What's the food culture in Key West?

Key West wakes up to Cuban coffee, not drip. A colada from Cuban Coffee Queen on Margaret Street costs $4 and comes in a styrofoam cup with thimble-sized plastic cups meant for sharing. Each shot runs about 2 ounces of espresso folded with sweetened condensed milk until it turns caramel-colored and syrupy. Sandy's Cafe on White Street does the same thing for $3, and locals tend to prefer it. Breakfast fills the 7-9:30am window at most kitchens, and by 10am the focus shifts to lunch prep. Blue Heaven on Thomas Street serves eggs with banana bread under a canopy of banyan trees while roosters pace between tables. The chickens are feral, protected under Monroe County code, and they will go after your toast.

The conch fritter is Key West's signature dish, and at least half the versions on Duval Street taste like deep-fried dough with a faint memory of seafood. B.O.'s Fish Wagon on Caroline Street does the best version on the island, fried in a skillet behind a wooden shack that looks like it should have been condemned in 1985. The batter stays thin, the conch pieces give 3-4 bites of resistance each, and you eat standing at a picnic table smeared with Datil pepper hot sauce. Conch chowder splits two ways. The clear-broth version is traditional Florida Keys, and the tomato-based recipe came south from New England with the tourist trade. Most restaurants on Duval default to the red. For the clear broth, try Half Shell Raw Bar at Lands End Village, where the kitchen still makes it the old way at $9 a bowl.

Stock Island sits one bridge east of Key West and has the food locals eat on their days off. Hogfish Bar and Grill on Safe Harbor Marina serves a hogfish sandwich on Cuban bread that might be the best fish sandwich in the Florida Keys, at $18-20. Hogfish is a reef species with mild, white flesh, and the Stock Island kitchen grills it with nothing more than coleslaw on the side. Matt's Stock Island Kitchen across the marina does a smoked fish dip with saltines that carries a campfire-smoke taste you can smell from the parking lot. Back on Key West proper, El Siboney on Catherine Street has served Cuban food for over 40 years. The ropa vieja, shredded beef braised in tomato sofrito, comes in portions big enough to feed two people for $16. Each plate of yellow rice carries saffron-tinted oil pooling at the edges, about $3 as a side.

Key lime pie in Key West follows one test. Yellow filling, not green. Any restaurant serving green pie is using food coloring and bottled juice, not real Key limes. Kermit's Key West Key Lime Shoppe on Elizabeth Street sells a frozen version on a stick, dipped in dark chocolate, for $5.50. The frozen texture works when September humidity sits near 80%. For dinner, Santiago's Bodega on Bahama Street fills up by 7:30pm on weekends with its small-plate format, and the date-and-goat-cheese flatbread at $14 is the one to order. Latitudes on Sunset Key requires a 10-minute ferry from the Westin marina, costs $15 more per plate than the main island, but the yellowtail snapper over the water at sunset is hard to argue with. Late-night options are thin. Better Than Sex on Simonton Street serves dessert-only in near-darkness, and its peanut-butter pie will strike you as either romantic or insufferable.