food in fl picture post (part 3)
Before i get into my Panama adventures, here is the last picture post with all the food i ate in Florida that wasn't just a quick pastry/sandwich/coffee or supermarket food. I will mention one fabulous thing that went into my Ursack after i got to southern Florida, and that's plantain chips. You can find them all over the place, and they tend to be lower in sodium than potato chips, so great for calorie-boosting as a cyclist. They taste so much better than those added-sugar banana chips you find in the "healthy" sections of grocery stores up north. You can get them in regular salted, lightly salted or no salted versions, and the no salted versions also come as "maduro" or mature (i.e. naturally sweet, like a banana) versions. I mostly ate them plain as a snack, but also sometimes sandwiched into a tortilla with peanuts or crushed a few into my porridge for a bit of different flavor and texture. Plantains are the best.
Speaking of banana-like things, something i have to confess from cycling across America is that cyclists appear to throw trash too. Specifically, banana peels. Car drivers tend to throw fast food wrappers and beer bottles out the window and it's fucking disgusting to cycle past, but banana-eating cyclists are just as bad. There seems to be this theory that banana skins are biodegradable and, sure, maybe if you chuck them deep into the bush like an apple core... but dropping them on the shoulder where other cyclists go, they just sit there looking progressively grodier. Giving all of us a bad name, those dudes are.
Anyway, on to the food of Miami and the Keys.
The opening shot is the first thing i ate on the Florida Keys, from a taco truck in Marathon, which is halfway between Key Largo and Key West. It's a torta, and i can't remember what meat i got, but as you can see there were a ton of veges on top so it didn't really matter. Avocado, tomato, lettuce, onion, cabbage, plus a side of rice and beans. It was a pretty solid sandwich, although all those veges definitely showed it was a Keys-appropriate version of a torta - less "authentically" greasy and trashy and a bit more health-conscious.
Next morning my Keys-based liveaboard friend took me out for breakfast. We went to one of the well-known brunch joints in town where everyone was recovering from their hangover. A guitar player was singing Jimmy Buffett songs and telling jokes that old people with hangovers would appreciate. I got their huevos rancheros, which was eggs served on a tortilla with some black beans, pico de gallo, avocado and queso fresco. Home fries on the side. It wasn't salty, it wasn't spicy, it wasn't challenging. It was exactly the kind of Sysco food you can get at any chain breakfast/diner-style restaurant anywhere in America. It was fine.
The night before i went out and got drunk with some wealthy tourists from somewhere in the northeast who regularly holiday in Key West. They recommended i go to a small beach shack and private beach that apparently had a great fish taco. My local friend had also heard great things about the fish taco but hadn't tried it yet, so we went there, and by God it was a fantastically good fish taco. It tasted like California. It had mango in it. Tomatoes. Some kind of aioli or something. Came with a cookie for dessert. (The fruity drink i ordered separate.) It also wasn't spicy or challenging, but it tasted healthy and delicious.
Our next stop in the "eat all the best stuff in Key West" mission was at the restaurant next to the southernmost point. We got poke cups, where the cup that the poke was in was made out of fried plantain. I never had poke before, but apparently it's a Hawaiian raw fish dish that suddenly got trendy while i was living in China. The fish was tuna and the green stuff was some kind of seaweed. It was a really good mix, and i'd find out later (here in Panama) that patacones aka tostones aka plátano frito aka fried plantain is a common side dish for ceviche, so the combination makes sense.
My tour guide also took me to a mostly-vegan café where he said i'd find the best slice of key lime pie on the island. It was one of those wacky American health food places where they smash up all the "healthy" food from different places that well-to-do health nuts like to travel to, so kinda Thai, kinda Japanese, kinda Italian, kinda everything. The menu didn't make any sense, and i realized i had spent the whole day trying to avoid Italian food - which is everywhere in Key West - so i decided to go all the way and get a famous Italian dish turned vegan. This is a chicken piccata made with tofu. It was actually really delicious. Capers make anything great. It wasn't very filling, but it made me feel healthier after i ate it. Look at all the veges!
Alas, when it came time for dessert, someone else had ordered the last slice of vegan key lime pie. Goddamnit! Instead i got a coconut cake. That thick, creamy icing was made with coconut cream, so it was hella rich. I can only imagine how good that key lime pie would've been without any dairy in it. Decadent.
