Conch, Key Limes and Cafe con Leche

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Stone crab claws, a Keys' specialty, is in season October - May

Photo Credit: Tom Stack

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Harriette's in Key Largo, a local favorite for comfort food.

Photo Credit: Tom Stack

Florida Keys cuisine boasts diverse influences from the Caribbean, Bahamas and Cuba.

Whether you’re gobbling golden, round conch fritters as colorful chickens peck at your feet or contemplating a golden, round sunset over a masterpiece plate of local mahi-mahi brushed with a mango glaze, you are tasting that which the Florida Keys stores in its pantry of historic culinary influences. A trip along this hopscotch of islands takes a gastro-excursion through time and a multi-layered mélange of food traditions. Grab a fork and let’s go! 

Black Beans & Café con Leche

When Cuban compatriots fled tyranny and revolution, they sailed the 90 miles to Key West, ate, set up cigar shops, and eventually sifted northward. So although Key West is a haven of Latin scents and tastes, a few of the best Cuban restaurants lie beyond.

Visitors to area restaurants relish Cuban classics such as ropa vieja and paella, along with lobster enchiladas and Key lime pie hailed among the most authentic.

Conch Republic and Floribbean aside, the Florida Keys are still a part of the good old U.S., no matter how exotic it feels.

When, exactly, Bahamians began edging their way over to the Keys is difficult to document, but many arrived to help build the railroad in the early 1900s. They brought with them their love for conch, which caught on so rapidly and rabidly that Key West eventually dubbed itself the Conch Republic. Down Old Town way, Bahama Village remains a stronghold of Bahamian heritage. Don’t mind the chickens; they’re part of the legacy, too.

Meanwhile, conch has become nearly as emblematic of the Keys cooking scene as Key lime pie, and you’re going to find it in any restaurant worth its weight in hot pepper sauce, the condiment of choice for cracked conch, pounded tender and flash fried to keep it that way. A Marathon landmark for more than 25 years, Cracked Conch Café takes its name from the signature dish, but also serves authentic Bahamian conch chowder, conch salad and other seafood dishes indicative of the culture.

Jerk & Tamarind

The hybrid child of the happy union between Caribbeans and Floridians is named Floribbean, and the Keys provide the perfect medium for this grand experiment in fusion.

See what happens when the two shall meet at Little Palm Island Resort & Spa’s fine dining experience: conch chowder with pepper puree, roasted vegetable salad with pineapple and tamarind dressing, and grilled pork tenderloin with pineapple rice, mango and black bean relish, and coconut curry sauce. The menu here changes every night.

Mangoes in Key West takes the same playful island approach with such palate-poppers as snapper with passion fruit beurre blanc and jerk pork with plantains.

Hot Cakes & Burgers

Conch Republic and Floribbean aside, the Florida Keys are still a part of the good old U.S., no matter how exotic it feels. Not quite as American as apple pie, its Key lime trade-off nonetheless has American earmarks, and so does its love for comfort food – plain and fancy.

Harriette's in Key Largo tends toward the plain, especially for breakfast, which brings them in droves for old-fashioned pancakes and Southern biscuits, gravy and grits. At Ballyhoo’s in Key Largo, you’ll find the fancier, trendier side of American cuisine in such creations as chicken Caesar wrap and Cajun blackened tuna.

Mahi & Lobster

Through the influx of cultures, one culinary thread has remained constant and it has to do with being surrounded by water and at the end of the road to where, once, few groceries arrived. Islanders lived by seafood and even today, with the world’s breadbasket at their fingertips, seafood remains trademark and treasured.

It’s pretty safe to say that every restaurant menu dabbles if not specializes in seafood fresh from the backyard. Turtle Kraals in Key West, however, has surfaced to the top of the barrel by sheer dint of its harborside stance, from where it scoops up the freshest and turns it into such creations as mango crabcakes and lobster rellenos.

The specialty at Marathon’s Keys Fisheries, Lobster Reuben, demonstrates the importance of the Florida spiny lobster in island cuisine. The marina-side restaurant serves the local delicacy in various guises, along with whatever else is fresh in such imaginative tastebud-thrillers as whiskey peppercorn snapper and Key lime mahi.