Aventuras De Viaje

Culinary Keys

The Keys are famously only 90 miles from Cuba. Cuba is on my bucket list for travel, but until then, I decided I want to try an authentic Cuban sandwich and of course, a café Cubano. I had never had a Cuban coffee before and to be honest, didn’t really know what one was, other than it surely had lots of caffeine, and caffeine is my drug of choice. I am happily addicted to caffeine. I love coffee. I love coffee like Ron Burgandy loves Scotch. Coffee is my wife-approved mistress. Les is also addicted, although she exerts more control, limiting herself to just a couple of cups per day, more due to her inability to sleep than to due to force of will. I like to have 2 cups before I go the gym, and a cup afterward, and then a cup after pickleball, and then after lunch, but this particular morning as Dean loaded all our bikes for our road trip to Key West, I had only 2 cups.

As we headed south, we passed a sign proclaiming some restaurant had great Cafe cubanos and the topic was briefly discussed. Dean asked what made a coffee a Cafe Cubano, Les said “I think it’s sweet”, maybe how it was prepared, just one of those car topics which come and go on trips, nothing remarkable, another topic comes up and, well that’s just the nature of driving and we kept heading south.

The drive to Key West from Marathon is about an hour, and we had read parking was challenging and expensive, so Lisa came up with an absolutely brilliant idea of parking at Higgs Beach which is free, and then riding our bikes around. As we unloaded the bikes, someone asked, “How will we know where we parked?” “No worries,” I said, “I’ll just drop a pin on my iPhone.” Off we went.

Key West is a beautiful little town of about 26K people, quaint, balmy, lazy Palm trees and of course, the constant sound of roosters crowing since roosters and hens run loose nearly everywhere. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hVaNktWFAHM

The houses are mostly small, but very well maintained and with little fences and even littler front porches, they just make the whole place seem like something right out book.

Our first stop as I’ve already told you about, was the Hemingway House, and then after a gentle, leisurely ride, Garbo’s Restaurant, thanks to masterchef Grady, a friend of Dean’s, where we dined on yellow tail poke bowls, sitting outside, with warm breezes, just really enjoying life.

After lunch, more leisurely riding, taking in Duval Street (the world-famous party epicenter of Key West – which we all agreed deserved a night-time return visit in the future), Mallory Square on the waterfront of historic Old Town, and of course that historic landmark, the Southernmost Point of the Continental US, which I had seen only once before when we took our parents on a cruise for their 50th wedding anniversary with Mike & Charlotte, Sharon & Darren and me & Leslie. We may even have a picture somewhere like below, but that cruise was pre-iPhone days when people were more judicious with their film rolls. By the way, the queue to take your picture with this buoy was about 20 people long, so we just rode up to the barrier, took a selfie and were back on our leisurely ride.

Now to those observant readers, you might be thinking, Blake has used the word “leisurely” like three times, and that is quite unlike my erudite friend. So astute you are, dear friends and family, for what came next, was in no way unhurried and laid back.

I was bringing up the rear of our group and it suddenly hit me – I simply must try a Café Cubano. I called out, “Hey, does anyone want to stop for a coffee?” “You know where one is?” (I had already done a quick search – yes, I was Googling with one hand and holding the bike handle with the other) so I yelled back, “Yes, pretty close, only about 2 minutes.” Now, that was 2 minutes by car because when you Google and bike without your reading glasses, it’s hard to remember to click the bike/walk symbol, but the replies came back, “No thanks, but we can wait.” Of course, I insisted they go ahead, 2 minutes is short, I’ll get it to go, easy peezy, Key West breezy.

Now, if you remember the PMP days (pre-mobile phone), you know the horrors and perils of splitting up. Shopping in the mall with your family for Christmas? “Ok, so we meet back up at Brookstone at 2:30” It never happened properly, you showed up at 2:25 at Camelot Music, your friend was stuck at Waldenbooks, you got frustrated and went looking for them at Spencer Gifts, and 2 hrs later you finally get back together fuming, and re-hash what each person thought should have happened. Well, we split up and while it crossed my mind that I had to find the truck, but I had dropped a pin, so all good.

I found El Siboney which was more like 5 minutes than 2, but ordered a cafe cubano to go, practicing my Spanish skills and even asking “Donde esta el baño?” even though I could see the sign pointing to them because you know, to really learn a language you have to speak it, and though it drives my kids crazy, I was actually at a Cuban Restaurant and I could hear people speaking Spanish more than English anyway.

The cafe Cubano was ready when I exited the baño, which in hindsight, orinar was a mistake, becuase I missed the prep, but here it was, my little cafe Cubano in the smallest styrofoam cup I had ever seen, with a little lid to match. I thanked them and went outside to Walter (White), my bike, and decided to take a sip before trying to catch-up with the gang. The first sip was like molten lava, a mistake I have made before with other store bought coffees, so I should have been smarter, but there you go, a few hundred taste buds sizzled out of existence like a drop of fresh water on a North Carolina freshly tarred black top. I replaced the cap jumped on Walter, and started peddling in what I thought was generally the right direction. It wasn’t. I stopped (I’m not a complete idiot), found the dropped pin, and started cycling more quickly. Now I am holding this little styrofoam cup with molten black lava inside, with my right hand thumb and index finger, and with the other fingers on my right hand holding the handlebars, while holding my phone in my left hand trying to decipher why it was not telling me which way to go, so I am fiddling with my left thumb the volume, the screen, the scroll down menu, each with a little more haste as I am now imagining Dean, Lisa and Leslie surely getting close to the truck if now already there.

It was about this time that I hit a slight bump in the road. I am not talking about the proverbial bump in the road, I mean a literal bump in the road, and not like when kids today say things like “Yeah, I was so embarrassed I literally died.” Well you’re telling the story, so you didn’t literally die, but I did literally hit a bump in the road and my little black Cuban inferno spit some molten lava on my arm nearly causing me to careen into the oncoming landscaping truck driven by, I suspect, Cuban immigrants, but it was not my day to die an ironic death, so I peddled on. At this point, I knew I was going to be inconveniently delaying my party, so I started peddling feverishly, still holding the phone in my left and in my right a constantly dwindling tiny Mount Vesuvius, my arm Pompeii. Every bump resulted in another mini-eruption, and each turn instructed by Maps threatening to topple this farcical culinary calamity.

Do you know that feeling you get when you realize Siri has led you astray? That hit me when I passed the silver fish statue on the beach. I had actually missed a very critical turn, and had now ridden more than a mile and half past our parked truck. It was like I was in the Tour de France now I was going so fast, riding off the bike trail to rush past, so guessed it, other leisurely riders, over curbs, my shorts, shirt and arm now covered in God’s black nectar. When I finally arrived to my patiently awaiting group, there was only about a half inch of coffee left.

Cafe Cubano is made with strong, dark roast espresso sweetened with a thick sugar foam. I hate sugar almost as much as I love caffeine.

The original post had me on Big Red, which is absolutely not my bike, it’s Leslie’s. Lisa’s bike is still unnamed but in the interim is Little Blue and Dean’s is no name, like the pub we will visit later this month. I have no idea why such an egregious mistake was made and I apologize to Walter for my malfeasance.