Thanks! It’s a fun hobby. My magnum opus is the Best Places to Eat Near I-95 from DC to Key West. All locally owned, all within 15 minutes of the interstate, all good.
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Yes, please do keep us posted @LastManStanding
I see that I will be very busy reading everyone’s Blogs. @ScottinPollock also has one.
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Totally agree on Europe…we had a Portuguese grocery near us that smoked sausage and ribs and it was pretty good, but not great.
But I would never suggest barbecue on either coast of South Florida…we do have some darned good cue, but not at the southern end.
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Thanks, Olunia!
I lament that I didn’t start making video in 2003 when I started traveling:/ (although unusually, my first destination was to Hong Kong during SARS!)
Florida bbq?
And just the other day, I was reading about Kansas City-style tacos (i.e. with parmesan embedded in the fried taco shell).
Nope. No unusual ingredients…just good meat smoked over hardwood.
An awful lot of Florida is small rural towns where you can follow the smoke to find good barbecue.
Miami and Ft Myers are neither small nor rural and I’m not all that surprised that a search foe barbecue didn’t turn up much.
To put it another way, if I were in Florida, it would either be in Miami, or near another major city. Crab, conch fritters and Cuban sandwiches take priority!
I will, @johntannerbbq @Olunia I’m looking for a cheap hosting service.
My hosting was AWS LIghtsail which charges 3.50 a month which I cannot pay at the current situation. So I am looking for something around 10 - 12 per year, a shared hosting service.
I will post here as soon as I set up the site again. 
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Meanwhile, it’s not about food, but I have another website about my country. I set it up to help tourists navigate the country without a tour guide, and without falling in to common traps. All are invited to take a look. Main page is the main itinerary, and other articles are under the Blog menu item.
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This!
I was just in Miami a couple of weeks Go for a meeting…my Miami counterpart and I hit up the seafood and Cuban dives while the rest if the guys ate at the hotel.
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If you get up around Crooked Lake (Babson Park) there’s a Brazilian guy of German extraction (several generations back) named Von Rommel running a food cart called “El Baron”, with Brazilian style churrasco that my family and I found to be really very good. Not exactly US style BBQ, but still it’s meat cooked over wood chunks. 
The sides we had, troopers beans and sweet-filled empanadas for dessert (we got 2 each of apple, peach, and cheese-passion fruit), were also all very good.
He’s there Wed-Sat and then takes Mon-Tue to prep all the meats. The only problem is that any online order service you’d check like postmates, uber, square are outdated as to content (just one example, he had to switch out picanha for sirloin to keep the cost down) and pricing, so I just drove by and got a photo of his menu there for calling in my order later.
We were renting a pretty house on the lake for a week and while the local fish/steak place is also pretty good, the take-out meal from El Baron was the best we had all week.
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Okay, I give.
What are troopers beans?
Bacon, sausage, kidney or pinto beans, some kind of greens, sweet peppers, onions, and some starch (I think usually manioc root).
I think this recipe is pretty close to what he makes, but I’m not certain. I don’t know what greens he used but I’m pretty sure I would have recognized collards. I looked them up after we got home with the plan to recreate them, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Basically it’s supposedly a historic cowboy food from Brazil, maybe of Portuguese origin. Which makes me wonder if the bacon is original or a more recent addition. Anyway, the guys driving the cattle were called tropeiros or “troops” or “troopers”.
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I have stumbled across a couple of S Fla places – Off The Bone in West Palm, and Troy’s, which has a couple of places now. But in Florida, I’m all in on seafood and Cuban. I prefer the west coast for seafood (we go to Marco Island a lot, and to the fishing village of Woodland nearby), and I’ve found two good Cuban places. the Rumba Cafe in east Naples and the Havana Cafe of the Everglades. I’ve written up all of these on the blog/
Thanks John. I’m still working through your blog, which as I already mentioned (but it bears re-mention) is a great resource. I have a daughter currently in Boca Raton (moving soon with a work transfer to Tampa as she just got married) so we’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years between Jupiter and Delray Beach, and we also spend a lot of time in the Keys.
Speaking of WPB, as you mentioned, if you get back check out a hole-in-wall place called The Grilled Cheese Gallery. It’s along a fun street with lots of antique shops and the like in the north side of WPB. The sandwiches are really great - but you need clement weather and eating outdoors because, for some strange reason, they run the place without a vent hood! Inside is too smoky to abide.
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Regarding Marco, we’ve stayed there a few times, IIRC in each case for Thanksgiving week. We had our full family plus my wife’s parents (8 total) each time and rented a house on a canal with close open water access.
I found it a very nice place overall, but a bit off-putting as the locals seem to resent the weekly renters, a lot more so than other places we’ve rented in FL. Just my opinion, of course. And we had some eventual nice interactions with the residents next to the houses we rented, but it seemed their guard was up a lot more. Couple that with the “locals only” beach access, and Marco has become one of my lesser favorites.
(Blush!)
I know that area! Next trip I’ll check it out. I better make a note, though.
I can’t help much in re Tampa, although I hear that Ted Peter’s Smoked Fish is great, but then most smoked fish is pretty darn good. I think that’s where Columbia started. I’d like to go to the original some time. I’m eagerly looking forward to your reports when you get down there.
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Thanks John. We’re probably going to help move our daughter to their new shared apartment later this month (I tried hard to get them into a rental house, as I despise apts, but that’s where they landed).
I’m definitely going to check out the Tampa-to-Sarasota restaurants while there.
I forgot to mention earlier a big favorite of me and my son in the Boca/Boyton Beach area - a Haitian place called Tropical Island Restaurant in Boynton. Their goat stew with beans/rice is killer, and they’re super nice folks.
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Yum!
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- Tucson, AZ—UNESCO City of Gastronomy. I noticed that Tucson, Phoenix/Scottsdale is not mentioned much here. Did anyone notice the final Top Chef Houston was filmed here?
- I love talking about Chinese food that we had growing up, dim sum and my endless search for the best xiao long bao.
- Fresh king crab in Alaska.
- I grew up in the Bay Area, I am an artist, and I’m really good at not killing cactus and succulents.
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