Another snack i got on Stock Island - which is the island next to Key West that's mostly marinas, docks, warehouses and a growing number of hotels - was from an "islands" food truck serving Jamaican, Ethiopean and Key Westian dishes, plus CBD and "medical" marijuana. I decided to stay vegan and got a quinoa bowl, which probably wasn't especially island-y, so i dowsed it in scotch bonnet sauce to make up for it. I also drank a really interesting soursop juice. Soursop is a type of custard apple, which is called guanábana in Spanish, and i've seen it appear in a few juices down here in Panama already. It's mildly sweet and has an extremely pleasing flavor.
Before i left the Keys, i figured i should finally eat some conch, even though they don't actually harvest conch any more in the so-called Conch Republic. Conch is a sort of shellfish, and the way it's usually eaten is in conch fritters. Much like the crab cakes i ate up on the west coast of Florida, i was simultaneously disappointed and pleased by what it turned out to be. Disappointed because it didn't taste at all like seafood, and didn't even seem to have any seafood at all in it. What's the point? But pleased because i don't like seafood anyway, so getting what was essentially a deep-fried ball of dough was just fine.
I took the bus from Key West to Florida City, which is the outer-most suburb of Miami and the last city on the mainland before crossing to the Keys. It's about a 50km ride into Miami proper, and somewhere along the way i got hungry and desperately tried to find somewhere to eat. It's difficult, because that whole strip is really poorly set up. The busway i was following mostly passed through derelict and industrial areas, with clusters of chain restaurants in the bigger strip malls and mom'n'pop places that weren't open in the smaller strip malls. I did find this Greek-or-possibly-Turkish (they used both terminology on the menu) place, though, where i got a surprisingly good cheap feed. Falafel plate with tabouleh, hummus, salad (i asked for no cheese but oh well), tahini, hot sauce and a pita. The ball of crumbly stuff in the top-right is halva. I haven't had halva since Germany. I can't really explain what it is if you don't know. It's something like blended sesame seeds or some other grain with sugar and pistachios. It's awesome. This was a great meal.
The next morning i was cycling over to Miami Beach from my hotel in Coral Gables and i found this little Portuguese bakery a couple blocks back from Calle Ocho (Little Havana). I had to stop and get a 葡式蛋撻, which is Chinese name for egg tart. I can't remember the Portuguese name. This was the best egg tart i had since living in China. (The reason they're so good in China is because of the Macau/Portugal connection.) I also got a piece of some kind of Christmas cake, which was a heavy, dry bread similar to a Mexican pan dulce. Very good.
Back on Miami Beach, i headed to a Latin American café for some lunch. I got the famous ropa vieja, which is a popular Cuban dish, but i think it's originally from Spain. I know someone will throw a chancleta at me for saying this, but it tastes kinda like an Italian bolognese. What makes it instantly better than a bolognese is it's served with rice, beans and plantains (i ordered "maduros" - the sweet ones). I also got a delicious papaya smoothie.
This next picture is unfortunately blurry, but Miami Beach also has a döner place. I was half-expecting to see a bunch of the German DJs in town for Art Basel to be eating there. I could've ordered a traditional meat döner, or a falafel one, but they had the rare mixed vegetable döner, which i haven't had since one particular döner place in Berlin, so i had to get it. They had exactly the same sauces and condiments that they have in Germany, and it felt really cozy to just give an order like i used to so many times and get a delicious bread stuffed with those nostalgic flavors. I also got hummus and pita chips. Yummy. Messy, but yummy.
Before leaving the US, i wanted to get at least one more taco, so i stopped in at a Mexican/Salvadoran place that specialized in both tacos and pupusas. I don't normally get carne asada (steak) tacos, but i have been watching one of my favorite wrestlers - Thunder Rosa - review tacos on YouTube recently, and she always orders carne asada, so it inspired me. This carne asada was okay. Quite juicy, no gristle. Al pastor is the other one. These were respectable tacos, although still not Texas Good.
Since i was there, i ordered a pupusa as well. Pupusas are something like a pita-thickness tortilla cut in half (or two less-thick tortillas) with food in the middle squished in a sandwich press. This was a bean and cheese version, served with coleslaw and salsa (not pictured). It was so good. The filling was super juicy and as soon as i took a bite it drippled down my fingers. The one thing i think could've made it better is hot sauce (the salsa for pupusas is more like a pico de gallo), but i suppose that wouldn't have been authentic.
