Posts tagged "Live Music"

Blue Heaven

729 Thomas St. - (305) 296-8666- http://blueheavenkw.homestead.com

Why did I wait so long…

You gotta love a restaurant with it’s own outdoor shower.

I can’t believe we’ve been in Key West almost a year and have just now gotten to Blue Heaven over on Thomas Street. It’s not like it’s outside of the walking distance circle from my apartment, not like I haven’t heard from a hundred people how really good the food is, nor like it’s overly expensive. I really have no excuse. But let me tell you, I’m an instant convert.

A longtime friend and ex-colleague of mine Kelly came to town the other evening for a quick visit and some dinner before she had to re-enter the real world after a week-long vacation in the lower keys. We had originally intended to take her to Mangia Mangia (one of our favorite food hangouts), but she had honeymooned in Key West 11 years before and remembered really enjoying Blue Heaven, so hey.. why not! I love new things!

I immediately loved this place when I walked in. You enter through a large gate into a wonderfully overgrown and eclectically decorated courtyard. To the right is a cool outdoor bar area complete with a huge rattly-looking wooden cistern looming perilously above the bar, and a stage. I don’t think there’s a white light to be found in the entire place, it’s very colorful. The bar, stage, and surrounding courtyard patios are strewn with little bistro tables, cats, chickens, knick-knacks, and antiques. There’s even a ping pong table. Cool!

We gave our name to the hostess and were told there was about a 20 minute wait. That’s OK, I wanted to wander around and see the bar area and courtyard anyways. We ordered a couple beers at the bar and did some exploring.

One of the things that hit me right off was the music. There was a guy on stage playing guitar and singing… and the volume was low! Good god in heaven, I have come to mecca! One of my biggest pet peeves with live music (especially the lone, singing-guitar-artist type) is that they seem to always have the need to blast it so loud your ears want to jump from your head and run away. I’d like to be able to have a conversation and enjoy myself, and I just can’t do that when someone’s acoustic guitar is ear-fucking me. Too many restaurants and bars don’t get this simple concept. And it’s not like most of these people are brilliant musicians to begin with. Anyways.. I digress.. that’s a good topic for a future post.

There’s an outdoor eating area just off the bar area, and also a smaller indoor area. When we got the nod from the hostess she asked if we wanted to continue to wait for an outdoor table or just sit inside.. hey. I’m no snob.. I can sit inside too! She took us around to the side of the building and in through an old french door into a small quiet dining room. Air conditioning.. ahhhhh.

Time to eat!

We ordered a few more drinks and perused the menu. We were having a really hard time deciding because everything looked so GOOD. We delayed decision-making and ordered the Caribbean BBQ Shrimp appetizer. It was pretty darned tasty, the girls loved it, but I thought it was a bit salty. Of course I’m kind of a salt nazi anyways; it’s definitely not one of my favorite flavors, but I know there are folks out there who dig it.. so the vote on this one is 2 thumbs up out of three.

When it was time to finally order, Christina got the pork tenderloin with sweet potato, mango chutney and curry butter sauce. I ordered the beef tenderloin with cabernet demi-glace, and Kelly ordered one of the specials, some sort of grilled snapper dish.

Woah.. talk about tasty! My filet was very good.. not the best I’ve had, but certainly a far stretch from the worst. It was perhaps a bit on the done side of the medium I’d ordered, but not too far off. The Demi was very good, and they served it all up with a big chunk of corn bread. Very, very tasty. Christina’s pork was out of this world, definitely not a combination I’d have thought of, but it really worked well. I didn’t try Kelly’s salmon because I’m not much of a fish person, but she said it was really good.

So let me just say this

YES! I want to go back! I imagine it’s not so colorful during the day, but I hear the breakfast is out of this world, so I’m definitely going back for some of that. I can also see going to Blue Heaven just to hang out at the bar, have a few beers, and listen to some music with friends.

All in all a very pleasant experience!

Captain Tony’s Saloon

428 Greene Street – 305-294-1838 - www.capttonyssaloon.com/

And you thought Sloppy Joe’s was on Duval!

I knew right away this place was a little different. When we walked up to the front, there were a group of drunk coeds standing under the sign on the sidewalk, (fake breasts threatening to slip out of seriously strained bikini tops), facing the street and trying to chuck pennies up over their heads into the mouth of the big fish on top of the sign. I don’t know the history behind this, but I can only assume it’s a good luck thing. I certainly felt as if my luck was changing!

I’d been here once before for a couple of beers, but had to come back to grab some photos for this post (oh darn). Captain Tony’s is a place like no other, the ceilings and walls (every single available scrap of space) are covered with thousands upon thousands of business cards, panties, license plates, old junk, and bras.. bras, bras, bras.. everywhere you look bras. It’s literally impossible to make out what it all is, there’s so much of it.

Then there’s the tree. A huge old Oak, growing right up through the middle of the floor and out the roof! It’s dark, dingy, and utterly key west through and through.

A rich and infamous history

This is the original location of Sloppy Joe’s Bar, the actual place Hemingway hung out in in the early 1930′s. Sloppy Joe’s was owned by Joe “Josie” Russell. Hemingway immortalized his friendship with Joe in his book To have and have not by using him as the basis for Freddy, the captain of the Queen Conch, and owner of Freddy’s bar.

The building had been many things before Joe Russell bought it in 1933. It was a telegraph station in 1898, after that it was a cigar factory, a bordello, several speakeasies, the county morgue, and an icehouse.

