Porto San Giuseppe

Yesterday, I realized that I am on the last end of my annual Florida vacation. I really love it down here, as I love the surroundings, the area, the pace of life (although sometimes a bit overly slow)and especially the weather. I've never been here during the summer or during a hurricane season, but I'm certain that all things considered, this is a fine place to be.

In the morning, we ventured to Apalachicola's downtown area, where there is a myriad of different places to shop, eat, and see, as the city was founded as a harbor in the early 1800's, and the market place reflects a lot of that old charm. We visited a flower shop by mistake, as it was a former sea sponge warehouse that housed an antique store, that now housed a flower shop. In entering the store, it said that it was a flower shop and gift store. From what we saw however, it was a very, VERY basic flower shop. Wherever the gifts were, they were probably on backorder, for as far as I could tell, there were no "gifty" type things anywhere to be found. As we walked into the store, the owner was very chipper and polite in asking us if we could be helped. When we said we were looking for the antique shop, however, we were quickly shooed out of the store with a flurry of directions. Apparently that woman's been asked the same question more than once.

I am not one for antiques at all. I suspect that it has everything to do with how antique shops smell. They just smell old, musty, and dank. Normally this kind of a shop wouldn't be one that I would seek out. However, this particular shop sells some of the best hand-made soap (made from goat's milk) that I have ever used in my entire life.

Being redirected to "the Hayes House" back in town, we ventured to where this antique store was relocated, and browsed through all of the wares they had to offer.
Upon buying a dozen bars of soap, we headed for our next stop, "The Owl Cafe" Cooking Shop, and proceeded to get some really cool kitchen stuff, a seafood cookbook, some shrimp de-veiners, and spices.

We decided to head back to the beach house, where we'd be able to sit in the sun for a few hours before having to decide what we were going to have for supper.

My mom suggested our dinner destination, "Joe Mama's Wood Oven Pizza" in central Port St. Joe, Florida. When we first arrived, there weren't a lot of cars out front in the street, and in looking from the front of the restaurant (which had dark tinted glass), it didn't look like it was open.

After further review, we did see lights on in the restaurant, and decided to give it a try. We were greeted by a very friendly young woman that understood our confusion when we said we couldn't tell if the restaurant was open or not as it was so dark. We were seated, and our server came over, took our drink order and let us decide on the type of pizza we would like to try.

The great thing we noticed was that almost every table in the restaurant was full of diners, and that it truly did have the wood burning stove in the kitchen, similar to the wood ovens my mom and I experienced when we were in Rome, Florence, and Torino. We were both excited to anticipate having REAL Italian pizza. My mom ordered the pizza margherita, which had garlic, tomato, basil, and mozzarella. I opted for the Quatro, which had fresh mozzarella, basil, cured ham, and tomato.

In a matter of minutes, out came the pizzas from our server, and sure enough, they were identical to the pizzas we had in Italy. After the first taste, we knew one thing: this pizzeria is a complete WINNER. Wood stoves have a different way of cooking, and give pizza crusts (or for that matter, the whole pizza) a more rustic, earthy taste and texture, and the crust was amazing!

It truly was an experience reminiscent of past travels to Italy, and was a great way to end the evening. Next time, I hope to try the pizza with the arugula..it looked really interesting!

Fresher Than Preferred

The weather in Florida has been spectacular all week. No clouds seem to be anywhere nearby, and the temperature has been anywhere from 78-83 degrees. Doesn't get any better than that.

I have had several opportunities to walk along the beach, both around the beach house and nearby where there's a lighthouse. We have seen many types of seabirds, shells, dolphins, and some lizards. We have been able to see fishing boats way off in the horizon, catching fish or shrimp.

Nothing is better than fresh seafood from the Gulf of Mexico. In this area, there are many different restaurants to be able to try tuna, grouper, shrimp, bay scallops, oysters, and any other type of seafood you can imagine. We've tried many over the last several years in coming down to Cape San Blas and Port St. Joe, Florida.

Tonight we were hungry. My mom and I decided that we would venture to a place that we've gone to 2 or three times in the past. It's in the harbor at Port St. Joe, and it's called the Dockside Cafe. I don't think any time we've gone there where the service has been anything to write home about, and some of the servers just do their jobs. This isn't an issue, since the food has been good, and usually comes promptly.

I have no idea if our experience today was an exception or what. Walking into the restaurant, normally someone at least greets you at the door, even if you are asked to seat yourselves. We opted to sit out on the patio, where there was a nice breeze, and wasn't quite so stuffy. As we walked to the table, we passed by about 3 to 4 different workers, none of whom bothered to say hello, or even acknowledge we were there. I have no idea if they were short of help, but from what I saw of the patron to server ratio, this was certainly not the case.

We ordered our beers (which were probably the only things that were served promptly) and ordered the food. I opted for a shrimp basket with fries, and my mom ordered their blackened grouper with steamed vegetables.

After waiting approximately 20 minutes for our food to be served (and by now, our drinks were getting lighter), we finally got the food. While the server was chipper, the food was anything but.

I asked my mom how her food was, and the best part of her meal was the steamed vegetables on her plate, as her blackened grouper was somewhat fishy. I've never had fishy tasting grouper before. This was a first.