I love that this is the next picture. For my last night in Miami i was back in Coral Gables. Coral Gables is a fabulously rich part of Miami, in the "old money" sense. It's all lawyers and bankers and restaurants that charge $20+ for a main and would laugh me out of the room coming in with tattoos and flip-flops. I went to the diviest bar in the neighborhood, which was still a very trendy version of a dive bar. First of all, they had a vege burger. Then, when i ordered the vege burger, i got a fucking pupusa because of course i did. It turned out to be super delicious. It was two thick tortillas with cheese melted onto them to make them even thicker and more slice-of-bread-like, with a black bean patty, guacamole, tomato and some other stuff in there. I hate to admit it, but it's probably the best burger i had in America.
The head chef at this not-really-a-dive-bar was obviously into fusion cuisine, because there was also "Irish corned beef spring roll" on the menu. I had to get it, because the bartender described it to me as "like a Reuben sandwich" (which is Ashkenazi), but also it was deep-fried into an American Chinese "egg roll", and served with - get this - fucking queso dip! It's like we got Irish, Jewish, Chinese and Mexican all on the plate at the same time, and all in their most Americanized version. Incredible. It tasted exactly like what you imagine it would taste like. Heavy, fatty and salty as fuck. It was awful. But also somehow amazing. I immediately switched to White Claw after eating this because i felt so fat. Totally worth it.
In the morning before getting on the plane to Panama, i wanted to get my last colada, but found another taquería along the way. Oops! I had to eat more tacos. This is al pastor, carnitas and a vege taco because Florida. They were pretty good tacos.
After the taco place i found a coffee place, which apparently also was well-known for their croquetas. So i got my last colada - oh how i will miss that sweet, strong flavor - and three croquetas - jamón, bacalao (a type of fish) and spinach. They were yummy. I would venture to say more yummy than the very expensive croquetas i got at the fancy tapas place in Naples, but also they were like a quarter of the price so they only needed to be quarter as good to be better value for money. I think it helped to eat them out of a paper bag in the parking lot. Croquetas aren't really supposed to be high-class.
Ahh, that was it! No more Miami food! What a wonderful city to eat! There are tons of very expensive restaurants in town, like real haute cuisine places that could probably earn a Michelin star, but y'all know that ain't my bag. I just want to eat where the local people go to feed themselves, not wait in line with a bunch of foodies and hipsters hoping for some unique culinary experience. The best thing about Miami is that the simple cafeterias and greasy spoons feature all the diverse flavors that represent the different cultures in town - not just the expected Latin American and Caribbean flavors, but also the flavors of the tourists passing through, and the ones who came to visit then never left. I will miss it.
The next food post will be Panama. My experience here is so far so good. It is very hot and humid. My Spanish is embarassingly bad, but it's being forced to get better at every step because nobody speaks English. I hope that flying to Bocas del Toro tomorrow isn't a mistake, since i suspect there will be way more tourists and expats over there, but if that is the case then i will just enjoy the beach for a bit before coming back to the city, which has a pretty chill vibe.
Speaking of banana-like things, something i have to confess from cycling across America is that cyclists appear to throw trash too. Specifically, banana peels. Car drivers tend to throw fast food wrappers and beer bottles out the window and it's fucking disgusting to cycle past, but banana-eating cyclists are just as bad. There seems to be this theory that banana skins are biodegradable and, sure, maybe if you chuck them deep into the bush like an apple core... but dropping them on the shoulder where other cyclists go, they just sit there looking progressively grodier. Giving all of us a bad name, those dudes are.
Anyway, on to the food of Miami and the Keys.
The opening shot is the first thing i ate on the Florida Keys, from a taco truck in Marathon, which is halfway between Key Largo and Key West. It's a torta, and i can't remember what meat i got, but as you can see there were a ton of veges on top so it didn't really matter. Avocado, tomato, lettuce, onion, cabbage, plus a side of rice and beans. It was a pretty solid sandwich, although all those veges definitely showed it was a Keys-appropriate version of a torta - less "authentically" greasy and trashy and a bit more health-conscious.
Next morning my Keys-based liveaboard friend took me out for breakfast. We went to one of the well-known brunch joints in town where everyone was recovering from their hangover. A guitar player was singing Jimmy Buffett songs and telling jokes that old people with hangovers would appreciate. I got their huevos rancheros, which was eggs served on a tortilla with some black beans, pico de gallo, avocado and queso fresco. Home fries on the side. It wasn't salty, it wasn't spicy, it wasn't challenging. It was exactly the kind of Sysco food you can get at any chain breakfast/diner-style restaurant anywhere in America. It was fine.
The night before i went out and got drunk with some wealthy tourists from somewhere in the northeast who regularly holiday in Key West. They recommended i go to a small beach shack and private beach that apparently had a great fish taco. My local friend had also heard great things about the fish taco but hadn't tried it yet, so we went there, and by God it was a fantastically good fish taco. It tasted like California. It had mango in it. Tomatoes. Some kind of aioli or something. Came with a cookie for dessert. (The fruity drink i ordered separate.) It also wasn't spicy or challenging, but it tasted healthy and delicious.
