Dineatfish- A Fish Restaurant

It's at Mile Marker 14.5  which is close to Baby's Coffee at Baypoint. It's been through a few transformations, most recently as Kaya Eats, an oddly named place. Now it's known simply as "Fish" which is not an easy name to look up online. A nice clean uncluttered interior:

They built the place alongside Highway One and made a kind of sports bar out of it, years ago: 

It faces west over the water and the mature trees on the south side give you the impression of eating in a forest. Happy hour is one of those pernicious institutions that causes alcohol to be sold cheap, I got my old favorite a bottle of Yuengling while my wife branched out and tried a ginger beer mojito and it wasn't at all bad. 

We decided to have three appetizers for an early dinner, First  we had curried mussels and they were very good, not too hot but spicy enough with a green coconut curry. Then we tried the pork tacos which I found a bit sweet but they got five stars from my wife, so what do I know?

 I enjoyed the glass my Yuengling came in, putting me in mind of old single cylinder motorcycles, known as "thumpers."

The rice balls were superb, and tasted as close to the homemade ones I used to get as a child made by my great aunt. They were less a cheese puff and more rice and tomato inside with pieces of red bell pepper that give them a slightly tart refreshing taste. I could have had another helping of these.

My wife noticed the interior seemed less noisy than it had during the Kaya period. Also the service was great, attentive not fussy and prompt. 

 We made reservations for the Valentine's day dinner which as I am working means we will have to come early. I guess that means we liked it. Lower Keys eateries are doing well. Thank god for snowbirds who demand more!

Here's the link: Fish

Winter Sunbathing

Bye Bye Baby's

So I ask myself, is there another change planned for Mile Marker 15? Change is endemic, change is good but it would be disappointing for a lot of people were Baby's Coffee to beat a further retreat. For Sale? Huh?

They say one should leave a sleeping dog alone but as cute as she was enjoying the morning on the porch I roused Cheyenne and we set off looking for a suitable walk. I had my eye on Mile Marker 15 yesterday morning to answer that question and though Bay Point is twelve miles from my house I knew Cheyenne likes the walk so off we went, and drove for 15 minutes because I wanted to stop by Baby's Coffee.

I like Bay Point, a triangular strip of land that points due south from the Overseas Highway, with a grassy triangle of parkland dotted with picnic tables, ball courts and a kid's playground. Bay Point is far enough from Boca Chica there isn't much jet noise but it's close enough to Key West to put you twenty minutes from the city door to door, roughly.

The Keys shuttle service goes by obviously so you are on a bus line out here and aside from Baby's there is one fancy restaurant Kaya Island Eats and...

...a little store. It's a handy spot one way and another and the bicycle path attracts the spandex crowd too.

The weather has been perfect lately, a fresh southeast breeze blowing away the humidity but allowing he heat to permeate the air. I find it invigorating. I was concentrating on the camera so the picture came out as what I call the grumpy Rasputin look.

The heat was a lot for the hairy Yellow Labrador who prefers her walks early in the morning or very late at night but she was a good sport and we ambled and stopped and ambled a little more. It was very companionable, as usual.

Which was just as well as my wife took the weekend out of town to see a friend in Central Florida and I was home for three days which I had been rather looking forward to spending alone. Except with Cheyenne around one is never really alone. She's a funny girl, she wants to be with me but always a few feet away, always ready to get up and trot after me, but never too close. Sometimes I get down and scratch her and she enjoys it for a while but then she shakes me off and moves away to lay down by herself. A weekend with my best bud.

They've been around for decades and started in Key West downtown taking over a business space that was labeled Baby's Place. I guess for want of a better name that became the name of the coffee roasting company. It didn't last downtown for ever and roasting was first moved as I recall to Homestead. Then the retail store moved to Mile Marker 15. I thought that was an odd choice and I wondered how they would do, but of course I have no instinct for business, though luckily for me I know it, so of course they flourished out in the boondocks!

Nowadays the coffee is roasted in Louisiana it seems and the store in the Keys is for sale. I spoke with an employee who said it could sell anytime as it is on the market and available. I'd like to think someone is out there who wants to roast and sell coffee under the eternal summer sun. I can't imagine what kind of a crazy life it would be operating an iconic business like this and I'm certain there's someone out there who will thrive on it.

I have discovered that they offer some fairly decent tea at Baby's so sometimes I'll choose that over the coffee. China green unadorned hit the spot. Along with some disgustingly delicious crumb cake. When the wife's away the food choices go straight to hell.

They sell sandwiches and pastries and mugs and candies and t-shirts and all that stuff alongside the actual business of selling hot liquid in styrofoam cups.

From there it was back to the car and my dog and we shared a few crumbs of blueberry cake and we went home and got on with the weekend.

She makes an excellent companion on an open ended weekend. We'll split tonight when I go back to work before my wife gets home but until then we will be inseparable.

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Baby's Coffee

I was ambling with Cheyenne when I saw this blob and I had to trot back to the car to get my camera. These things are everywhere and if you search Facebook for Key West Blob there is apparently an explanation.


Call me eccentric but I prefer not to know so I just note them in passing and keep on keeping on. My wife was inside Baby's Coffee buying us an afternoon pick-me-up so I had Cheyenne to myself for a few minutes.


