Stock Island, Florida (Key West)--Hogfish Bar and Grill

Hogfish Bar and Grill
Safety Harbor, Key West, FL 33040 
305-293-4041

http://www.hogfishbar.com/

 Why Hogfish?  For an astonishingly beautiful sunset and very good food.

This restaurant is actually on Stock Island, and not on Key West--but it's only a ten or fifteen minute drive from the center of KW. The directions on the restaurant's website are easy to follow, so do persist, and they will get you through the maze of trailers, campers, and picturesque turns on the way.

We sought out the Hogfish Grill with our good friends during our vacation in Key West (where we'd rented a small house), having heard from someone else back in Chicago that this place was worth visiting.

This is very much a low-key, informal, island-style bar, and, let me tell you, bars are not usually my favorite kind of atmosphere. (Indeed, someday I will rail against the restaurants who instruct host/hostess to automatically direct people to the bar.  Certainly, it's to make sure that the place makes money; it's likely that some will feel obligated to order beverages whether they want to or not--so the host/hostess says, "There's a wait, but please sit at the bar, and.....," even when tables are available. Some of us just don't want to sit at the bar, thank you, and we'd prefer a choice rather than a directive. But I digress.)

The experience quickly became a mixture of splendid food and sunset ambiance: we had a fabulous view of setting sun from an outside table near the dock, and the food was equally good. Three of us had the mixed grill, which features calimari, shrimp, scallops, mixed veggies, rice, and a fish of the day (two of us had mahi as the fish and the other chose hogfish). The fourth in our party had coconut shrimp, which she pronounced "the best she'd ever tasted." (And she's constructively picky and quite an authority on shrimp, let me tell you, given her New Orleans origins.)

I had the delightful mixed grill, but I also sampled the coconut shrimp.  Our friend is right: they were the least over-breaded and the tastiest, appropriately "shrimpy" fried shrimp I'd ever had. (Yes, they were great.)

We had fried green tomatoes as an appetizer for the table, too, which were fine--if you like fried green tomatoes, which some of us did, and some of us didn't.

In all, the menu had a wide range of items--from sandwiches to salads to entrees--all of which looked very good and suitable for a variety of budgets.

Again, speaking as a not-really-a-bar person, I nonetheless have every intention of returning when we make it back to the Keys.  My Spousal Unit--who is most definitely a bar person--agrees.