The Food Capital of Connecticut

If Mecca is to Muslims, this is to Fooderatis. This place. Wow. Wow. Double Wow. A million times wow. Stew Leonards claims itself to be the World’s largest dairy, but it’s more than that. It’s a fresh produce palace.

They make pretty much everything on sight. Departments include fresh coffee beans, bakery, patisserie, place where they make potato chips and rice cakes (not sure the actual name of that department, but they even make sweet potato chips – so thick and delicious that I bought a bag to take with me to New York), tortillary, pizzeria, sushi bar, cheese section, seafood, abattoir/butcher, fresh fruit and veg, juicer, smoothie bar, ice creamery, cellar and I’m sure I’ve missed some others. Each section is massive, and has a bigger range than I’ve ever seen in these departments. The fruit and veg section is probably twice the size of your specialty fruit & vegetable shops in Australia. But the thing is that you can consume all these products while you are doing your shopping. Even your trolley has a coffee cup holder in it for you! Each department offers an array of samples and simply give away all their goods that are deemed inferior (i.e. massive bowl of cookies that had fallen apart when they came out of the oven, for consumers to eat, bbq in the butcher section).

This is pretty much your entrée, because when you come to the end, there is one of the biggest buffets I’ve seen, and all of the fresh produce is utilised in it! Simply amazing – you fill up a bowl and they weigh your meal and charge you based on weight. 2lbs (just under a kilo of food) was about $10. Bargain. I don’t think I can aptly describe this place without taking you there, but it makes going to the market an experience. They even had a petting farm out the front for kids! And also a grill out the front where you could order cheap as cheap meals. That was right next to the smoothie bar too. This place – WOW. I officially name it as the food capital of Connecticut.

Conche Fritters

We’ve covered Key Lime Pie and we’ve covered Gator Bites so far in the blog. Now onto the third strictly food segment: Conche Fritters. Conche are a type of shell with a fleshy inside, which in turn is boiled, then mashed up with some vegetables, dipped in batter and then deep fried. Served with a tomato & paprika heavy sauce, these are heavenly little snacks perfect to serve with a couple of drinks. You could find them quite easily in key west, and I also found a few places in Miami that served them. The taste is a little difficult to describe – the flesh is quite a sweet meat, with the sweetness reduced with the addition of vegetables and batter. Delicious. Best conche fritters we had were at a place called Finnegan’s on Duval St, purely for overall taste. However, that just being suited to my pallet, I should probably also mention another place (whose name escapes me) on Caroline St (both in Key West) and just across the road from Pepe’s Café (Key Lime Pie) in a little shanty set up, which looks far from glamorous. They serve up a generous helping for a small price whilst you overlook Caroline St. The chef here proclaimed to have a 50/50 conche-to-vegetable ratio, and they weren’t quite as sweet. The batter was also a far simpler batter, leaving the fritter itself to do the work. Only a close second, but both deserve a mention.

GATORADE

It just wouldn’t be a trip to Florida without a trip to the Everglades. So of course, we obliged. They are far closer to Miami than you would imagine, with the park itself stretching as far north as Orlando almost. It’s a pity that this ecosystem looks likely to sustain some long-term damage from the oil spill and the inadequacy of BP, but enough about that.

We went to the Everglades Alligator Park (http://www.everglades.com/) which offered an opportunity to (as the name suggests) get up and close with Alligators. Very close in fact. The fences are by no means thick. It’s just your standard fencing (the stuff you see at music festivals). That’s it. If you stick your fingers through the holes, bad luck. You will lose your finger. Or get the shit scared out of you as you walk past a docile looking alligator that starts hissing at you and then lunges at the fence when you are half a foot away from it. Yes, that is what happened to me.

We stayed and watched all the shows that the park offered (alligator feeding, alligator wrestling and a snake show). It was the same host for all three, and he was by far the most entertaining host ever. The jokes didn’t stop, and he had an especially good time when he picked out a Belgian girl to be his volunteer for the snake show.

However, we did really go for the true boat ride through the Everglades which we got to achieve, and get wet in doing so. And get very very very very close to the wildlife. So close in that if you put your hand over the side of the boat, you could pat one of the alligators that decided to come and hang out right next to our boat. Apart from that, it’s driving over half water, half vegetation for a solid half hour, and as plain as that sounds, you do get to take in the scenery, which is much more intriguing than it sounds. Oh by the way, it’s not as if they talk you through the Everglades on these boats for the whole thing. The boat is loud. Very loud. And people get wet. The drivers make sure of this.

Good fun had. Back to Miami now.

PS. Because this also doubled as an alligator farm, you can guess what we ate for lunch.

Another night out in town

So you can only imagine how we were feeling. A long day in the sun. Snorkelling and all the other water activities. Free beer. Then a cruise with more free alcohol. We were a little bit buoyant (which is how we ended up with the last post).

