Lost Food

We took Chuck and Wayne to brunch by way of thank you. My wife said Lost Kitchen so who were we to disagree? Chuck photographed me stumping down the boardwalk with Layne, and Wayne watching our progress: 

The Lodt Kitchen used to be a pop up, one of those fashionable millennial concepts of top class low cost impermanence in public eating. Now they have a fixed location and oddly enough it’s in a low rent marina in Stock Island.

Safe Harbor is another of those low cost water living situations but it gives off the feeling of being a community. Not necessarily of sailors but of artists and artisans seeking relief from gentrification and expense and development that is creeping into Stock Island from Key West. 

The boardwalk used to be home to carpenters and metalworkers and painters. It’s behind Hogfish which ably markets itself as old Keys style for tourists seeking the authentic. It gives the impression of hanging on barely as Stock Island starts to find itself home to large developments of modern marinas and hotel resort complexes. 

Ironically I have long been predicting Safe Harbor’s demise yet here they still are, hanging on. 

I made a small kerfuffle as I came in with my walker but at least I am more mobile these days and can usually use a walker. I took a seat with my back to the wall to give the chair greater stability so Chuck took my picture under a sign hanging on the wall from a former sports bar on Caroline Street. Change is the rule in Key West. 

Brunch was a mystery. They served drinks, fruit juices and champagne or strong sweet coffee which I much enjoyed. And brought dishes with no warning or choice which was pleasant inasmuch as there was no pondering menus, a much over rated first world activity I find,  however with no printed menu we had no clue what was going on. 

Poached eggs over spaghetti squash, I ended up with two as Layne didn’t like the cold egg. Could have used stronger seasoning I thought. It was billed as a New Orleans brunch so the spicy remoulade with the fried green tomatoes hit the spot:

In addition to no clues what was coming we were sat at a table with three strangers, a French Swiss man who instantly found connection with Chuck the Francophone and his wife an environmental lawyer who connected with my wife the former public defender and a Cuban woman who connected with Wayne in some level I didn’t catch. I looked around. 

It’s a good thing I suppose to have a local watery displaying art upstairs and thus not accessible but it felt like well meaning gentrification. 

The restaurant is warm and inviting so while it seemed the service was mysterious it worked. Food came and coffee was refilled and conversation flowed. 

Then we had gumbo. I have to say I am not a fan of okra. I have tried but tontjose of you who say fried okra is good I say you can fry anything and if you eat it before it cools it will be good.  However okra cooked in gumbo lends the sauce a peculiar and rather goey consistency which reminded me of bodily fluids. Lots of shrimp and sausage but that okra...

I could have eaten lots of dates with the stewed pear, our last course. Or a crisp sugar cookie. 

It was an enjoyable outing and everything about brunch spoke of attention to detail. 

It is clearly much appreciated and dare I say fashionable. 

And the whole operation is right there squeezed into a small space. 

They have quite the following, reservations required where you have to allow yourself to be led, rather than making the choices. I just can’t make up my mind which side of the gentrification line they lie. I hope they will be allowed to continue this strange personal restaurant format no matter how mainstream Stock Island becomes.

Cormorant

I see ducks. Honestly I don’t know what they are. I first published this blog in June 2007 and since then I have received all kinds of guff for my deplorable lack of knowledge in the fields of botany and bird watching.

So if you see me make a gross error in taxonomy for heaven’s sake call me out on it. Recently I posted a picture of a cormorant and an eager bird watcher and photographer, a true expert Mark Hedden wrote on my Instagram account that it was a green heron.

I’m sure he’s right but to me it was a dark shadow perched on a branch overlooking water.  Ergo it was a cormorant. Simple no? Incorrect it turns out but if it has a certain profile and it’s near water it’s a cormorant until proved otherwise.

And I hope I have made it clear you are very free to call bullshit if I get it wrong. I shan’t challenge you, nor shall I ever waste my precious time left on planet Earth trying to learn the names and distinguishing features of animal bird and plant life.

I know a few names in each category and that’s good enough for me. If this exposition leaves you feeling let down allow me to apologize, but take heart at least that I’m not pulling the wool over your eyes. If these aren’t cormorants they ought to be:

No, wait! Even I know these are pelicans. If they are white I think they are juveniles but these are adults I'm pretty sure.

A  broad view from a refurbished Rest Beach west  toward the White Street Pier. 

Poinciana Housing

As part of my incorporation of exploration into my trips by electric mobility scooter I was checking out the tidal canal off Donald Avenue hoping to see I wasn't sure what. I ended up noticing no wildlife but a bunch of dead mangroves, burned by Hurricane Irma. So I took a couple of pictures, one with a filter:

 The other without. Hurricanes suck up seawater and rain salt water on the just and unjust alike as they sweep across land. Gardeners are advised to soak their gardens with fresh water before a storm to limit the damage of the salty breezes from these storms but Irma was so bad it wrecked plants normally immune to the salt environment. 140 mph winds can do a lot of damage.

