Text 22357, 74 rader
Skriven 2014-12-28 11:08:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: more on Fla 518
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Joe Patti's is a seafood warehouse store that also serves
food in simple preparations. Bill and Linda were excited
to take us there, and it really was a hoot, with every
possible kind of Gulf fish and shellfish product on ice,
apparently caught fresh daily from Joe's own fleet of
boats. Bill got filets of grouper and triggerfish, and I
picked up 3 lb of some of the biggest stone crab claws
I'd ever seen, $10/lb.

We decided to wait for the crab claws and not eat here, but
Annie found the beignet stand out front. She claimed never
to have had them before. So we got an assortment - regular,
Bavarian (i.e. pastry) cream, and raspberry jam-filled.
Annie hated the Bavarian, and I couldn't stand the smell of
the jam ones (think jelly donut taken to a new level of
grossness). The beignets were more zeppolelike and less
New Orleansy - Pensacola seems to want to emulate that
somewhat more graceful city but falls a little short; I'm
sure that a lengthier stay would reveal uniquenesses of its
own, but a one-day trip yielded only this impression.

=

Back home for the crab claws, which I was going to warm up,
but Bill just started digging in, and so, what the heck.
These were good but coarser-textured than I am accustomed to
- one pays a price for size. I should perhaps have gotten
Maine lobster claws for half the price, but when in Rome.

=

The rest of them went back to East River Smokehouse, the home
of double-size pints and bunny bread; I was kind of tired and
not hungry or thirsty, so I elected to stay in bed. The report
back was that the shrimp are good (the place is 50 feet from
the Gulf) and the french fries the best Annie has ever had. I
could have used a shrimp or six, but boy did that bed feel good.

=

Bill and Linda wanted to show us Destin, apparently a major
Gulf Destination these days. To me with my rudimentary visual
sense it looked like any other seaside resort town but with
more malls and more chain stores within them. I was singularly
underwhelmed. Annie doesn't like chain restaurants, but she
was hungry, and Bill got tired of her stomach talking, so we
pulled into Margaritaville, another Jimmy Buffett enterprise.
We all had various changes on fried seafood, except for Linda,
who doesn't eat such things and had a chicken quesadilla (yuck),
which she pronounced good. I can report that Jimmy Buffett makes
very bad Maryland crab cakes and sings very out of tune. I was
so disappointed by my meal that in addition to the tails Annie
gave me one of her coconut shrimp, which was respectable. A
Pensacola pale ale also helped to ease my pain.

The Great American Fudge Company or something like that is a
short walk down the wharf, and Annie squealed like a pig in
mud (her term) when she saw it. I went on walking but had to
backtrack 10 minutes later when Bill came out and said that
perhaps help was required extricating her from the place. When
I got there she was still chatting with the candymaker about
various things, having been shown the various cooking apparatus
and the big marble kneading slab and so on and so on. I
encouraged her to make her purchases and get out of there, and
shortly she came away with four half-pound sticks of fudge, one
for each of us. The kid had not done the marble kneading slab
proud - mine, dark chocolate, was heavy like lead and hard like
iron and is being saved for the apocalypse either for emergency
nourishment or emergency beating back of zombies; the praline
was not much better but could be broken into bits and eaten.

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