Lobster BLT / Key West 7

EATING DOWN HIGHWAY ONE


With Gene Morgan and his favorite traveling companion Nancy

Somewhere in the Saddlebunch Keys is Baby’s Coffee.  (I may be wrong about the location, the sign flies by as you cruise down the road. You are by it before you can hit the breaks to stop.) Many of the Keys guide books say you just gotta stop at Baby’s. We did and got some pretty good breakfast muffins, but we got out the door quick. Nancy said the place gave her a headache. It smelled too much like strong coffee. You can guess, we get our caffeine elsewhere. We prefer colas.

There are some restaurants in the Keys that many tourists never find. They are too far off of highway one in non-tourist kinds of places. You gotta look for them.  At mile marker 10 on Big Coppitt Key across from the row of pastel painted hurricane houses you turn down Boca Chica road. You cross the canal bridge onto Geiger Key, wander down the road a bit and on the left you will find the Geiger Key Marina.



Right on the water at one end of the marina you will find a funky tiki bar called the Geiger Key Smokehouse. You will sit at a picnic table on the edge of the dock watching schools of fish swim by in the water below. The gulls will hang around nearby hoping for a handout. Boats will cruise by between the dock and the nearby mangrove islands. It seems like a perfect place to catch site of the elusive manatee said to frequent the islands. That is one of the reasons we always stop here, but we have not seen one yet. The other reason is the food.

We just have to have a lobster BLT. This is Nancy’s meal complete with sweet potato fries. Whoa, dude if that ain’t heaven then I ain’t going. Fried lobster, bacon, tomato, and lettuce on a big hunk of bread, what more do you need? Well, maybe some Rolaids. So, it’s a 50/50 chance it will make me sicker than a dog that has just eaten something strange he found on the street, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take for this rich tasting crunchy gift from mother ocean.

A note from Carrie : minus the lettuce, this looks scrumptuous!  I love sweet potato fries!