Clams And Cronuts

A friend of mine came to Key West from New Jersey and had a hole in his life for many years. Then DJ's Clam Shack opened on Duval where the Middle Eastern falafel joint used to be. He told me that at long last Key West had a place where you could buy a proper lobster roll. D J's Clam Shack on Duval doesn't have a huge Menu but it's interesting because it's unusual for around here.

What, I asked naively, is a lobster roll? He rolled his eyes at my hopeless ignorance. Is it my fault I grew to maturity as an adult in California, and East Coast delicacies passed me by? I am told Maine makes lobster rolls as a state institution such that McDonalds in Maine sells them as part of their local menu.

D J's has Yuengling on draft which is a good sign but I can't drink in the middle of the day else I pass out, so I settled on a soda. The food? Well that had to be a lobster roll for a first visit. What, I asked the rather bored dude behind the tiny counter, are Ipswich clams, thinking of their namesake place in eastern England. They are specially flown in from Massachusetts so they can be fried he said. The clams on display he added were regular clams, the ones I like in broth or on pasta. Clams fried? Weird. I'll try the Ipswich model next time.

My lobster roll showed up in short order and I took a seat overlooking the nine hundred block of Duval. Hmm, cold lobster chunks in mayonnaise. I prodded the red flesh cautiously with an inadequate plastic fork. It was the roll that shocked me, consisting as it did of soft sweet yellow bread. The lobster was fine, not too goopy and the whole thing was surprisingly good. The coleslaw was fresh and crisp. I enjoyed lunch.

Here's a thing. I heard the gloomy guy telling another customer this clam shack is going to on the food channel in a couple of months. I had heard the drive-in guy was in town and apparently it will be an all Key West show with reviews of Badboy Burrito and Garbo's. So as it happens my culinary travels while my wife was away has helped me cover these local take out eateries. I love Badboy and my first encounter with Garbo's was excellent and both those joints represent Key West cuisine, a local twist on classics. A lobster roll though doesn't seem particularly Key West, as good as the food was, and I am going back for the clams...and another lobster roll! However if you wanted a third Key West dive or diner I would plump for El Mocho on Stock Island as representative of Cuban cuisine, because Cuban is actually a true local ethnic cuisine. Perhaps for a TV show El Mocho is maybe a tad bit too ethnic. So then why not El Siboney or even Sandys or Five Brothers...pick your poison. But New England lobster? Weird.

Hey, it's their TV show and I'm sure we all have opinions. Good luck to 'em. Meanwhile back in Old San Juan my wife was having a farewell lunch in the other Commonwealth. I rather liked the look of the pork chop in guava sauce, and wondering about that...got me wondering why we are so afraid of how other people do things. I wonder why the food channel is so white and so mainstream. We don't have TV at home so perhaps our occasional glimpses while on the road have revealed an excessively monochrome food channel.

On the other hand before we get carried away, judging solely by the exterior, that eatery in Puerto Rico does not look like a diner, and certainly not a dive, and drive-ins weren't around in the 17th century when the "Rich Island" was living the high life and English colonists were floundering around in bogs and forests.

After the lobster roll exploration I figured I had less than twelve hours before my wife got home so pudding was in order, another opportunity to explore outside my usual haunts. In my world pudding is anything sweet eaten to end a meal and it so happened I had left my dog in the car in a shady spot in front of a bakery called Key West Amazing Cakes and Creations on Fleming Street just off Duval.

I'd heard about the doughnut and croissant crossover started in New York and breathlessly reported on a National Public Radio. They also told of huge lines and limited sales at the bakery to spread the wealth of a few hundred Cronuts among the masses. I could not imagine standing in line for hours to buy a pastry. But I was curious.

I guess by the time deep fried croissant pastry shaped more or less into a doughnut, reached Key West the lines have thinned. I only had to wait a couple of seconds for the nice lady to come out from the back before she offered me the choice of chocolate vanilla or strawberry and with a vanilla I took a stool balancing my bun and a cup of coffee. Here goes nothing.

It wasn't bad at all. Fried pastry can't taste bad but ambrosia it's not. I'm not certain I would choose fried croissant dough over a "proper" doughnut given the choice. A cruller ("old fashioned" in California) might beat out a Cronut in a contest. On the other hand let me get back to you. I texted my wife and she wanted a taste when she got home so I put a chocolate and a strawberry in a to-go container for home later. Then I'll know for sure which tastes better.

 

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Crowds, Pedestrians, Cyclists, Oh My!

Don't get me wrong, you can never have too many visitors to a tourist town. But, by gum, you can have a damned sight too many for misanthropic old me. These folks on the dock were having a three way conversation in French and English to see about going fishing. Thats what's needed to keep everyone employed in a town with no other resources.

It was a lovely sunny day before this latest cold front came into town to give us gray skies and the usual drizzle. It wasn't hot but it was warm and the air was cool and refreshing. I have been on day shift for a while and my lunch breaks in the middle of the day have put me downtown among the madding crowds.

