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.