Rounding the corner onto 20th Street I saw the black fence at the corner house which prompted me to take a picture of it. How often do you see a homeowner so bold as to paint their outer perimeter such a color? Exactly.

Poinciana Housing used to be Navy quarters in the 1950s. Then the 154 units were deactivated by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission which gave the buildings and land to the city which promptly set the property aside for low income housing.

 Weirdly enough it is still surrounded by fencing as though to secure the residents from predators outside the former base but in light of the fact the two entrances are wide open the fence seems to serve no real purpose. It just makes you work to get inside.

 The odd thing about Poinciana is that in a town where space is at a premium there is surely some more efficient way to use the green acres located inside the rusting boundary fence. I think of Meridian West on Stock Island, high density low income housing with shaded parking on the ground and two floors of housing above, all stacked and not at all unpleasant. The trick would be to rebuild Poinciana without displacing people right and left. 

The city is always wringing its hands about worker housing but like anything else you have to build it to create it and so far...nothing.

I gave up rolling to the other entrance on Duck Avenue at 5 mph and turned around shooting some pictures through the irritating fence. 

 And across the street a sign of Christmas. Smile! You and your red teeth are on camera!

Lunch In Marathon

Friday night after work I took Rusty for a walk around the apartment complex and it was hot and sweaty. Saturday morning the cold front arrived and our walk in the park was interrupted twice by sprinkles from the gray clouds overhead. After the second time I called it a day and we drove home. Rusty is nobody's fool and while I shuffled around organizing my walker and dumping his eggs in the trash he loped off and took a seat undercover in the entrance to our complex. He really is a remarkable dog.

Robert came by just before noon to whisk me off for lunch. It was very decent of him to drive in to Key West from his home on Cudjoe and it made a long drive all round for him as his plan was to get pizza in Marathon of all places. Why Marathon? Because he had stumbled upon a pizza joint not well known to outsiders he said. Like I said it was a gray wet day with temperatures around 70 degrees:

The restaurant called Hurricane was invisible in the strip mall opposite Home Depot. The section on the left is the bar and the place on the right was the eatery. We were looking for food, not adventure so we took the right. 

 You can see at a glance why it's unknown and we were the first customers of the morning. Lots of attention from the smiling waitress and instant beer.

I made an early pit stop, always a source of anxiety in my handicapped state, but I was using the walker not the chair so I was more mobile that way and the toilet was a delight. I'm sure you need to know this but look at those substantial rails for me to lean on! High excitement! A coat of paint and the walls would have been perfect. As it was I positively glowed to be accommodated so comfortably  No falls here!

I had a weakling beer at 4.8% while Robert drank battery acid porter at 6.5% after tasting my selection and declaring it to be disgusting and soapy.  The pizza was sausage and spinach, Robert's favorite at the moment, and we did it justice of course. 

We talked of broken joints and climate change and attempts at my work (Robert is retired)  to suck me into the pointless melodrama of the workplace which I firmly rejected this past week.

My wife has been poorly the past few days and in an effort to reduce her workload I said I'd order dinner at work last night. She suggested we go by Kentucky Fried Chicken so I could try their chicken pot pie and thereby hangs a tale. In our temporary apartment we have weak internet and strong cable service and we have watched a few TV shows. Layne likes the Food Channel and I like reruns of MASH and so from time to time we spot bizarre KFC commercials and they have some doozies, check them out if you have cable.

In between the Colonel dancing with statues and attending barbecues while dismembered (I think) I got to see a pot pie dinner on offer and I grumbled to my wife that she never makes pastry ("Make your own!" I hear the peanut gallery rumble) and I like pot pies. So, being the brilliant person she is, she suggested I get a pot pie for my dinner. Why Marathon? That question again and the answer is that there is no KFC in Key West! Let me say it was actually very good and hit the spot.  

 Robert is a bloody nice guy. He stopped by our house and even picked up the mail for the immobile tired man in the passenger seat. I am trying to be easy going about my inability to walk easily, and it is getting better, but I am frustrated. Robert is very good natured.  We listened to some strange stories on NPR as we did our marathon drive, about some dude in jail falling in love with a  community volunteer and marrying her. His original crime? Murdering his ex girlfriend and his baby momma and hearing that left you a bit breathless. A story that gave me pause, measuring the life effect of a major screw up in decision making which he sounded sincere in regretting, but still....  Life in jail versus a few months handicapped. I'm okay.

Besides I am getting to recover in the Florida Keys which even under a cold front are not covered in snow and ice and other nastiness and my friends are always there for me ready to listen and cheer me up.