Our next stop in the "eat all the best stuff in Key West" mission was at the restaurant next to the southernmost point. We got poke cups, where the cup that the poke was in was made out of fried plantain. I never had poke before, but apparently it's a Hawaiian raw fish dish that suddenly got trendy while i was living in China. The fish was tuna and the green stuff was some kind of seaweed. It was a really good mix, and i'd find out later (here in Panama) that patacones aka tostones aka plátano frito aka fried plantain is a common side dish for ceviche, so the combination makes sense.
My tour guide also took me to a mostly-vegan café where he said i'd find the best slice of key lime pie on the island. It was one of those wacky American health food places where they smash up all the "healthy" food from different places that well-to-do health nuts like to travel to, so kinda Thai, kinda Japanese, kinda Italian, kinda everything. The menu didn't make any sense, and i realized i had spent the whole day trying to avoid Italian food - which is everywhere in Key West - so i decided to go all the way and get a famous Italian dish turned vegan. This is a chicken piccata made with tofu. It was actually really delicious. Capers make anything great. It wasn't very filling, but it made me feel healthier after i ate it. Look at all the veges!
Alas, when it came time for dessert, someone else had ordered the last slice of vegan key lime pie. Goddamnit! Instead i got a coconut cake. That thick, creamy icing was made with coconut cream, so it was hella rich. I can only imagine how good that key lime pie would've been without any dairy in it. Decadent.
Another snack i got on Stock Island - which is the island next to Key West that's mostly marinas, docks, warehouses and a growing number of hotels - was from an "islands" food truck serving Jamaican, Ethiopean and Key Westian dishes, plus CBD and "medical" marijuana. I decided to stay vegan and got a quinoa bowl, which probably wasn't especially island-y, so i dowsed it in scotch bonnet sauce to make up for it. I also drank a really interesting soursop juice. Soursop is a type of custard apple, which is called guanábana in Spanish, and i've seen it appear in a few juices down here in Panama already. It's mildly sweet and has an extremely pleasing flavor.
Before i left the Keys, i figured i should finally eat some conch, even though they don't actually harvest conch any more in the so-called Conch Republic. Conch is a sort of shellfish, and the way it's usually eaten is in conch fritters. Much like the crab cakes i ate up on the west coast of Florida, i was simultaneously disappointed and pleased by what it turned out to be. Disappointed because it didn't taste at all like seafood, and didn't even seem to have any seafood at all in it. What's the point? But pleased because i don't like seafood anyway, so getting what was essentially a deep-fried ball of dough was just fine.
I took the bus from Key West to Florida City, which is the outer-most suburb of Miami and the last city on the mainland before crossing to the Keys. It's about a 50km ride into Miami proper, and somewhere along the way i got hungry and desperately tried to find somewhere to eat. It's difficult, because that whole strip is really poorly set up. The busway i was following mostly passed through derelict and industrial areas, with clusters of chain restaurants in the bigger strip malls and mom'n'pop places that weren't open in the smaller strip malls. I did find this Greek-or-possibly-Turkish (they used both terminology on the menu) place, though, where i got a surprisingly good cheap feed. Falafel plate with tabouleh, hummus, salad (i asked for no cheese but oh well), tahini, hot sauce and a pita. The ball of crumbly stuff in the top-right is halva. I haven't had halva since Germany. I can't really explain what it is if you don't know. It's something like blended sesame seeds or some other grain with sugar and pistachios. It's awesome. This was a great meal.
The next morning i was cycling over to Miami Beach from my hotel in Coral Gables and i found this little Portuguese bakery a couple blocks back from Calle Ocho (Little Havana). I had to stop and get a 葡式蛋撻, which is Chinese name for egg tart. I can't remember the Portuguese name. This was the best egg tart i had since living in China. (The reason they're so good in China is because of the Macau/Portugal connection.) I also got a piece of some kind of Christmas cake, which was a heavy, dry bread similar to a Mexican pan dulce. Very good.
Back on Miami Beach, i headed to a Latin American café for some lunch. I got the famous ropa vieja, which is a popular Cuban dish, but i think it's originally from Spain. I know someone will throw a chancleta at me for saying this, but it tastes kinda like an Italian bolognese. What makes it instantly better than a bolognese is it's served with rice, beans and plantains (i ordered "maduros" - the sweet ones). I also got a delicious papaya smoothie.
