Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Wave Your Freak Flag Proudly!!!!

Well, it's that time of year again.... It's Fantasty Fest in Key West!!!


I'll keep you updated with pictures and stories, as we are bound to have some!! Fantasy Fest is kind of like Key West's version of Mardi Gras and Halloween combined. There are theme-parties every night all around town, all culminating in "the Big Parade" Saturday night. This parade has huge floats, amazing costumes, LOTS and LOTS of beads being thrown... it is a true spectacle.
Our nights here at Damn Good Food TO-Go tend to be fairly slow during the week of Fantasy Fest because everyone is out partying and generally being on display. However, each morning, people wake up in a fog, body paint smearing on their pillows, and need to eat!! Lots of Biscuits and Gravy (our secret recipe and a well-regarded hangover cure!!!) and LOTS of Gatorade are sold this week!!!
At night, I always look forward to our customers coming by to show off their various costumes, and they range from the fancy and creative, to the down-right naughty!!! Take a look above and below at the first couple of Fantasy Fest pictures we have.... more to come throughout the week.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Best Wishes for a Life of Happiness!!

I had a lovely experience this evening, and feel honored to have played any part in it. A really nice couple came in around 10pm - Mark and Dina, from New Jersey. They just wanted to have some coffee and to sit and relax. As I brewed them a fresh pot, we chatted quite a bit. They had stopped in earlier in the day to pick up a menu, and Mark looked familiar to me; I knew he was someone who had visited before.

As we talked, Mark told me that they had gotten married at sunset this evening, out on Smather's Beach! They had gone out the night before for a very romantic dinner at "Latitudes" Restaurant (http://www.sunsetkeyhomes.com/lattitudessunsetkey.htm), and so decided that today they would let their wedding be the highlight of the day and not try to top that romantic dinner from the night before. No bridal party with 16 attendants, no tuxedos in the humid Key West evening, no big frilly wedding reception. Just a nice walk around town, and a cup of coffee in their favorite local spot, a little of the beaten trail.

So instead, they came and spent a piece of their wedding night with me, drinking coffee, chatting, and watching the fascinating parade of characters that comes through our door every night.

I feel blessed and honored to have played a role in their wedding night, a night they will remember and talk about forever!!!

It's kind of neat to think of all the different things that Damn Good Food is to people. We are their morning coffee spot, their place to pick up lunches to take fishing, their room service. We are their place for bar snacks as they sit at The White Tarpon (bar, directly next door to Damn Good Food To-Go), their place for desserts after walking off a big dinner....

And we are the place to spend a quiet, memorable evening after a beautiful, private, sunset wedding in Key West.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

A Bully Named Ike

I never thought that I had much in common with the phenomenal Tina Turner.... But now I find myself being bullied by a guy named Ike. He's making my friends and family go away, he's stealing my lunch money and in general threatening my safety and well-being.

So, here's the latest (sunday 9/7, 7:45am). Hurricane Ike is currently a Category 3 hurricane. All tracking models show the storm going over Cuba. After that, they divererge a bit in their predictions but all models show the storm riding south of us as a Category 1 or 2 storm, passing us sometime around Tuesday evening. It looks, at the moment, like we are most definitely going to experience what we like to refer to as "A Significant Weather Event", but that's as much as I feel comfortable predicting at the moment.

Damn Good Food To-Go is currently open for business, and we intend to stay that way, as always, until the power goes out or until there is simply no more demand for our services. Over the years, I've watched the pattern of behavior as a Hurricane approaches, and it looks like this:
    • When the visitor evacuation is declared (and that went into effect this morning - Sat - at 9am.... FAR too early, but that will take me down a whole different ranting path!!!), the departing visitors as well as our locals start to "nest". They order food like it's the last time they'll be able to eat, and they gather to talk about the storm.
    • When the storm is within 24 hours of passing us or hitting us, people stop eating and begin drinking....Hurricane Party!!!! Woohoo!!!! This involves excessive drinking, purely as a way to show respect to Mother Nature, of course. You see by getting completely hammered, people are saying to Mother Nature, "I acknowledge that I am completely powerless against you. Do with me what you will. I will not put up a fight oh Great One!"
    • When the storm has passed, and people awaken from their alcohol-induced stupors, they realize that they have not eaten in days.... and they call Damn Good Food To-Go!!!

