The Duval Crawl

Standing at the corner of South and Duval Streets in Key West, the Brawny Sherpa and I are tempted first by the Southernmost on the Beach Cafe, which is an easy commute from our room at the little La Mer Hotel, which is part of the Southernmost Resorts. There’s no way we’re going to have a bad time at an open-air bar and restaurant overlooking the beach and the water. We manage to slip in early one evening for cocktails and beet salad, hold the pancetta, without reserving a table or having to wait. Why plan ahead when you’re on vacation in the Florida Keys?

During a good part of our stay, we don’t stray much off Duval for nourishment. Trekking north from the beach, we enjoy margaritas at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville at 500 Duval, swing by Sloppy Joe’s at 201 Duval just because it’s there and we’re drawn to its music and literary history, and just enjoy the dive that is the Hog’s Breath Saloon at 400 Front Street.

We quickly make the Sunset Pier at Ocean Key Resort a regular stop where we drink rum runners and look at all of the boats. Not only do we like the scenery, we enjoy the address: Zero Duval Street. The service isn’t quite as fast as the service we’re used to in New York, but we figure the management just likes us to linger.

The place we prefer, though, the one bar that seems to us to be the most like the Key West of Hemingway and salvagers and failed writers and tragic romances is the Green Parrot Bar, where no snivelling is allowed. Here on 601 Whitehead Street, at the corner of Southard, you can sit and sip a spiced rum and ginger ale and consider the wall art or remember—or forget—all your days with rum and bars and heat and sweat. And then you can go across the street to a bodega and buy a lottery ticket.

Note from the Brawny Sherpa: In between bars, there are many fine places to grab a cigar.

—Lori Tripoli