As Key West gets more crowded with people determined to be drunk in public this week, a middle aged man's thoughts naturally turn to places far from home. Ah escape! Even from Paradise! No-especially from Paradise.
Diggy pestered me for another ride earlier this week and we took a few hours to rumble over the Seven Mile Bridge and check out another eatery. This one, like Burdines is on the water, only its on the north side of town, what Marathon residents call Gulf side (as opposed to Ocean side on the south side of Highway One). Diggy has only just had his eyes opened to the possibilities of fleeing his hometown from time to time and he's developing a taste for the wide world beyond Key West.
Keys Fisheries is the place one chooses if one is in the mood to get Fish. They have a massive menu, overdone in length, but they are well known for their lobster Reuben, consisting of slabs of greasy toast with the other white meat nestled inside. As lobster can live up 120 years when not interefered with, I prefer to avoid encouraging their demise. I find the meat tolerable, overly sweet, and that encourages me to not eat them. The fact that lobster live low-key lives, tucked under rocks and not doing much of anything allows me to sympathize with them when they are torn out of their quiet nooks and allowed to suffocate slowly in our dry atmosphere to become human food.
My blackened snapper lived a much shorter life and tasted a whole lot more savory than the poor old lobster in the reuben at the table next door. 
My companion pronounced the restaurant "ghetto" which is a term I believe of disapproval. When young Diggy eats out he likes table service, not do it yourself which is the low cost theme at Keys Fisheries. But he did like the notion of using a pseudonym to order the food, sometimes a movie star's name , or a figure from history; the day we were there it was song titles:
My companion pronounced the restaurant "ghetto" which is a term I believe of disapproval. When young Diggy eats out he likes table service, not do it yourself which is the low cost theme at Keys Fisheries. But he did like the notion of using a pseudonym to order the food, sometimes a movie star's name , or a figure from history; the day we were there it was song titles:Diggy took Low Rider, while I, with my search for the political in all statements went with Imagine. The view of the Gulf of Mexico was okay, blocked by a parked Catalina 27 and by the annoying waterfront fence.
The fries were declared "not as good as Burdines" by my junior food critic. Next time we'll try elsewhere, always searching for good eats in the Keys.
The fries were declared "not as good as Burdines" by my junior food critic. Next time we'll try elsewhere, always searching for good eats in the Keys.Well, you gotta do something to justify the ride.
2 comments:
Your killing me with that picture of the menu. The fresh seafood is what I miss the most(hard to find conch anything in S-ARK). We (the south Arkansas riders) made our pilgrimage down to the keys on our rented Harleys from Eagle Rider and had an absolute blast on your island. I will not wait another 5 years to do it again. I want to say thank you for your time and effort b/c your insight provided us with some neat places to see and recognize from your photos. My only small gripe (very, very small) was the amount of scooters that take up all the motorcycle parking around town. My buddy and I (our first morning) got a welcome to Key West fee of $35 attached to our bikes from one of your work friends. We parked as close to the motorcycle parking on an off street to run up to the motorcycle shop on Duvall to get a couple of white t-shirts (the black was too hot) before we went cruising around the back streets of town. You see, the scooters had filled the motorcycle parking with an inability to park in consistent straight lines. From then on, if the m/c spots were full when we needed to park, we would "gingerly" pick up the scooters and park them correctly to make enough room for our SUVs of the motorcycle world. Nobody got mad and it all worked out for the best. Do I really mind the parking ticket - nah, not at all - now it's laminated and tacked up to one of the roof beams of our tiki hut next to the pool in the backyard and displayed as a prize!!!
Glad to help. Don't take the ticket personally. I found an old parking ticket under my seat, by accident, when I took the seat off the Bonneville. By the time I went to pay, it had gone up to $45...
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