We have been lucky over the past 10 years, and we have not been without power after a storm for too very long. Damn Good Food To-Go is in a very storm power grid so when we do lose power, it's only for a short time. We will hope for the same this time around.

My current plan is to stay and ride out the storm. I feel as safe as I can be in my condo, and I need to be able to evaluate damage, if any, in the business as quickly as possible.

I will keep you posted as things change. Thanks for checking in!!

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

New Friends in the Summer


So, there is now talk of our new friend Gustav (that would be Hurricane Gustav) passing through the area over Labor Day weekend. Contrary to what you hear in the national weather reports, it is not tracking toward Key West. Right now it looks like we may end up with a little extra wind over the weekend, BUT THE WEEKEND WILL NOT BE A WASH OUT!!

After Fay breezed by, our economy was negatively affected for over a week (we are still feeling the effects!!). I want to do my small part to let people know that Key West is here, eagerly awaiting the arrival of visitors to our lovely island.
Hurricanes are one the challenges we have living down here, and we take every necessary precaution to protect ourselves. However, we also have learned not to pull the "Chicken Little" routine!! The sky is NOT falling.
Come visit. We'll show you our little piece of paradise!!!

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Nothing but another bad hair day!!

So, that's the way it usually goes down here, thank goodness! We're out here, a seemingly unprotected little island, and manage to be in the direct path of nearly every Caribbean storm, and yet, here we remain: a little damp and windswept, but none the worse for wear.

....just another bad hair day in paradise!!

(Just so you know, we stayed open until anbout 2pm the day of the storm, let it pass and then reopened at 6am, for business as usual. For any of these storms, we stay open as long as we can - as long as we have power and as long as it's safe to get home - and will always reopen as quickly as possible. We didn't even lose power this time around, although I have reports from some friends who tell me that parts of the island were out for a few hours).

Thanks for checking in. Have a Damn Good Day.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

It's A Fay Day In Key West

So here we are. The phones are not ringing so much. There are very few people coming in to order. And the cook and I are sharing three hats instead our normal two (I'm covering the phones and the walk-in customers and he's cooking. then when we get deliveries, he's cooking, then delivering, and I'm then covering the phones and counter, and cooking!). TEAMWORK!!

You see, we are currently under a Hurricane Watch and mandatory evacuation, awaiting the arrival of what is currently "Tropical Storm Fay". One part of a mandatory evacuation is that the tourists are forced from the hotels and sent home. This leaves something of a hole in our economy down here.
As you can see from the picture above, we are in a direct line of our friend Fay, but it seems, by all current estimations, that we are going to have a blustery (OK, winds could get up to 75-80 MPH, but still, certainly not catastrophic!), rainy few days.
We will stay open as long as there is a demand (which seems to be rapidly waning, replaced by a desire to congregate and DRINK HEAVILY). We'll see what happens tomorrow, but we'll open in the morning and then stay open again until people stop wanting food again, or until the power goes out.
Rest assured though, Key West and Damn GOod Food To-Go will be here when this storm has passed, and we'll be waiting for your visit. Please come see us soon, and don't always take the Weather Channel hype at face value. Give us a call if you want a real weather report for the beautiful Florida Keys...
305-294-0011

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Visitors from Foreign Lands

Living in a tourist community means that we get lots of visitors from all over the world. One of the things that this means is that we must understand people who speak with very strong accents and who may not understand things that we have in this country, that we take for granted.

