Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [110]
Jerry’s has character to spare…but it also has important hamburgers—hamburgers that local newspaper readers voted the best along the Gulf Coast. They are good-size, juicy patties of beef beautifully dressed with lettuce, tomato, chopped onions, mustard, and mayo, served with sweet coleslaw and crisp French fries. Not gourmet burgers, not unusual burgers: just good, satisfying hamburgers…in a classic lunch-counter setting.
Although many visitors to the “Redneck Riviera” know Jerry’s as the hamburger place, regulars come for three square meals a day. The breakfast menu features all the usual configurations of eggs and luncheon meat (with grits and/or hash browns), plus an extraordinarily luxurious chicken liver omelet. At lunch, you can have such regional delights as smoked mullet, deviled crab, and broiled grouper, as well as big deep-fried oysters with hush puppies on the side.
La Teresita
3248 W. Columbus Dr.
813–879–4909
Tampa, FL
BLD, open all night Fri & Sat | $
A Cuban sandwich is a beautiful thing: ham, roast pork, and cheese along with mustard, mayonnaise, and pickles encased in elegant bread that is toasted to a crisp. There is no better place to eat one than Tampa, especially at the neighborhood café called La Teresita.
There are a few tables scattered about, but the choice seats (and swift service) are at the counters. Seats are arrayed along a sweeping serpentine surface where whole families line up on the rows of stools at dinnertime.
Regulars come for breakfast of buttered Cuban bread and café con leche; lunch favorites include carne asada, ropa vieja, vaca frita, and the best black beans and rice in town. Throughout the day, you’ll see groups of happy gents gathering in the street after dining at La Teresita. Here they fire up big made-in-Tampa cigars and look like kings who have just enjoyed a royal feast.
Louie’s Back Yard
700 Waddell Ave.
305–294–1061
Key West, FL
LD | $$$
When we visit Key West and think about dinner, we think of more than something to eat. We think of the ocean of warm breezes, of tropical beverages in a magical place. Those thoughts logically lead us to a table at Louie’s Back Yard, where the best seats are located on a multileveled terrace overlooking the Atlantic. Here you dine while pleasure boats sail past and pelicans graze the waves.
In truth, this gracious pink classic-revival house could serve a TV dinner and it would be irresistible on a moonlit night, but it happens to be one of the innovators of Key West cuisine, known for such tropical delights as Bahamian conch chowder with bird-pepper hot sauce, grilled local shrimp with salsa verde, and cracked conch with pepper jelly and ginger daikon slaw.
We have since worked with chef Doug Shook on The Louie’s Backyard Cookbook, which is filled with all kinds of recipes for Caribbean culinary pleasure. Still, the Louie’s supper forever etched in our book of great culinary memories was our first: a pair of lovely grilled strip steaks glazed with hot chipotle chile sauce, sided by garlic mashed potatoes and red onion corn relish. To top things off, we had fancy coffee and feathery key lime tarts. Soft island breezes made hurricane lamps flicker. Bulbs strung among branches in overhead trees formed a radiant canopy above the patio. The ocean glowed cobalt blue when distant, soundless lightning storms at sea ignited over the horizon.
Pepe’s Café and Steak House
806 Caroline St.
305–294–7192
Key West, FL
BLD | $$
“I could be you! You could be me!” exclaims our waitress with glee, setting down her ever-present pot of coffee to write an order that happens to precisely match what she likes to eat in the morning: an omelet of Jack cheese, Anaheim peppers, and smoked sausage sided by a creamy griddle-cooked mashed potato patty and a slab of bread du jour—warm coconut quick bread, nearly as sweet as cake. Breakfast at Pepe’s, from 6:30 every morning, is heaps of fun, always featuring