championship in 2015. The Caribbean Journal Travel Awards has named him “Bartender of the Year” three times, most recently in 2025. His consultancy, Mr. Mix Bahamas, now develops cocktail programs for hotels, bars and restaurants across the island.
This summer he’s putting all his efforts towards his ultimate favorite fruit: the mango. He’s competing in the Bahamian leg of the Hennessy MyWay global cocktail challenge (the international finals take place in Paris this October), building a cocktail that uses both Haden and Tommy Atkins mangoes six different ways — a nod to both sustainability and his Bahamian upbringing. “I remember growing up, walking in a neighborhood, everybody has a mango tree, but not all mangoes are alike,” he says. A variety of mangoes, like Julie and Champagne, were all traded like baseball cards during his childhood. “The summer season is just like the fruit,” he says. “It’s bright; it’s beautiful.”
The cocktails are only part of it. Cunningham now also judges competitions himself, is a mentor to young Bahamian bartenders and has been working to expand access to the industry for the next generation. And, just as he did at the beginning, he continues to put his customers at the forefront of each and every experience, thinking way beyond the glass in front of him. “Behind every cocktail is a personality,” he says. “A great attitude can save a bad drink. And a good drink doesn’t make up for bad attitude or bad service.”