Recently, a couple of Italian men came in to Damn Goood Food To-Go for lunch. They were reading the menu and asked the girl working at the counter (who is relatively new at Damn Good Food and has had little exposure to people from other countries):

"What is this 'toorkey', and he pointed to the turkey build-your-own deli sandwich that is on the menu. Well, at first she couldn't understand what he was saying, but after a bit of pointing, she kind of figured it out, and replied:

"It's a sandwich. You pick your bread and whatever you would like on the sandwich."

"No, no, no," he said. "I don't know thees toorkey. What is this?"

She looked at me for help, but I was on the phone with another customer (and because she is it the later stages of her training, I wanted her to come up with an answer on her own). She finally came up with an excellent answer.

"It's like a big chicken."

"Oh, no thank you. Do you have dog?"

Well, she was completely horrified, and I was, much to her frustration, laughing so hard I could barely complete the order I was taking on the phone. At this point, I DID have to jump in and help.

I pointed to the two different hot dogs that we have on the menu, and the young men were very pleased. They ordered their dogs, paid and went outside to wait for their lunch. When I got off the phone, tears streaming down my face from laughing so hard, the poor girl was nearly hysterical.

"I THOUGHT THEY WANTED TO EAT DOG!!! I DON'T KNOW! I KNOW THEY EAT DOGS IN SOME COUNTRIES! AND THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TURKEY WAS! AND YOU WERE JUST LAUGHING! I MEAN, I THOUGHT THEY WERE GONNA GO OUTSIDE AND MAYBE PICKUP SOMEONE'S DOG AND TRY TO EAT IT! OH MY GOD!"

After a while, things returned to our version of "normal", and one girl's cultural horizons were broadened... just a bit.

Friday, May 2, 2008

A Little Obsession Goes A Long Way

I received a call about two months ago from a customer-friend who lives in the Boston area. It was the third call I received from him that week, and each time he calls, he says nothing in the way of introduction, but rather begins a slow recitation of ingredients. You see, my friend is a bit obsessed with replicating our Sweet Sesame Vinaigrette in his home kitchen. We make all of our sauces and dressings from scratch and there is something about the Sweet Sesame dressing that gets under people's skin (so to speak!).


Richard comes down to Key West to fish a number of times a year, to go fishing and, of course, to eat Damn Good Food. He always takes one or two of our Chinese Chicken Salads (with the famous dressing), some cookies, and a few other of his favorite items with him. I think, honestly, that the fishing is secondary, and uncovering the secret of the Sesame Vinaigrette is why he really comes down here.

During this last phone call, he told me that he had actually enlisted the help of a famous chef friend of his to break down the ingredients and ratios....

I haven't heard from him since :( Either he broke the secret recipe, or has been institutionalized over this obsession of his. Hmmmm. I'll let you know when I hear from him.

PS. I am currently in talks with a small company to produce some of our favorite dressings and sauces (including the psychosis-inducing sesame vinaigrette!!!) for us, for sale in local markets and then soon, I hope, in "fine food stores everywhere"! Updates to follow.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Becoming Unemployed in Key West

It must first be understood that people seldom come to Key West to work. In fact, many come to Key West to not work. The interesting thing is that I seldom have to fire people; they tend to weed themselves out, most often by pulling the no-show/no-call. Here are some of the excuses I've had.... just this week.

* First was the "I just can't stand to make any more milkshakes" excuse for quitting (she then no-showed anyway). Oh well, we take pride in our delicious milkshakes, and each one must be made with love to qualify as a Damn Good Shake!!

* Next was the person who no-showed/no-called for his Saturday and Sunday shifts (not responding to calls to make sure he was ok). His excuse, when he showed up promptly on payday, was priceless: "I am so sorry; I know I really screwed up. My neighbor and I made margaritas the night before and I got so sick. He did too so we think there was something bad in the margaritas." He said it with a straight face so I figured the least I could do was not laugh at him. I would have cut him some slack if he had just said that he'd had waaaay to much to drink!!