The coffee shop is at Mile Marker 15, whence they moved after starting out life in downtown Key West at the KW Peppers building if I remember correctly.


Then they moved the roasting operation to the mainland to save money and took the retail store to Bay Point.


Which island has it turns out a nice chunk of Monroe County open space behind the coffee shop.


The Lower Keys Shuttle between Key West and Marathon has a stop here, seen above. Below, my dog decided this was where we would have our coffee:


In the company of some locals resting comfortably in the grass.


Soon enough my wife appeared with the coffee and we watched the clouds scud overhead while I listened to my wife's latest tale of woe from the horribly administered school district. I am hoping the idiot Superintendent gets his marching orders before he ruins local schools completely. He is under qualified, inexperienced and as a result has a very inflated ego and a total lack of self confidence. And he hates strong women which puts my wife at risk.


A passing dog walker very kindly offered Cheyenne a treat which made her the poor woman's best friend for life.


Jeez Cheyenne! It's just a cookie!


It's a fine spot behind Baby's. The best place to stop and enjoy coffee on a lovely Keys afternoon.



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Kaya What?

"Soon Come" gets the point across but it is an odd way of putting it, if you can actually read the pale blue and white writing on the turquoise banner as you whizz by at 60 miles per hour.

Knickerbockers, a sports bar, was built here years ago, after Hurricane Wilma blew through the islands. So they put a big generator upstairs, we were all a bit flood-wary after Wilma, but the sports bar failed. Now, despite the dim economic prospects for the world at large, "island eats" are coming to a nicely refurbished building at Mile Marker 15.

There's a new pizzeria opening up the road at the Sugarloaf Lodge. I hope they all know how to hire professional waitstaff to back up whatever good food they decide to churn out. Even if I never eat there, there's something bracing about seeing people ready to open businesses, buy homes and carry on as though there really isn't a recession nagging at us.

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Bay Point

It is said that a good parking space for a Floridian is a shady parking spot. It's a sentiment with which I heartily agree.


I like the triangle of green behind Baby's Coffee for occasional dog walking and the water glimpses are an added pleasure for me.


The restaurant called Knuckleheads that came and went in a winter several years ago left behind a nice building. It's complete with a generator and now it has clean grounds and plants in pots.


I'm not at all clear where the customer base is for a large operation here, half way between Big Pine and Key West, and that's probably one more reason why I don't run a restaurant, the lack of vision thing.


These Harleys stopped at the coffee place and set out for Key West looking good, if understaffed, please note.


Cheyenne through all this was busy grazing the superb lawn in the park.


I started groveling to see if I could get a better angle.


And wasn't I surprised when I got up from groveling to find two dogs bearing down on us. " Is your dog friendly?" she asked. Huh? "I have yet to find an aggressive Labrador" I said when I had recovered from my astonishment at the question.


You'd think dog people might get a clue from a dog that is standing in a field grazing and happily minding her own business. Pooh Bear behaving like Eeyore. And in case it isn't obvious from the pictures she isn't at all aggressive.

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Night Key West

The evening started out well. My wife rode downtown from her classroom to meet me at the Tropic Cinema. We went to see the third in the series of movies set in Sweden called the Millennium series. We found The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest excessively talky and the least enjoyable of the series. I felt like walking out I was so bored but I didn't want to miss out on the ending of the series...I parked Cheyenne in the multi story parking lot on Grinnell Street. She wasn't the only animal left in a car.When I came back to the car night had fallen and the parking structure had become a playground for a couple of active youngsters on their skateboards. My camera couldn't catch their determined features as they flashed by in the half light.This corner of Key West looks like the high rise part of the island, with the Steam Plant apartments rising out of the gloom. Such is the state of the economy that the $3.2 million luxury apartments are being offered at half price by developer Ed Swift. Private parking and rooftop pools and all.We parked our vehicles at the School District lot off Trumbo Road and went for a night time walk.The Coastguard Station across the water. In the old days, when the Steam Plant was an active electrical generating station the harbor waters here were so polluted they called this spot the Toxic Triangle.Nowadays it's much cleaner and thus also more commercial. Where once boats tied up informally to the seawall today we see modern marinas in Key West Bight- from shrimp docks to pleasure boat docks in one generation. This is the Galleon across the water.Beyond the school district parking lot the Coastguard station is always ready.From the madness of the big city, relatively speaking, Cheyenne and I soon found ourselves out enjoying the relative peace and quiet of the outer islands. In this case I figured Cheyenne could use an "extra walk" under the glorious almost full moon. I pulled into the park behind Baby's Coffee on Bay Point (Mile Marker 15).It was a splendid warm evening and we both enjoyed strolling around under the ridiculously bright lights illuminating an empty tennis court. Cheyenne trundled back and forth, nose to the ground, making up for the time she spent snoozing in the car in Key West. I played with the camera and enjoyed the contrast between the black night sky and the highly illuminated world around us.

Looking north there was nothing but blackness, the blinking red lights of the radio station towers and the red tail lights of cars streaming by through the long exposure of my camera.

Standing around in my shorts at the end of November is no bad way to spend a winter night outdoors. Not a snowflake in sight, thank goodness.