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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Bangalore Indian Nights

Indian food has not managed to take root in Key West. There was a sit down restaurant for a while at the thousand block of Truman and the food was quite decent but perhaps owing to the lack of parking it didn't last long. They had some Indian dishes at the former Deli after the longtime owners sold to some newly arrived hopefuls, but that place has turned into the new home of Key West's dessert restaurant.

So when my wife in distant Puerto Rico said try the Indian I was not ready to believe her, but I drove by Badboy Burrito and of course she was right. Instead of being closed as per usual on a Sunday, the door was open. Intriguing. I moseyed in looked around. I liked the table with tablecloth, a nice touch in a small eatery where one doesn't expect to buy food and sit. I have taken a stool at the window which is okay when you are on your own with a burrito but having a table, especially with fiddly Indian good is important.

I snapped a picture of the menu as a reminder to myself because the owner hasn't yet printed up to go menus. The schedule is basically dinners weekdays and all day Sunday. Essentially he is operating the reverse schedule to that of the burrito operation, which is actually a smart use of the space, often done in poorer countries. This is as far as I could see a vegan menu so everyone gets a chance to taste something Indian once again in Key West, a good thing.

I was intercepted by the owner, whose accent matched mine so we got to talking and a very interesting conversation followed. Philip had some thoughtful ideas about emigrating and he left Europe just a year after I did. In Philip's view the US offers much greater flexibility and self confidence. He compared the societal changes coming to this country as an evolution of public opinion. Health care, decriminalized marijuana, gay marriage, wire tapping and wealth inequality are all issues that are being debated and discussed. In Britain by contrast Philip says society is a fossilized landscape, wrapped in fearfulness, surveiled in ways Americans would never accept. His cheerful faith in the future was almost as refreshing as the cooking smells coming from the kitchen in the back.

We shook hands with a promise to meet soon. I went on to get my dinner which fortunately still tasted good though it wasn't Indian which I was now craving. I had no particular conversation with the staff at El Siboney but I got my dinner and drove home in a thoughtful cheery mood. Dinner and a movie will be Indian flavored soon I have no doubt.

Cheyenne enjoyed her long slow afternoon walk enough that she only had strength to eat half her dinner, as did I, and we passed out together at a ridiculously early hour, a deep refreshing sleep to end a companionable Sunday together. Who needs a wife (still enjoying Vieques as it happens) when you have good food, a happy dog and a deep desire to sleep.

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Ships Boats Sails And Racers

The old Honda shop on Southard Street is the headquarters of Race Week this January in Key West, so underneath the old "Kawasaki" and "Honda" signs there are big turquoise Qs, the emblem of the sponsoring company, Quantum sails. Apparently racing sailboats on the Southern Ocean Racing Conference is a Big Deal, and even though I spent decades living in and messing about with cruising sailboats racing leaves me cold.

To my way of thinking there is something totally deranged about taking the slowest means of locomotion ever invented and then trying to race it in contests of speed over the water. Mix in the variables of weather, which is a big variable, tides, measurable but awkward, waves which are usually a product of the other two, and racing seems even more pointless. Then of course there are the crews and like any hiring process getting humans to power the boat is made extra difficult when you need particular skills but don't want to pay for them.

There is a common misconception that boat ownership is particularly expensive. It used to be when boats were made of wood, ropes were real manila hemp and sails of Egyptian cotton. Take those natural products, dunk them in saltwater under a burning sun and stress the hell out of them and they won't last long! But this is the 21st century and modern sailboats are made of indestructible fiberglass. It's so long lasting you can see the power of glass-reinforced-plastic, to use its proper name, as you drive to Key West. Storage lots, mangrove lined coves and small bays are all filled with dreams deferred, toys forgotten which will never rot or disintegrate. It's such a problem the county pays hundreds of thousands to remove abandoned boats, and they hardly make a dent. Each piece of plastic, each hull, has an owner and the owner may be dead or in the mountains of Montana pursuing a new lifestyle and the county has to file paper to remove someone's dead boat. Nothing is simple certainly not boat removal, much though land bound citizens wish it were, and the abandoned hulls bob, their fittings rot slowly and finally they sink into the mud or weeds. Modern boating.

Yet sailing fascinates. Perhaps it's the image of the big triangular sails of our childhood imaginations as we read of the great River Nile. You can see it, brown desert air, pyramids and palms and those slow feluccas chasing wisps of air as they work their way up the Cradle of Civilization.

I loved sailing not least because it was the first place in my life I had someone who showed me the path. My sailing instructor was an intuitive sailor who taught me to understand rather than just learn. On the other hand I hate sailing too. It's the most frustrating way to travel as you fight time and exhaustion and waves to get where you are going. Then you arrive and you are automatically home. Drop the anchor, fold the sails, light the stove and you are in the womb, no passing traffic, no neighbors, no "No Parking" signs. It's primal.