* Then there are the ones who have claimed that they were in jail. The problem there is that I check the sheriff's department website (a website that most business owners in Key West have bookmarked!) every morning to see who as been arrested. So, to all my employees, present and and future, unless you really have been arrested, that's not a good excuse to use. And if you HAVE been arrested, I should be your one phone call. In fact, I was someones one call this week (and he still made it to work).... But that's another story for another time.


Tuesday, April 15, 2008

World Class Sailfishing!!!

Well, it's time again for the World Sailfish Tournament here in Key West. This is an enormous event, for the world of sport-fishing, for Key West and for Damn Good Food To-Go. http://www.worldsailfish.com/home.htm

This is big week for us 'cuz we feed a huge number of the fishermen and -women. It's about midnight right now and we're making sandwiches (about a hundred for tomorrow morning pickup) that will all be picked up, along with breakfast and coffee between 5:30am (we open a little early for this tournament) and 7:00am. It's complete madness and it couldn't be more fun.

It's nice to see some of our old friends who come to fish the tournament every year, and see new faces who will become dedicated Damn Good Customers. We're grateful to all of them, and we're thrilled to play a part in this major competition.

Good Luck to all who are competing, espially to those who are fueled by Damn Good Food. Be careful on Wednesday; winds will be blowing hard! Chase those Sailfish, and bring back great pictures!!

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Our Patron Saint

Since I mentioned my dog Zoe in the previous post, I thought that I should show you a picture. This picture was taken at sunset at Ft. Zachary Taylor, one of the State Parks here in Key West. It's a beautiful park to walk around, whether you want to be on the beach or explore the historic Fort. You get a beautiful view of sunset, and of all of the boats coming and going.... small sail boats, catamarans and parasil boats, schooners, fishing boats, cruise ships and coast guard cutters. You can take a picnic lunch (maybe from Damn Good Food.... hmmmmmm).

Anyway, this picture of Zoe is up on a shelf here in the restaurant and Zoe keeps and eye on all of us while we work, and all of you when you order your food.

Bon Voyage

Tonight I bid a friend and employee a fond farewell and bon voyage. John, known to his friends outside of Damn Good Food To-Go as Mike, (that's very much a Key West thing. People here often, it seems, have two names), is working his last shift for about five months tonight. He is getting on his sailboat, which he lives on with his sweet dog Loki (whom I am pretty sure was separate at birth from my sweet princess, Zoe), and is sailing home to the coast of North Carolina, to spend some time with his family.

You see, down here lots of people live on their boats, but unlike their landed versions that occupy "mobile home estates", these really are mobile homes. This sounds like quite a daring adventure to many who do not live the island life, and, in fact, to many who do. It is, of course, an adventure, like any road trip is, and come this weekend, John/Mike will pull anchor and head north for a few months. But for those who are acting like he is a embarking on a trans-atlantic sail, look at a map. We're only talking about 700-800 miles. He's just getting off the rock for a while!

He will be missed greatly at Damn Good Food To-Go and we (I, especially!) are counting the days until he comes back.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Time Flies....

I realize it's been about 3 weeks since I last posted. That's because we have been exceptionally busy. This is, of course, a very busy time of year in Key West with college Spring Breaks and Easter holiday for many of the younger kids. It was made a little nuttier this year with Easter falling in March so we had the convergence of the Breakers and the families with their youngsters.

What that has meant to us at Damn Good Food is that often, in the late evening, we get groups of Spring Breakers coming in to feed before they go out to party, and families with many children no taller that my knees, starving for one last jolt of sugar before the parents TRY to put them to bed. It's an interesting show!!

Here's a sampling of some of the funny stuff I've seen & heard while working over the past month:

Spring Break Girl: "What size is your serving of chili?"
Damn Good Betsy: "It's a 16oz. container."
Spring Break Girl: "Hmmm. Is that almost a pint?"
Damn Good Betsy: "Yeah, pretty close to it."