The traffic gets to me as it always does in winter. There are bound to be tons of tentative confused drivers nosing their way through the narrow streets. That they come to Key West in unsuitably large cars doesn't help, and would you believe how few people know how to parallel park, a vital skill in this cramped city.

Much better the visitors keep walking and look for big sleek tarpon haunting the harbor waters looking for crumbs in the shade of the docks. Or like the young woman below standing contemplatively like a widow on her walk waiting for her ship to come in.

No, it's not the pedestrians that clutter the streets, and though the cars do you have to expect that. The cyclists worry me a lot more, not least because I will be the bad guy if I mash an innocent on two wheels. The thing is I am generally sympathic to two wheelers, especially if they riding instead of driving, I have encouraged termed some cyclists already this winter whose habits are death inducing.

I had one crowd of half a dozen filling both lanes on Windsor near Virginia and wobbling as they went and when I tooted gently I got gestures from the idiot riding furthest across in the oncoming lane. It's not as though I was herding them I just wanted the oncoming lane to get past the clusterfuck. Then there are cyclists talking on the ubiquitous phone.

The wobblers, the inexperienced riders who think Key West is Disneyland and thus a good place to rekindle long dormant cycling skills. On public streets. I worry these cretins have offspring who will be foisted early on an unsuspecting world and that they will drive their foster parents mad if they are as dim as their biological patents currently themselves regressing to childhood on two wheels in Our Fair City.

Let's face it cellphones are a wonderful tool and I love mine as a resource, but who wants to be tethered to someone who is glued to their phone? I've heard tell of people who take Facebook to bed with them, and rather them than me.

I have noticed far fewer snowbirds on my suburban streets outside the city but Key West itself is packed. I am not a fan of sidewalk crowds, but I have to say its encouraging to see people enjoying the act of walking, with phone or not.

When I see these people cycling I wish they would take these new habits home with the but I suspect the spread out life on the mainland won't translate to cycling as it does here, briefly, on vacation.

Walking certainly doesn't, and frankly I see locals vying for the parking spots closest to the store when I am out in the modest shopping malls we have down here. The no walking disease is rampant everywhere in daily life. Even the bums in Key West, who walk incessantly put their feet up quite a lot of the time.

And on the subject this year's slow driving award in Key West goes to operators of cars with Tennessee tags. With no apologies to GarytheTourist I make this nomination because for some reason every time I get stuck behind some lost slow poke I see the green tag of the Volunteer State smiling back at me. They are probably just rental cars but still...

Then of course there are the sailors, in town for Race Week, identified by their North Sails backpacks, and the thousand yard stares of titans engaged in unholy toil that we mere mortals could never comprehend...

But if these crowds are the price we pay for a quiet summer and long hot days of empty streets, I say it's an excellent deal. Roll on Easter, when the caravans line up to leave town, and all those Tennessee tags will be gone.

Key West on Dwellable

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Garbo's Grill

There is this weird little silver box planted in the ground on the six hundred block of Greene Street. It's called Garbo's Grill and it's Key West's nod to the food truck fad sweeping the nation and the Food Channel. I have been curious for a while but it's only open in the middle of the day and every time I've been by it's been closed.

Until now.

This place has a massive reputation and under the old ownership was listed number one on Trip Advisor's Key West restaurants page. Which in my opinion says more about the unreliability of Trip Advisor than anything about Garbo's Grill. Considering this is my first taste of the place what do I know, perhaps it deserved to outrank Key West's many other quality restaurants that offer actual sit down eating space. But who you know is as important I guess, as what you do when it comes to getting rated.

Happily all that ranking stuff is now off the shoulders of the little kitchen that could and the lines are interminable. The ice chest in front of the trailer contains the non alcoholic drinks. It's a bit like a fishing trip, reach down and grab a cold one.

The truck itself is tiny, like three small phone booths stuck together and with three busy people inside it seems a hell of a way to make a living. They seemed cheerful enough, blasting disco music while they sliced, diced and cooked.

They had a line of people to keep happy too, and a crowd of people who were too busy chewing to look happy.

The menu is simple enough, yet each item is filled with complex flavors which makes me want to go back and try more than just the Kobe beef short rib burrito I ordered. I spoke with the bearded cook and he said they can't do quesadillas in winter when they get backed up because they simply take too long. Other than that I heard people moaning as they bit into the burgers so I guess not having quesadillas isn't the end of the world.

I suppose a large part of the allure, beyond the food, is that it's not uncomfortable to be roughing it outdoors eating al fresco in January in Key West. For people coming from snowdrifts Up North that has to be worth a lot. That and fresh fish within sniffing distance of salt water.

