The Keys to Life

Happy Friday everyone!

Last weekend I took a little adventure down to Key West and was delighted by a few dining spots: Hungry Tarpon, and NineOneFive were two of them. Only snapped a few photos so bare with me!

There are so many places to eat down there, its ridiculous. Nine times out of ten you’ll get a good meal because everything is just caught and extremely fresh.

So our first stop was at Hungry Tarpon at Robbie’s Marina. If you have time to walk around, they have a little market place with tents and local vendors which is always fun. Gotta get those souvenirs for everyone, right?! 😉
It was packed when we got there and weren’t even sure if we were going to get a table! Luckily, we got led to an awesome little bar-like tabletop, overlooking this:
Sadly, I didn’t get any pictures of the Blackened Ahi Tuna Tacos I ordered (it was a completely “in the moment” trip), but all that’s necessary to say, is that they were incredible, and filling.
Three tacos on a soft flour tortilla, topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, and cilantro. Whatever combination of spices with their ‘special sauce’ they used for the blackened ahi is a huge reason for this post. We also ordered Blackened Shrimp Tacos, and again, the seasoning on those little shrimps made it so difficult to stop eating!
Before those tacos came out we ordered their Tuna Sashimi, which came in a martini glass with a seaweed salad bed, an avocado layer, and the tuna atop it all. AmmMmmazing.
This little place was awesome. 🙂

Next stop on CaptivEATing, dinner at NineOneFive in Key West.
This was probably my favorite meal of the whole trip. Every single item on each plate was filled with flavor and complete deliciousness. A nice, bold, 2011 Chateau Haut-Surget Lalande-de-Pomerol assisted our palettes with the divinity as well.
This place, is a place you want to go to no matter how much time you have down in Key West. I’m just going to get right to the point.
Atmosphere, phenomenal. Food, so so phenomenal. Service, phenomenal.
Actually, our guy was SO on point, that we took his suggestions for food and literally, 4-out-of-4 recommendations, were melt in your mouth status. From the appetizer to the dessert, each suggestion topped the last one.

What we ordered: Devils on Horseback (bacon wrapped dates with roasted garlic and a soy citrus sauce), Braised Pork Tacos (orange chipotle braised pork, avocado salsa, and lime creme fraiche), and a Crispy Whole Yellowtail Snapper.
Wow.

No photos of the Devils on Horseback but the bacon on the outside of the dates was cooked perfectly, they were a good size, and the citrus soy they came with was perfectly salty for the sweetness of the dates.
Another no-show, the Tacos. Holy, freakin’ moly were those little tortilla pockets good!!!
That was a characteristic of the tacos that made the dish better than expected; they were folded into little pockets, versus having an open taco where all the braised pork would have fallen out of. MM, mm, Mm!! Juicy, tender and extremely flavorful.

And finally, one I CAN show you, the Yellowtail Snapper.
Usually I’m not a fan of the entire fish, but this night I was feeling daring and knew I wouldn’t be steered wrong. Man, I really wasn’t steered wrong. We ate the fish with chopsticks, piece by piece off the bones, each bite incredibly refreshing and flakey. Everything was just incredible. I think thats been a very used word in this review.. Must mean something. 😉

We also ordered a wonderful dessert that was chocolate upon chocolate upon coffee ice cream, which was, can you guess? Incredible.

Thank you, NineOneFive for such a pleasurable experience.

My friends, go to these little gems when you make your way down south.

Thanks for reading and keeping up with CaptivEATing. Hope you were captivated by something!