My other favorite was the second night that 3 families, all related, came in around 10pm with all of their your children (there were at least 8-10 kids under 7) for ice cream. Among our many desserts, we have an ice cream freezer with all the yummy ice cream bars: Haagen Dazs, Crunch Bars, Ice Cream Sandwiches, Dibs, Strawberry Shortcake.

Well, this particular night there was just 1 Strawberry Shortcake bar left, but two little girls wanted it. This was settled very quickly when one of the girls (4-5 years old) reached in, grabbed the single remaining Strawberry Shortcake bar, and licked the outside of the package. She then just looked at her little cousin with a look that so clearly said, "Well, I've got mine. Now what are you gonna have?" Her cousin was, naturally, inconsolable.

Never underestimate the power of a single little girl when her mind is set,or the power of a lone Strawberry Shortcake bar!!

Come and visit Key West, and Damn Good Food To-Go. We're having a blast, and we don't even charge extra for the show.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Rough Night?

When I came in to open the restaurant this morning (with a two hour sleep deficit: 1 hour due to daylight savings time, and 1 hour due to the revelling Spring Breakers...) I was greeting with this note from the night shift:

I Hate Drunk People
Quest: What's the best thing u got?
Ans: Cappuccino Chocolate Chip Muffin
Quest #2: .... For a guy?
Quest #3: Can I see it?
Quest #4: Is it sweet?

I imagine there was more (I've been through it myself so many times) but she ran out of room on the white board and, thank goodness, did not resort to writing on the walls (which would have, by the way, been fully warranted in this situation).

Thursday, March 6, 2008

"Regular" is not an Option @ Damn Good Food To-Go

At Damn Good Food To-Go, "Regular" is neither a Size nor a Flavor.

We offer Large (16oz) and Small (10oz) coffee and orange juice. "Regular" is not a size option.

We offer 6 flavors of muffins (blueberry, cranberry-orange, banana-nut, cappuccino chocolate chip, corn and raisin bran). "Regular" is not a flavor option.

We offer 6 types/flavors of bagel (plain, poppy, sesame, onion, everything and cinnamon raisin). "Regular" is not an option.

And while I'm on the subject, "White" is not a flavor of cheese. We offer American (yellow), Bleu Cheese (you can work that one out), as well as Cheddar, Swiss, Provolone and Pepperjack, all of which are White , and each of which has a distinctly different flavor. Please, help me understand the selection of cheese based on color!!!

I have tried to provide lots of options on the menu, to satisfy the largest number of customers and the most diverse range of personal tastes. However, it has come to my attention that all of these options seem to be quite overwhelming to many people.

I am considering a simplification of the menu, perhaps like the one in the diner scene in the movie, "My Cousin Vinny":
MENU
breakfast.................... $6.95
lunch............................ $7.95
dinner................................... $9.95
It would certainly make things easier for the customers, and my cooks would be thrilled!!! What do you think?

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Welcome to Damn Good Food To-Go

Welcome to all current and future Damn Good Customers. I decided to start this blog for a number of reasons:
  1. It will be a good place to tell stories (when I regale friends and family with tales of my daily interactions with customers [funny, irritating, sweet, sometimes just wacky], they usually think that I am making it all up - or, at least, embellishing. I swear, I make none of this up. They also tell me I should write this stuff down... so here I go).
  2. It will be a place to provide some guidance (based on years of daily experience) with ordering your Damn Good Food To-Go.
  3. Sometimes, it may be a place to vent or to comment on life here in Paradise; an insider's view of life in Key West... the good, the bad and the ugly (sometimes all wrapped up in one)!

Thanks for stopping in for a look. I hope you'll keep check back, and I hope you'll come in to see us, whether you live here in Key West or when you come down to visit. Who knows.... your visit could make the pages of the Damn Good Blog!!

See you soon, and don't forget to make every day a Damn Good Day. Betsy