Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Vegging Out: Best Vegetarian in South Florida
Honey Tree
Southern Cooking
You are technically in the South down here, but much of South Florida is so south it's
sud
as opposed to Southern if you catch our drift. Basically, we're saying Miami is too interna-
tional to be classified as the American South. And as such, Southern cooking basically
skips Miami as a city. That said, in the Everglades and the Keys, the Southern influence is
much more keenly felt.
Southern makes up in fat and pure tastiness what it may lack in refinement. Standard
Southern fare is a main meat - such as fried chicken, catfish, barbecued ribs, chicken-fried
steak or even chitlins (hog's intestines) - and three sides: perhaps some combination of
hushpuppies (cornbread balls), cheese grits, cornbread, coleslaw, mashed potatoes, black-
eyed peas, collard greens or buttery corn. End with pecan pie, and that's living.
In the Keys, Southern-style cooking melds with Caribbean gastronomy. In truth, there's
a lot of room for overlap, as black slaves developed many of the same recipes in the US
and the Caribbean. Plus, Southern and Caribbean cooking are both unapologetically rich
and heavy, and the latter may apply to you too if you're not careful when you eat in the
Keys.
Cracker cooking is Florida's rough-and-tumble variation on Southern cuisine, but with
more reptiles and amphibians. And you'll find a good deal of Cajun and Creole as well,
which mix in spicy gumbos and bisques from Louisiana's neighboring swamps. Southern
Floridian cooking is epitomized by writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' famous cookbook
Cross Creek Cookery.
Ice tea is ubiquitous in the Everglades and the Keys, but watch out for 'sweet tea,'
which is an almost entirely different Southern drink - tea so sugary your eyes will cross.
