I confess I was surprised when I recently visited my favorite diner and found all sorts of strangely out of place upgrades, if you can call them that, at El Mocho. Right up front the door has writing on it! With a seagull motif! Very cool.
We got a bilingual menu, though I was pleased to see there was still a whiteboard on the wall with some extra dishes scribbled on in faded ink. Oh and check out the credit card logos. That's new.
I took this rather crappy picture of the extension with a new dining room and not one but two televisions hanging off the wall. I hate eating with television glaring down on me so the original dining area suits me better. You can also see the whiteboard in this dreadful picture I snapped:
Some things don't change. My wife got half a sugar in her con leche which I think is a gringo affectation, but the boss lady didn't bat an eye at this minimalist sugar order. I asked for a more robust one full spoonful of sugar with my coffee where a proper Cuban would get half a dozen. Styrofoam still rules even though it is destructive and non recyclable.
The decor is less personal now with artwork of the tropical flavor you can buy anywhere. They used to have photos and notes of appreciation from the flyers at Boca Chica, but I think the future of El Mocho is going to be like that of El Siboney in Key West, catering "authenticity" to wealthy incomers. It's all part of the gentrification.
Breakfast hasn't changed and it's still less than five bucks for the basic. Grits were off as we were early, among the first arrivals so we had to settle for the pre-formed hash browns. I really like the hot buttered Cuban bread with the extra thick curly bacon and the perfectly fried eggs. It is an indulgence and is thus delightful in its simplicity and lack of pretension.
El Mocho offers no air conditioning if you want to be coddled but it is a refuge from the bright summer sunlight outside.
We walked Cheyenne for a bit and talked and Gary left me some discs of pictures he's taken around here. I plan to use them during the month of July while I'm on vacation riding a motorcycle in mountains.
I gave Gary the lowdown on life in the Keys as I see it and he took my observations in good part, so perhaps listening to me rant is better than eating grits with American cheese. It doesn't sound like much of a choice to me. The next time you're on a Key West forum and they are asking where the locals eat and you see a list of names that doesn't include El Mocho you will know what to think. Bring your white rubber boots, just like the commercial fishermen do. On second thoughts, don't because the boots are their prized and privileged uniform, just come as you are.
El Mocho on Stock Islands' main drag, Maloney Avenue, is the magnet for breakfast these days. They open at five in the morning and serve a mixture of American greasy spoon and Cuban delicacies till three in the afternoon.
Lunch at El Mocho is a massive affair, heaping piles of rice and black beans accompany the main course with sweet fried plantains to leave you stuffed and barely able to move... but this is the robust fare workers on Stock island have come to expect, and for well less than ten dollars too from the funky little hut a block away from the Tom Thumb convenience store and across the street from the last remaining independent home supply store on the island. This is a small corner of independent small business on Stock Island amid the mobile homes and dusty light industrial welding shops and carpenters and fishermen who all wait with bated breath hoping massive redevelopment slated for the island is held off by the economic misery generated by the derivatives collapse. We heard recently that the frou-frou Harbor Yacht Club situated in the new marina that replaced Peninsular, has folded, though the developers promise it will reopen in January, so clearly all is not well in the world of gentrification. In El Mocho the Cuban family that has owned it continues to serve up what the people want:
Eggs, bacon, and Cuban toast already buttered, cafe con leche, no soy milk low fat options here, in an atmosphere that would be no atmosphere were Formica and chrome Naugahyde furniture not nostalgic.
The lights are bright and the food is served in a hurry from the kitchen. Each of the half dozen tables wedged into the misshapen room gets a minimum of condiments, the basic oil/vinegar for your salad, ketchup, hot sauce, salt and pepper:
If you are on your way to work and barely awake put in your order and when it arrives piping hot in just a few minutes you put your head down and dig in:
Spanish is the lingua franca here but English is also spoken, perfectly fluently if masked by a smile and thick Cuban accent. El Mocho is a classic old fashioned hub and the espresso machine is the tool that creates coffee but also serves as the spot where information is traded:
My wife and I come here often enough to be greeted warmly and with a hint of recognition, but I am not one of those that is very able at the hail-fellow-well-met routine, in the places I go to eat. If no one knows my name that's fine by me so I cannot give you the family's story that runs this place for our benefit. I'm not alone in my reticence, reading the paper is a favorite way to accompany some breakfasts:
I first used to come to El Mocho years ago when I was hauling out my sailboat for maintenance down at Peninsular. One year we spent almost an entire winter it felt like sitting up on the dusty pea rock of the boatyard with a task list as long as a battleship's and El Mocho was where we came to escape the tedium and filth of the boatyard. It is not atmospheric in the traditional sense, but it isn't fake either:
The walls under the bright fluorescent lights carry a few modest period ads:
And some autographed pictures brought in as a token of appreciation by fliers far from home training at the nearby Boca Chica Naval Air Station. It's not rare to see the military in here looking for a bacon and egg sandwich and a con leche:
With the closure of the Vieques training ground off Puerto Rico, Key West has become one of two major training facilities for fliers in the US (Elgin Air Base in the Florida panhandle is the other) thanks to proximity to open water and mild weather easy to fly in year round. And because the US has its military fingers in pies all round the world our allies come here to get training too from time to time. This picture was signed by fliers from 433 Escadrille of Quebec and there was another similar from 4 Air Wing in Alberta nearby:
But for the most part the dress code at El Mocho is informal, and that's the way I like it too:
El Mocho reminds me of places I've eaten across Latin America, no air conditioning, no glass in the windows as a matter of fact, hot in summer, cool in winter, a cash only economy that keeps prices down and accessible. The porch out front is reserved for the regulars who gather like their counterparts in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico (or Cuba I'm sure) and talk as they suck down their Latin espressos, known in Cuban as buchi (mouthfuls). Through the grille that serves as a window I could see one patron repeatedly flipping a small paper cup to his lips:
Cubans order coladas, which are half a dozen buchis in a large paper cup, then they distribute the thimble sized cups among friends and pour the coffee out in rounds and throw them down the hatch. It's powerful stuff with lots of sugar (lots!) so they are well wired for the morning... All too soon it's time to go, my wife on her Vespa (sporting her red Turkey sticker she got on her trip) to the college on the north side of the island and me to bed by Triumph:
But before we left the haven I took one last picture of the Cubans arguing about nothing and watching the world go by:
Say what you like but to me this really is a last piece of Old Key West, unselfconsciously real. Vaya con Dios.