I had lunch with Webb Chiles yesterday and we had a good old natter, the mesomorph and endomorph sitting at a table in the sun together. Rusty was perfectly behaved coiled up at my feet watching the other people having lunch. Webb thinks Rusty won the lottery when I found him; I think it may be the other way round.
Check his (Webb's not Rusty's) Amazon page - he says his life's work is art and he may be right but to someone stuck in an office it's high adventure too and eminently readable.
Webb's boat, the diminutive Gannet is docked in Marathon after surviving Hurricane Irma while propped up on land and is now ready to take off as soon as strong winds shift and seas calm down a bit. As he is busy completing his sixth circumnavigation I am not at all sure when I shall see him next but I will follow his progress on Gannet's satellite plotter on Webb's own page: inthepreseantsea
My first attempt at lunch went badly. We drove to Key Colony Beach to sit on the water at Sparky's Landing. We found the classic hole in the ground on our second pass looking for the place. I never thought to check ahead; this place is an institution.
Gone...I didn't come here often, maybe once or twice a year but I liked Sparky's with outside dog friendly seating, also overlooking the water with a simple fresh fish and sandwiches menu.
So I deployed the back up plan and we went to Burdines, the other "overlooking the water" restaurant that I like. This is a picture, below, from a previous visit with Rusty (and not Webb):
We got to see a few boats come and go, as the hostess, a part time resident told us about the downstairs damage caused by the hurricane and we ordered our sandwiches. I took this picture below, ten years ago and while the personnel has all changed the place itself has stayed the same through hurricanes and floods:
I want to go back and comb through Marathon a bit more. The city is running okay but there is still clean up underway, and a new Marathon is coming out of the Hurricane Irma fiasco. Including I was surprised to see, a Courtyard by Marriott hotel. Marathon maybe transitioning from Keys fishing village to chain store stop on the Overseas Highway.
Trip Adviser people tend to be monotonously repetitive in their recommendations, the whole service isn't, in the end, designed to push the adventurous choices and I wondered if this place would come up to billing. Often visitors to the Keys seem to like the atmosphere more than the food and frankly I'd rather eat good food in a crappy ambiance than vice versa. I tried ordering stuff I might not normally eat, being as how I wanted to take risks and the conch chowder was quite excellent.
It wasn't salty but it was creamy and filled with pieces of potato and conch. I am not a great fan of mollusks but in a chowder conch done right is better than clam in my opinion, and this was done right, firm but not chewy the conch gave great texture to the soup. The iced tea was also well worth drinking. It was tannic enough without forcing the point and my server did a good job of keeping the glass filled. She also recommended the pasta salad made with oil not mayo to accompany the fish fingers.
It was really a simple meal done well and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The pasta was firm, the dressing wasn't greasy and the fish fingers made a decent portion without being overwhelming. The fish was flaky and the fried crust was not the bland stuff I've had elsewhere. It was crunchy and all of it made a great lunch out of simple ingredients. I wondered how good dessert would be but I didn't want to make a pig of myself.
I took a table at an angle to the ever irritating TVs but there were lots of seating choices- too cold to sit outside and I didn't want to sit at the bar. There also appeared to be a separate dining room near the front of the building done up in bright colors. I liked the main room, all dark wood and funky decorations. The bar tender/host greeted me cheerfully and Blondie did a bang up job of serving me my lunch.
Cheyenne had just completed her first long walk of the day with more to come as we explored the Middle Keys. The air temperature was 63 so she was enjoying the sun in the back of the car in the strong north winds.