Joe Russell moved his bar out of the building in the middle of the night over a dispute with the landlord, and the building housed a gay bar through the 40′s and early 50′s

Captain Tony bought the bar in 1958 after hitchhiking to Key West from New Jersey on the back of a milk truck.  He’d left NJ to avoid being chased down by mob bookies to whom he’d managed to annoy quite seriously.

During his fantastic life of 92 years, Captain Tony fathered thirteen children by three wives, had been a Charter Boat Captain, a Gun Runner for Cuban mercenaries during the Bay of Pigs, and was elected mayor of Key West in 1989, his campaign slogan being; “All you need in this life is a tremendous sex drive and a great ego. Brains don’t mean shit.”

His goal while mayor was to limit growth and to have Key West maintain its reputation as a refuge for eccentrics and renegades. He was quoted by the Chicago Tribune as saying “Key West is an insane asylum. We’re just too lazy to put up walls or fences, I want to retain that mystique.”

Captain Tony passed away in 2008; he’d sold the business almost 20 years earlier, but was still a constant fixture at the bar, and he spent his time signing autographs and visiting with the patrons.

Now HERE was a guy I would have absolutely loved to meet, I’m really sorry I got here a year too late to make that happen. Captain Tony, you sound like my kinda folk!

The Lady in the Blue Dress

I’m still digging for this story, and when I get it figured out, I’ll post it up in the ghosts of Key West section, but for now here’s a quick rundown. Apparently during the time when the building was used as a morgue, that big old tree that now grows through the roof, was the town hanging tree.

A woman who had killed her husband and son was hung from that tree, along with a few other miscreants over the years. When a huge storm hit Key West and demolished the morgue, they found bodies all over the place in the aftermath.

I’ve heard a couple of versions of this, one is that they cremated the bodies and filled glass bottles with the ashes, which they then embedded into the concrete foundations of the rebuilt structure. Another version states the bottles were filled with holy water to keep the restless spirits at bay. It’s hard to find reputable stuff about this online, but sure enough, the bottles are there in the foundation. I’ll keep digging.

The ladies restroom is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of the lady in the blue dress. Christina didn’t see anything in there during her visit, so the Jury is still out!

A good place to hang out

I like Captain Tony’s, it rates right up there with Schooner Wharf for down and dirty local character. There’s usually some sort of live music, and always a lot of interesting folk. It’s a block off Duval so it’s not totally overrun by sweaty sunburnt tourists. And you can hardly pass up the opportunity to run into a ghost in the ladies room!

Check it out!

Schooner Wharf Bar

202 William Street – Ph: (305) 292-3302 – www.schoonerwharf.com

So far this is my all-time favorite bar on the island. Schooner Wharf is the first place we stumbled upon on our very first visit to Key West years ago, and it remained the first stop on all subsequent visits.

It sits right on the marina and is full of a wonderfully eclectic hodge-podge of detritus no doubt scavanged from many a tall ship or reeled in on the end of a fishing line.

It’s a great place to go have a couple of cold beers while waiting for a sunset cruise (and of course after the sunset cruise), do some tourist (or local) watching, and listen to some of the ever-present live entertainment.

I haven’t been to anywhere near even a quarter of the bars in KW yet, so I can’t say for certain, but my guess is this is one of the true local hangouts, and if you want to get a real taste of what life is like in KW, you absolutely must come here and strike up aconversation with one of the old salty dogs sitting around the bar. Locals might look scary sometimes, but my experience has been they’re mostly pretty harmless.

The staff is friendly and quick, and the food is not too shabby. I absolutely LOVE the clam chowder here. Clam chowder is one of those things I order everywhere I go to see who has the best. I can say with certainty that Schooner Wharf has the lead where the chowder is concerned. I don’t know if they make it from scratch or buy it straight from the devil himself, but I wish I could buy it in bulk from them.

Personally Oysters are something I’ve yet to gain an appreciation for, but Christina loves them, as do some of my other friends we’ve brought here. The verdict is super-yummy.

The only issue I’ve ever had with the food has been the last couple times I’ve visited. The fried shrimp was overcooked. I ordered them again the second visit to see if it had been an anomaly the first time, because usually the food is so good. I still believe it was probably a case of someone falling asleep at the fryer, and will give it another shot next time around to decide for good. Barring that small gripe, everything else we’ve had here has been fantastic. Schooner Wharf  is after all a bar, and not a fine dining establishment, so judging by that standard, I’d say the food is better than average.

There is an upstairs ‘poop deck’ that gives a better view of the marina, this is by far my favorite hangout at Schooner Wharf… unless it’s raining. The live music in the courtyard on the ground floor can get a little loud for me sometimes. Of course a trip to the bathroom from here requires a walk down some stairs, so plan accordingly…. nothing more embarrassing than tumbling down some stairs in front of a group of people eating. Trust me.

Speaking of bathrooms. I hear the Women’s restroom isn’t bad (Can’t say for myself), and while I guess the mens room isn’t as bad as many I’ve seen, the journey to reach it is an interesting one.

Also, no visit would be complete without a trip to Frank Everhart’s Magic Bar in the back corner of the ground floor. Frank is a true sleight of hand aficionado.  He’s a very entertaining guy, I highly recommend you spend some time at his bar. He gets there around 9:00 nightly.

Schooner Wharf has a webcam that looks out over the courtyard toward the stage. We spent many an evening in Orlando watching this while we were trying to dream up ways to move to Key West. It was like a little bit of heaven right there in our living room. Check it out, you’ll probably see me sitting at the bar quaffing draft Key West Ale!

Cheers!
Mike