This next picture is unfortunately blurry, but Miami Beach also has a döner place. I was half-expecting to see a bunch of the German DJs in town for Art Basel to be eating there. I could've ordered a traditional meat döner, or a falafel one, but they had the rare mixed vegetable döner, which i haven't had since one particular döner place in Berlin, so i had to get it. They had exactly the same sauces and condiments that they have in Germany, and it felt really cozy to just give an order like i used to so many times and get a delicious bread stuffed with those nostalgic flavors. I also got hummus and pita chips. Yummy. Messy, but yummy.
Before leaving the US, i wanted to get at least one more taco, so i stopped in at a Mexican/Salvadoran place that specialized in both tacos and pupusas. I don't normally get carne asada (steak) tacos, but i have been watching one of my favorite wrestlers - Thunder Rosa - review tacos on YouTube recently, and she always orders carne asada, so it inspired me. This carne asada was okay. Quite juicy, no gristle. Al pastor is the other one. These were respectable tacos, although still not Texas Good.
Since i was there, i ordered a pupusa as well. Pupusas are something like a pita-thickness tortilla cut in half (or two less-thick tortillas) with food in the middle squished in a sandwich press. This was a bean and cheese version, served with coleslaw and salsa (not pictured). It was so good. The filling was super juicy and as soon as i took a bite it drippled down my fingers. The one thing i think could've made it better is hot sauce (the salsa for pupusas is more like a pico de gallo), but i suppose that wouldn't have been authentic.
I love that this is the next picture. For my last night in Miami i was back in Coral Gables. Coral Gables is a fabulously rich part of Miami, in the "old money" sense. It's all lawyers and bankers and restaurants that charge $20+ for a main and would laugh me out of the room coming in with tattoos and flip-flops. I went to the diviest bar in the neighborhood, which was still a very trendy version of a dive bar. First of all, they had a vege burger. Then, when i ordered the vege burger, i got a fucking pupusa because of course i did. It turned out to be super delicious. It was two thick tortillas with cheese melted onto them to make them even thicker and more slice-of-bread-like, with a black bean patty, guacamole, tomato and some other stuff in there. I hate to admit it, but it's probably the best burger i had in America.
The head chef at this not-really-a-dive-bar was obviously into fusion cuisine, because there was also "Irish corned beef spring roll" on the menu. I had to get it, because the bartender described it to me as "like a Reuben sandwich" (which is Ashkenazi), but also it was deep-fried into an American Chinese "egg roll", and served with - get this - fucking queso dip! It's like we got Irish, Jewish, Chinese and Mexican all on the plate at the same time, and all in their most Americanized version. Incredible. It tasted exactly like what you imagine it would taste like. Heavy, fatty and salty as fuck. It was awful. But also somehow amazing. I immediately switched to White Claw after eating this because i felt so fat. Totally worth it.
In the morning before getting on the plane to Panama, i wanted to get my last colada, but found another taquería along the way. Oops! I had to eat more tacos. This is al pastor, carnitas and a vege taco because Florida. They were pretty good tacos.
After the taco place i found a coffee place, which apparently also was well-known for their croquetas. So i got my last colada - oh how i will miss that sweet, strong flavor - and three croquetas - jamón, bacalao (a type of fish) and spinach. They were yummy. I would venture to say more yummy than the very expensive croquetas i got at the fancy tapas place in Naples, but also they were like a quarter of the price so they only needed to be quarter as good to be better value for money. I think it helped to eat them out of a paper bag in the parking lot. Croquetas aren't really supposed to be high-class.
Ahh, that was it! No more Miami food! What a wonderful city to eat! There are tons of very expensive restaurants in town, like real haute cuisine places that could probably earn a Michelin star, but y'all know that ain't my bag. I just want to eat where the local people go to feed themselves, not wait in line with a bunch of foodies and hipsters hoping for some unique culinary experience. The best thing about Miami is that the simple cafeterias and greasy spoons feature all the diverse flavors that represent the different cultures in town - not just the expected Latin American and Caribbean flavors, but also the flavors of the tourists passing through, and the ones who came to visit then never left. I will miss it.
The next food post will be Panama. My experience here is so far so good. It is very hot and humid. My Spanish is embarassingly bad, but it's being forced to get better at every step because nobody speaks English. I hope that flying to Bocas del Toro tomorrow isn't a mistake, since i suspect there will be way more tourists and expats over there, but if that is the case then i will just enjoy the beach for a bit before coming back to the city, which has a pretty chill vibe.