To use a boat as a home is a romantic notion, but it can also be a hard headed practical one if you choose yo make your life in overpriced coastal communities as I have. A boat as a toy is a lot of money. You can buy a lifetime supply of motorcycles for the price of a small boat. But as a home, a plastic boat with plastic ropes and plastic sails is a deal, if you can stand living in a watery RV park, don't need a garden and are happy to make boats your life. Vacation? Go sailing...A weekend trip?...Go sailing. And that obsessive nature of boating pushed me away for the past decade or more. Once I have some new skill figured out and I feel competent I tend to lose interest. After my wife and I sailed from San Francisco to Key West at the turn of the century we figured we had the live aboard cruising thing down pat. We wanted to integrate into our new community so we came ashore.

Other people are less obsessive and for them sailing is a sport, a weekend of fun racing, perhaps a way to have some time away from the family, to be active with the boys...Women do sail but almost always as adjuncts to the husband and family (apologies to the few exceptions out there but I am generalizing), and as a sport it's not cycling or mountaineering but it is more active than watching other men run around a sports arena. And it is out in the fresh air, sometimes too fresh, especially if you sail San Francisco Bay, let me tell you.

Against that background we have the professional sailors, a way of life I cannot begin to imagine.

Pay is not good, after all why would wealthy boat owners pay their crews a decent wage, when the work is just "going sailing."

I don't think the life of a paid crew member is an enviable lifestyle. Yes there is travel but it's travel to work and much of sailing is fixing broken crap and these boats have lots of crap. You may be in San Diego, Seattle Ibiza or Key West, but it's all about blocks, tackles, tangs and sheets, not daiquiris.

To run a vaguely competitive racing boat you have to have money. Owners jet in, steer more or less badly and jet out. It's a feudal way of life, no job security as everything is dependent on the knight's mood and the squires have to hop to. The rich old man says jump and in the time honored manner the crew ask how high?

I suppose it is a young man's game, heave the line, climb the mast, sleep as you can and hope for the best.

The equipment list is endless and the racing is out of sight, small triangles chasing each other across the horizon. You can stand on Smathers Beach and watch the distant silent shapes but for what purpose? This is not high paid television stars acting out on a Sunday afternoon in your living room.

Sailing and thus being on a first class racing circuit is an integral part of Key West, the city with the vaguely imagined maritime heritage, so these sailors and their plastic sails thanks to the magic wand of the Chamber of Commerce connect to wrecking, pirating, and the yo ho ho drama of Key West's pirate-free past. And unlike the powerboat races which are run loud and long in the harbor with helicopters and paparazzi paraphernalia, the sailboats lack any form of internal combustion. They come and go as silently as the dragonflies they resemble, hovering over the water it seems, rather than driving through it. The powerboat racers on land funnily enough are just tourists but the sailors are pirates and not in a good way. This is a week to avoid eating out unless you like sitting next to loud obnoxious over sized sunburned children who were never trained how to behave in public. Bike Week is much hated by city residents for the loud exhausts but the riders are the milquetoast accountants you imagine lurking underneath the leather. Sailors, the people who harness the elements are louder than the bikes or powerboats when they come ashore.

There is something elemental about living on a boat, it's a return to the womb, the safety of set limits, the security of everything found and to hand. Cruise ships feed that need, the all inclusive holiday driven to exotic places seen and not properly touched. That was the part of cruising by sailboat that got to me, constantly having to worry about the life support pod, tied to it by an umbilical that interfered with visits ashore to inland sites. It's the good and the bad of traveling with your home.

Similarly these sailors travel with their lives, but in a backpack. As much as it is a sport it's an all absorbing job that brooks no rivals for your attention. Everything must be perfectly tuned to get results because every other team is doing the same thing. Racing is where boating gets expensive, no doubt about that. Specially cut sails are tossed out after a race or two, cordage is replaced and every inch of the boat has to be gone over. That's expensive.

So yes, boats can cost a lot, an unreasonable amount, but not necessarily. Clean a gutter here, termit tent there, replace pipes, rerun electrical wires, and that damned paint. A house doesn't come cheap of course. But if sailing isn't racing you are so to speak in the same boat if you live aboard and cruise gently. Boats and their fittings need upkeep. But when it comes to racing its a world apart, macho men living as playthings for the one percent and you see them swaggering through town as though they represent a world we cannot aspire to. Maybe. Bring the money go sailing have fun. And step off the sidewalk for old fogeys walking their slow elderly dogs. Thank you.

 

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