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| Welcomed by Tiki Man |
Ten years ago, my wife was assigned to a work project that saw
her being transferred, temporarily, to Florida.
She stayed in St. Pete Beach for a couple weeks each month, and I visited
her there twice. On those occasions, she
took me out to some of the local restaurants she had been frequently. Her favorite, by far, was a seafood
restaurant called Snappers.
We haven’t been back to St. Pete Beach since her project ended, and like any city that relies on
tourism, St. Pete Beach had changed quite a bit. Hardly any of the restaurants we remembered
were still there. But thankfully, Snappers
remained.
We were somewhat worried, as Snappers is a nice restaurant,
and unlike a decade ago, my wife was not on per diem. Still, we had such pleasant memories of our dinners
there that we had to try it once. In our
normal lives, we awaken in the early morning hours to sneak in a workout. Even though we weren’t visiting a gym on
vacation, and were staying up later as a result, our stomachs hadn’t adjusted
to the time change. Thus we arrived just
before six o’clock, which allowed us to order off the Early Bird menu.
The dish we had enjoyed most was their fried clams, and
normally you can only order it off the appetizer section. But on the Early Bird menu, it was listed under
dinners, and came with coleslaw. Still,
we were surprised when our waiter brought out a plate of coleslaw. “Yes,” he responded to our wide-eyed
expression, “we serve coleslaw like most restaurants serve salads.” The slaw tasted great, and was garnished with
shredded beet, which in addition to providing color, also tasted great. (Yes, we belong to that weird subset of
humanity that actually like beets).
To get my clam fix, I’d normally visit Long John
Silvers. We split their little clam
snack, which alongside a piece of fish and a hushpuppy usually satisfies
us. Our waiter at Snappers set before us platefuls of French fries topped with veritable mountains of fried clams. The breading was different from Long John
Silvers: it was more mildly spiced, and reminded me of the kind of tempura
coating for vegetables that you might get in a Japanese restaurant. Not only were the fried clams delicious, but
there was soooooooo much of them! We
couldn’t even begin to eat half of them, but we gave it a darn good try!
When we caved in to reason, deciding that if we ate much
more, we’d need to pay for two extra seats on the flight home, we asked our
waiter for some takeout boxes. He asked,
“Shall I have the kitchen staff put your key lime pies into boxes as
well?” Our jaws dropped. “Yes, they come with your meals,” he told us. Well, we shouldn’t have, but as we
were having such a wonderful time, we told him to bring them out. The pieces of pie weren’t all that large,
perhaps half the size I’d expect if we ordered them separately, but they tasted great. We ate
up all our desserts, and then waddled out to our car.
There are times when everything comes together, and the
mysteries of the universe are revealed.
Our dining experience at Snappers was one such moment. Now I understand why people retire to
Florida. Now I understand why so many of
these senior citizens flock to the Early Bird specials. Who cares about hurricanes, when the housing
is affordable, you can wear shorts and T-shirts year round, and the restaurants
feed you so much good food at such reasonable prices? When we retire, we’re moving to Florida,
baby!
Now, to stock up on those shorts with the elastic
waistbands…
Dragon Dave
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Now I am hungry!
ReplyDeleteIt's the beets that did it, right?
ReplyDelete