A Walking #Foodie Tour of #KeyWest @LucyBurdette

First, winners of yesterday's Readaholic mystery are Kristopher, BJ English, and Kaye Kilgore. You should email your snail mail addresses to LDiSilverio at comcast dot net. Congratulations!

LUCY BURDETTE: Ever since seeing the city of Adelaide, Australia early this winter on a foodie walking tour, I've become convinced that walking and eating is the best way to see any city. So when I learned of a new food tour in Key West, I signed up. Oh sure, we already eat plenty of good meals in town, courtesy of the research I must do for food critic Hayley Snow. But I was intrigued by the possibility of new places, and always in the back of my mind, plot threads for another book.

I met our tour guide, Analise, and two visiting couples in front of Camille's restaurant on Simonton Street. Camille's is an old time island staple, always busy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Our guide seated us at the bar for our first taste of Key West, infamous conch fritters. While we waited for bites to be served, we heard about how Key West natives became known as conchs, and how a new baby's sex was announced according to the way a conch shell was placed on the porch. The fritters came out hot and fresh, with a zesty lime remoulade on the side. I will never be a huge fan of conch fritters, but these were pretty darn good.
 
 
Stop two was at Anna's Cuban Café, a small takeout place very near the Southernmost Point. The roasted pork with white rice and black beans and a small fried plaintain was delicious. (Remember on this kind of tour--you don't have to eat everything, though you will work some of it off:).)

 






Afterward, we all enjoyed a little shot of strong sweet Cuban coffee, a.k.a. colata.
 






 

The tour proceeded past the Southernmost Point with a quick stop for a coconut milk. I've seen hundreds if not thousands of tourists carrying green coconuts and drinking out of a straw, but I've never tried it myself. 

Verdict: even though coconut milk is all the healthy rage, let's just say once was enough.


 
Analise then took us into the Bahama Village, formerly a segregated area for islanders of Bahamian decent. I learned new facts here, such as the existence of a white horse that walked up and down Duval Street to keep black faces from crossing into white territory. We also admired a new home renovated by Habitat for Humanity. The decorative latticework was designed in the shape of the trumpet to celebrate one of the home's former jazz playing residents. 



 

We enjoyed a fish taco at Andy's Cabana...








  

And a mini- key lime pie at iconic Blue Heaven. (LOL, this is the maxi, not the mini!)







 

 


Our last stop was Flamingo's Crossing, for a mamey flavored ice cream. This tropical fruit is the national fruit of Cuba and especially popular in milkshakes and ice cream. Although I never would have chosen this flavor on my own, we all agreed it was quite tasty--like strawberry mixed with orange.


 





Analise was the real star of the tour, a conch herself and full of interesting facts about her town.


Where would you like to go on walking foodie tour?

SEEING REDS: Where you can find us

Hallie 
Saturday 4/4 @2 PM Brookline MA Public Library with Roseanne Montillo
Monday 4/6 @7 PM Weymouth MA Public Library
Tuesday 4/7 @6:30 PM Buttonwood Books Cohasset MA with Holly Robinson
Wednesday 4/8 @7:30 PM Sweetser Lecture Series Wakefield MA
Thursday 4/9 @7 PM RJ Julia Madison CT
Friday 4/10 @12:15 PM Bank Square Books in Mystic CT

Hank
Monday, 4/6 @7 PM Brookline Booksmith interviewing Michael Sears, Brookline MA
Tuesday 4/ 7 @7 PM Newton Free Library Newton MA
Thursday 4/9 @7:30 AM Habitat for Humanity North Central MA "Women Build" Breakfast, Keynote Speaker Sterling MA
Saturday 4/11 Maynard Library Book Festival with Archer Mayor and Norton Juster
Sunday 4/12 @9:30  AM, Lyceum at First Parish Church, Bedford MA  Keynote Speaker

Rhys
Wednesday 4/8, Belmont Library, Belmont, CA 

Eight Rules for finding Decent Food--almost anywhere! @lucyburdette

LUCY BURDETTE:  Food matters deeply to my food critic character.  And to me too! If either of us get too hungry, we're miserable--a poor state to travel in. After three weeks in Australia, we came up with these suggestions for finding good food on the road...

Mex and Co in Manly

1. Go where the lines are. We found this little Mexican place in Manly when we looked in the window and saw baskets of homemade tortilla chips and margaritas in mason jars. And then I remembered I'd seen it recommended on Yelp by a California girl--who would know better? We weren't able to get in that night but believe me we showed up 15 minutes before opening the next night.

 
2. Which brings me to the law of converging suggestions. Try Yelp or Tripadvisor, but it helps if more than one person recommends, and also if you can get a sense of what kind of eater they are.

 
3. When desperate for something not too foreign or in doubt about the choices, go to the museum cafe. 

Here are my hummus and olives from the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

 

Sydney Harbor

4.  Steer away from tourist traps on the main drag. Be leery of these recommendations. (For instance, I would never start with a restaurant right on Duval, though of course there are exceptions!)

 


But sometimes the food can be sacrificed if the view is good enough (e.g., the cafe outside the Opera House), even if the folks at the next table are a little annoying... 

Parma at the Royal Mail on Spencer

5.  Try the local specialties. Parma turns out to be fried chicken with ham and cheese and tomato sauce baked on, which is a regional specialty in Melbourne. And we were crazy for the homemade curried mustard, too, at The Royal Mail on Spencer in Melbourne.

 





6.  Eat what's local and fresh. (This was a flower bed planted with lettuce in Sydney!)

 






 




7. Ask people who live there. We went to Little Creatures in Melbourne on our nephew's recommendation. 

  

And then ran into the chef and waitress from the restaurant we'd visited the night before--we struck gold with their recommendations of roasted corn, pulled pork,

Little Creatures in Melbourne

and these decadent salted caramel-stuffed donuts--served warm with ice cream:).



 














 

Cait with Lucy

8. If you're in a city, look for a foodie walking tour. In Adelaide, John and I booked places for a tour called Feast on Foot. Cait, a lively city resident, took us to six of her favorite spots where we tasted falafel and dolmades, duck tacos,

duck taco  at Mall Food

spoonfuls of incredible salted caramel, pork bbq buns, cupcakes and more.






And she gave us city history and a tour of street art, too--the best way to see Adelaide!

 

How about you Reds? Any tips for finding food in a strange place?