Just wanted to add though of the infamous Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville. Yep, it's his bar. And he makes his own type of rum, which I got to try. It was ok, not the greatest, but definately not the worst. So being in Margaritaville, we went there and had a margarita. Ended up chatting with a guy who used to be Jimmy Buffet's room mate (doubt if you want, I don't mind what he told me, because it was bloody interesting at the time). He turned out to be a rum fiend too. Again not sure how genuine anything he was saying was, but it was entertaining nonetheless.

We had to leave kind of early the next day, which didn't quite go as planned, due to Lukas leaving his bag in a bar and only realising at 3am in the morning when I was fast asleep. Though kudos to him for waking me up to drive him, only to realise that the rental car key was in the bag. Thanks buddy.

Fat Chick Falling Off Mechanical Bull

This post pretty much speaks for itself.

Best Key Lime Pie

Finally, we found the perfect Key Lime Pie. We overheard about it when a waiter was telling someone where to get a good slice of the icon, and decided to check it out. It's located off Duval St, so it's fair to say that not many tourists would be able to find it. Pepe's Cafe (http://www.pepescafe.net/) serve you up a helping of that famous Key Lime Pie that is so light and fluffy, with a biscuit base the just crumbles apart. The sweetness is not over done, and the serving isn't one of those gigantic ones that would be infamous in USA. It's big enough to serve as an ample dessert, whilst small enough to ensure you finish it (seriously, desserts bigger than entrees seems to be the norm here).

The website has the recipe for the pie up there, so make sure you check it out.

Ultimate Adventure in the Gulf of Mexico

We woke up nice and early to be on time (literally, smack bang on time - I couldn't believe it) for our cruise on a catamaran out to do some snorkelling, jetskiing, parasailing and various other activities on the water. Also included was breakfast, lunch, drinks, and once all the activities involving machines were over, free booze! All this for $139 (and it also included another 2 hour 'sunset cruise' which was also included free booze - pretty bloody good deal!).

The snorkelling wasn't the best I've done, with water visibility quite low due to the choppiness of the sea. This is probably due to the fact that there are storms out over the ocean nearly every evening. Still managed to see barracudas every time you turned around, a couple of sharks and some stingrays.

The wind picked up making it near impossible to hold down your plate for lunch, but quickly after, we were ushered off in our group to go parasailing, the first time I've done it. You only got about 10 minutes up there, but it was still pretty amazing to see a view over much of key west and a good look over the Gulf (don't worry folks, the oil spill hasn't made it down to Key West yet, no oil in sight).

Tearing up the jetskis was next, another thing I'd never done before. Trying to throw Lukas off the back of the jetski was the aim, and I came close, but not quite.

Then came the water activites: a giant rock climbing mountain floating in the ocean, along with a giant slide and a giant trampoline. Lots of fun was had with the other people from the trip, particularly on the rock climbing mountain, where there were numerous times people accidentally 'slipped' or lost their balance and fell into the water.

The day ended (it goes for about 6.5 hours) and we ended up back on dryland, a couple of hours to kill until our sunset cruise was to depart. Big shoutout to the crew at FURY (http://www.furycat.com/) who were the ones who took us out for the day. They did an awesome job and if anyone ever heads to Key West, definately hit these guys up. Chilled out, ever helpful, and not really much of a dull moment on the boat. The trip out to the reefs didn't take long at all, and there is generally always something happening whilst on board, so you're not waiting for long periods at a time for something to do.

Day Two in the Keys

So out and about, walking around Duval St on a Monday night. Taking it all in, it is very much a chilled out place, although the streets come to life once the sun goes down. The closer you are towards the marina at the end of Duval St, the closer you are to the action, so it seemingly tapers off the further you walk down.

Some dinner was had (an entire post to Conche Fritters is a must read), some jumbo sized cocktails were consumed and then we headed home.

Waking up feeling strangely fine, we organised some stuff for day three (Wednesday) and then spent time at the National Park beach, Fort Zachory Taylor. A couple of little rock formations to swim out to, and the sun shining long and hard. Prior to the swim, we got our tourist on and headed to the landmark that shows the southern most point on continental USA. How it's still continental USA when you've travelled over a good 15 islands to get there is still beyond me, but nonetheless, obligatory photo was taken (and attached).

Tues night, again we hit up Duval St and some of the various nightspots. Drinking is very much a way of life down in the keys. Not only is drinking allowed on the streets, it is encouraged. They serve you in plastic cups and encourage you to top up your drink before you leave the bars. Some more conche fritters were eaten, and due to it being a Tuesday, and also considering that we had to wake up early for our Ultimate Adventure on the Wednesday, we headed home around 12:30.