Offbeat Eats

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the problems with cruise ship tourism is that you get off the ship with several thousand other people, which really tends to swamp the local economy. And it also allows all sorts of lousy t-shirt shops, bad bars, and really bad restaurants to flourish. We were looking for a place to eat that (a) wouldn’t be overly busy, and was (b) good. We asked a few locals, including our kayaking tour guide, and they recommended Conch Republic.

(Closed) One of my online peeps told me of a good place to get tasty conch fritters, jerk chicken, and grilled crawfish. His direction were: “From the boat dock, head west along the waterfront until you find the worst-looking food vendor. That’s the place.” This is what I found: Claudette’s Native Food, in a converted U-haul (which, for the record, wasn’t the place my friend found, which was later found to be called McPhee’s Seafood).