So what does all this brouhaha taste like? Give them credit it was good. But consider this: I took the rib burrito back to work, stuck it in the fridge then later took it home, then I put it another fridge and took Cheyenne for a two hour walk, did some food shopping and went home. Then I zapped it in the microwave, and after all that mistreatment it was still very good. It had a lightness and freshness that took me by surprise. The meat was sweet like teriyaki but I figure it was as teriyaki was supposed to be, not sticky and sugary but a delicate sweet flavor. The Kobe beef was firm and full of flavor but not full of gristle or fat. I will go back for another go round for sure.

Key a West is doing quite well in the relatively cheap street food department, Badboy Burrito (and their Indian counterpart hopefully), Paseo sandwiches, Cuban food across town of course, the Uzbek sandwiches at Cafe Kennedy, the pizza at Onlywood and the galettes at Key Plaza Creperie.

And these guys were having fun too. I wish them all the best in a town where they have chosen a tough path to success.

Key West on Dwellable

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Buzz The Window Washer

Walking Duval with my indefatigable dog yesterday I came across a sight I had not seen before, perhaps because I don't pay enough attention.

Buzz says he came to Key West in 1982 "because it was cheap." There's a thought, cheap. But I remember at the time Key West was not the suave debonair retreat of wealthy Americans it is today. It was a dusty little fishing village with a hippy problem at the end of a very long road from Miami. I was a bit too straight laced for a hippy, gay fishing village. The fault was all mine.

Buzz was not terribly forthcoming about himself in those days but he decided back then shopkeepers needed a window cleaner so he set himself up in business. He says he grew up on a farm in south New Jersey, "...it really was the Garden State," he remarked wryly. He says his birthplace was a few miles from the first successful American glass factory which was it seems in Alloway, New Jersey. Buzz said transporting glass across the ocean broke a lot of it so two a German brothers decided to make their own in the New World. That's Alloway's claim to fame and the hint was that it's place in history inspired its son on his voyage south to a new life.

Check out his tricycle-workshop, which I suppose you refine over time if you have been squeegee-ing in windows for thirty years...think about that for a minute. Where were you when Buzz was abandoning the snowy Garden State for hot cheap Key West. He's still here, still doing it and he seems content.

He left behind a family including a twin sister but they seem to be made of sterner stuff. "They've been down a few times..." but a casual unconventional life cleaning windows and being a wine salesman ("it sells itself") has seen Buzz well all these years. It's hard to imagine he could have done better with a proper job and an address at an exit off the famous Turnpike. I look at Buzz and wonder where he got the fortitude to just squeegee and expect it to work out.

I didn't much like Key West in 1981 and I took off right away for the bright lights of California. I wonder if I could have become Buzz?

Nah, probably not on mature thought. I am a conventional wage slave.

Key West on Dwellable

 

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A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts

Cheyenne and I ambled down Chapman Lane and passed by the dude from Guyana selling some mope on a bicycle a coconut. I would hand my surplus nuts over for free but that would devalue the while experience. You know what salesmen tell us that if you underprice something people won't buy so you have to make them feel valued by over charging.

Something like that. I'm not a salesman so my coconuts grow in peace on my trees. However the encounter with the coconut guy got me to thinking. He was intrigued by my Labrador - Is that a poodle? - no and then he looked across the street at three West Highland Terriers - Are they poodles? He said hopefully as though any dog was a poodle. I suppose any coconut looks like a coconut to me. I wonder if they have breeds of nut?

Coconuts are not native to the Keys, they were imported to make the place meet tourists' expectations. And such are the expectations that the coconuts are now everywhere, and they produce more fronds than you can imagine.

They grow tall too. Check this one out. I was hold when cutting nuts off the tree to leave at least one as the tree grows too fast otherwise and the trunk gets thin as the tree tries to compensate. This trunk did a lot of meandering on the way up:

And like I said even though they aren't native some people cherish their trees. The tree through the roof thing looks to me to be a not great idea in the event of high winds. In regards to high winds the advice is generally to trim the nuts in June as hurricane season kicks in and to prevent them from becoming cannonballs in high winds. Coconut damage from one hundred mile per hour winds can wreck a house.

The business of selling nuts is a common enterprise around Key West. I've seen piles of nuts at Ana's Grocery on Simonton Street with straws stuck out of them ready for people to pay. I like the juice well enough and it does not give me the runs, a myth I've heard propagated to malign the nuts. However I have also tried mixing it with run and gin (not together) over ice and frankly I prefer coconut juice alone.

I have a love-hate relationship with coconuts. As lovely as they look they are a tremendous pain to manage unlike native scrubbier, less movie-worthy palms. The state department of transportation was going to replace the coconut palms with scrub palmettos or something similar and the coconut fanatics got all bent out of shape. There was no point in arguing that replacing the coconuts with natives would make gobpverment more efficient...Government efficiency is only required when the program you detest benefits someone other than yourself!

Key West Diary: How To Drink A Coconut

I've included the above essay I wrote a while back if you ever decide to go self sufficient and cut your own coconuts.

Key West on Dwellable

 

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