I ate about 4 of my 10 fried shrimp, which looked done on the outside, but upon closer examination, realized that they were extremely fresh: fresh off the boat, breaded, and fresh on my plate. While they were de-veined (thank goodness), the remaining shrimp on my plate were all translucent, and not the normal cooked white color that shrimp SHOULD be.

No amount of tartar or cocktail sauce would have improved the freshest food on my plate. I had to check the menu to make sure that we didn't end up in a sushi bar, as opposed to a seafood cafe.

Unfortunately, my criticism of my food to my server fell upon deaf ears, even after showing her my uncooked shrimp and giving her a cooking lesson on what cooked shrimp should look like. The only remedy was for the server to go back and get more shrimp for me. This was not an option for me. I respectfully declined. There was no offer to take the price of my dinner (at an overpriced $10.99) off the bill.

Freshly ingrained in our minds, her lack of empathy or care resulted in a less than stellar tip, which really shouldn't have been her fault. Oh well, our indifference matched what we experienced.

Dockside Cafe and Grill in Port St. Joe, Florida was a severe disappointment both from the quality of the food, and the quality of the service, which is a shame when we've seen many restaurants in the area in previous years that had fantastic food, fantastic service, but went out of business. If they don't pay attention to these types of things in future, this restaurant, too, won't last long either.

We certainly won't be coming back any time soon.

The Birds

I've come to the conclusion that I really like the beach. I like the ocean. I like the sand. I like the sun. I like how warm it is. Yesterday, for the first time since I was like 10 years old, I flew a kite on the beach. I had gotten a really cool kite that I had seen in a magazine, shaped in the outline of a shark. The kite is about 7 feet long, and as you look up at it from the sky, all you can see is the outline of this black shark, with its mouth open displaying a huge set of sharp, pointy teeth.

The seabirds didn't quite know what to think about this new avian friend in the sky. Most of them avoided it, but many of the seabirds that flew by, looked at it, squawked a bit, and then went on their merry way. It was relatively easy to fly, and again, was a perfect way to spend part of the afternoon. After all, yesterday was quite sunny and 81.

Afterward, my mom and I decided that we needed to go into town to get a few things from the grocery store. On the way, the Florida Highway Department must be in the process of doing several different projects, two of which happen to be from where we are staying, into Port St. Joe. At one point there was a flagman directing traffic around a blind curve on the highway. Either he was half-heartedly into his job, or was just slow to react (after all, this is the South), it seemed to take forever to get past the construction area. We ended up getting stuck behind a huge dump truck full of sand and whatnot, and what seemed to be a full load from the onset of his departure, turned out to be significantly less, as most of what he was hauling in the back was either leaking out, or being blown out by the wind.

I was tempted to flip the guy the bird.

Anyhow, we ended up getting the things we needed, toodled around the downtown area of Port St. Joe, and then headed back. Unfortunately for the city's economy, several businesses have closed shop or gone out of business. The economy has hit this area of Florida really hard, only to be exacerbated by new government restrictions on oyster fishing and protection, which is the livelihood of practically EVERYTHING down here.

Anyhow, in the evening, we ventured to Apalachicola to Boss Oyster Company for supper. I had a hankering for bay scallops, and last night's dinner was no disappointment. We were able to sit outside overlooking Apalachicola Bay and the inlet to the river, directly next to the wharf where several shrimping and fishing boats stood anchored, waiting for the next day's catch to commence.

While we were sitting on the patio outside, the menagerie of seabirds was a sight to behold. In two cases, the diners sitting on the patio opted to move inside, as there were several instances where there were hundreds of seagulls swarming around the area. My sister-in-law, who is no ornithologist, would have been as anxious as a cat laying in a room full of rocking chairs.

What was fascinating was how the restaurant had devised an interesting way to keep the birds from landing on the patio, by executing an intricate and random weaving of heavy test fish line in and out of the tables, canopies over the tables, and back overhead to the building. Apparently during the day, these fishing lines are shiny. By dinner time, they aren't, which makes the birds aggressive (seeing everyone eat nearby). By nighttime, birds go home to roost. Seagulls, for some reason don't like shiny fish lines, and therefore stay away, thus preventing unexpected surprises during dinner.

I was convinced I was pooped on twice during dinner.

At one point during dinner, my mom asked the server whether or not she had a B-B gun handy, as my mom informed her that it would be kind of fun to shoot at the seagulls. My mom then asked if there is any law against shooting seabirds. From the look on the server's face, she was taken aback, and then added "not to my knowledge. Wouldn't that be fun!" I am convinced my mother is Annie Oakley reincarnated.

Checking each other out to make sure there was no incendiary damages, my mom and I headed back to the beach house, and ended up enjoying a glass of this stuff called "Coco Vine," which is a libation that combines red wine with Dutch chocolate. It tastes like chocolate milk on ice and was quite tasty. And after thinking about how on earth someone would have thought to put chocolate and wine together, I then realized that this came from Holland. Someone must have had the munchies after smoking the reefer, and thought that such a concoction would be interesting.

Well, it's a winner.

The other thing I thought about after getting back was, all the people in the movie "The Birds" had to do to save themselves was to string a ton of heavy test fish line all over the city and over their homes, and it would have kept any deadly flying reptiles away...except at dinner time.

Apparently they didn't consult Boss Oyster company before making the movie.