Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [111]
Later in the day, Apalachicola Bay oysters by the dozen make Pepe’s a destination for insatiable oyster lovers who consume them raw, baked, or roasted Mexican-style. Weekly traditions include a Sunday night barbecue that features beefsteaks, pork ribs, tenderloin, chicken, salmon, and mahi-mahi. And who can resist a lunch menu that offers both a blue-collar burger and a white-collar burger? (The former is six ounces, the latter four.)
As attractive as Pepe’s food may be, it’s the place that’s irresistible. It boasts of being “the eldest eating house in the Florida Keys,” and it sure does have the feel of a place that’s seen it all. The old wood dining room is covered with bric-a-brac as miscellaneous as the contents of grandma’s attic, including pictures of famous people and nobodies, a nude painting, nautical bibelots, scenes of old Key West. Each varnished booth is outfitted with a shelf that holds about a dozen different hot sauces for oyster eating. Out back is a bar where locals congregate. (The bar opens at 7:00 A.M.!) And to the side, on an open patio strewn with mismatched tables, illumination is provided by an array of fixtures that includes a crystal chandelier, green-shaded billiard lamps, and year-round Christmas lights strung among the trees.
Saltwater Cowboys
Dondanville Rd.
904–471–2332
St. Augustine, FL
D | $$
Named for local founder Howard Dondanville, who was affectionately called Cowboy, and designed to look like a salt marsh fish camp from long ago, this way-too-popular restaurant serves excellent Minorcan clam chowder (a St. Augustine specialty) and a slew of southern seafood: freshly opened oysters and fancy-cooked ones, boiled crawfish with Cajun vibes, snapper, deviled crabs, soft-shells, and shrimp. A whole portion of the menu is headlined “Florida Cracker Corner” and devoted to frog legs, cooter (soft-shelled turtle), catfish, alligator tail, and even fried chicken with a vividly flavored bread-crumb crust. We suggest starting a meal with oysters Dondanville, served on the half-shell glistening with a mantle of garlic, butter, wine and finely chopped onions, then moving on to Cowboy’s jambalaya, which is a profusion of shrimp, oysters, chicken, ham, and sausage on a pile of seasoned rice.
Fish-camp-fare-frowners come for open-pit barbecue, including ribs, chicken, and shrimp. What we saw on other people’s plates looked good, but the opportunity to indulge in so much seafood precluded a sample.
When we said “too popular,” we meant that chances are good you will have to wait for a table at any normal suppertime. It’s a big place with four dining rooms, but reservations are not accepted. Waiting facilities are an open-air deck where cool frozen drinks (and sweet tea in mason jars) are served. The place is in a restored old home where the walls are decorated with antique fishing gear, snakeskins, stuffed animals, and cracker memorabilia, and where the outside view at the edge of the Intra-coastal Waterway is an ideal background for a romantic dinner.
T-Ray’s Burger Station
202 S. Eighth St.
904–261–6310
Fernandina Beach, FL
BL | $
It’s easy to drive right past T-Ray’s. It looks like every other Exxon station…except for the fact that there are a whole lot of cars circled around every day about breakfast and lunch times. That’s because inside this ultra-casual eatery are some of the best down-home meals around, at prices that are rock-bottom.
As its name suggests, burgers are the house specialty. They come in two sizes and dressed in many ways. We like the Big T Bacon Burger—extremely juicy and full-flavored. For beef-frowners there is a portobello mushroom burger, and there are salads and fried chicken and delicious cheese grits, too. Locals know T-Ray’s as the place to get superb chicken and dumplings every Thursday as well as classic banana pudding for dessert every day. And they flock here in the morning for masterful hot-from-the-oven biscuits.
Dine