#17   FLORIDA – Destined To Gain Weight

Usually after eating a substantial breakfast on the road, I try to tone things down during the rest of the day. Lunch might be an apple or a small salad and dinner a salad, sandwich, or a piece of fish. This all fell apart when we came to Florida. After arriving in Destin FL we decided to go to a restaurant called McGuire’s Pub for dinner. The amount of food I managed to ingest at McGuire’s was almost obscene.  I ordered an appetizer called Irish Bleu Chips which are homemade Irish potato chips covered with bleu cheese crumbles and bleu cheese dressing. Since this was listed as an appetizer I also ordered a cup of navy bean soup and shrimp scampi alfredo (shrimp scampi combined with shrimp alfredo sauce and pasta!) as my entrée. Here is a picture of the appetizer. Although delicious and addicting, if an appetizer is defined as a small dish whose purpose is to stimulate the appetite, this one failed miserably on many levels.

The Healthy One said “You don’t have to finish everything, do you?” Silly question. Needless to say, when I woke up the next morning I was still feeling totally full. We were on a schedule and that schedule had us driving to Georgia that day so if I wanted to have breakfast in Florida, I had to suck it up, or suck it down in this case, and do it that morning.

Asiago’s Skillet
Destin, Florida

AMBIENCE:  Asiago’s Skillet is an offshoot of the Asiago Catering Company in Fort Walton Beach. I assume that the catering company emphasized asiago cheese because the Skillet only had a couple of dishes with asiago cheese. Asiago’s Skillet only serves one meal - breakfast. When we arrived at about 8:30 AM, the place was empty of customers. According  to our waiter Dutch, we had missed the crowds. The restaurant opens at midnight and closes at noon. Peak times are at 2 AM when the bars let out and at 4 AM when people get a bite to eat before heading out on a charter fishing boat.  I first learned about the unusual hours of operation from this sign we saw upon entering the restaurant.

I found the sign somewhat confounding. Who or what was Bloody Mary Buffett? A Jimmy Buffett inspired cocktail maybe? Or a Warren Buffett tomato juice company investment? Or maybe just a misspelling of the word buffet?   It turned out that the sign maker did not know how to spell very well. In the corner of the restaurant was a Bloody Mary Bar where, after receiving a large mug of vodka, you perused the bar to pick and choose your ingredients, just like a buffet.

A Bloody Mary bar seemed like a fine idea. This way the bar patrons could keep their buzz going until dawn while the designated driver could drink coffee to stay awake.  Drinking a Bloody Mary or two and then taking a boat out into the Gulf of Mexico however does not seem like a great strategy for catching fish. Nor did it seem like a smart idea if you had a 6 1/2 hour drive ahead that day up into Georgia. 

The somewhat small restaurant sits on the major highway that runs through Destin. Inside was pleasant enough with a diner feel. The place was amazingly clean given that there were probably a whole bunch of drunk people inside just hours before we ate.

   

4 out of 5 stars.

FOOD:  Even though I wasn’t very hungry, I didn’t feel I could hold back.  First, I ordered a large fresh squeezed orange juice because that’s what you do in Florida. I next ordered the Bagel Boy Bull’s Eye which was described as a grilled bagel with eggs cooked inside. It came with potatoes and a couple of sausage patties.

The orange juice came right out and I was a little dismayed that there was a big ice cube in the glass. You dare dilute my fresh squeezed OJ? I felt better and a little chagrined when I discovered upon finishing the juice that the ice cube turned out to be frozen orange juice. It was a nice touch.

My breakfast missed the bull’s eye by a couple of inches. The grilled bagel didn’t work for me. It was as if the flavor of the bagel had been grilled away. If there was some way to toast the bagel and then stick the egg in the middle I would have been happier. The potatoes were outstanding, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. The sausage was very good.

The Healthy One got the Breakfast Burrito containing two scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, pico, & chipotle sauce. She also had a choice of bacon, sausage, ham, or chorizo, to put in the burrito. She declined all four meats – that’s why she’s the Healthy One.  I had established a pretty good rapport with our waiter and was tempted to ask him to give me the Healthy One’s meat choice on the side but the appetite was still stunted by last night’s dinner so I held my tongue. The Healthy One was very happy with her meat-less burrito and also agreed that the potatoes were awesome.

4 1/2 out of 5 stars

COFFEE:  We each got our own individual carafes of coffee which was much appreciated. As much as I liked Dutch, it was nice not to have to wait for him to come around and refill the cups. The coffee itself was nothing special. It had your typical mediocre diner-like taste.

3 1/2 stars out of 5

SERVICE: Our waiter Dutch was excellent: friendly, informative, and everything went without a hitch.

COST: $30.74 with tax and tip.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT DESTIN: 

Destin lies on the Florida panhandle’s Gulf Coast, once known as the Redneck Riviera but since rebranded as the Emerald Coast. It has grown enormously in the last 40 years from a modest fishing village to a major resort community. Destin is famed for its beaches which have some of the whitest sand in the world. The nice beaches and clear water have attracted hordes of tourists, high-rise condominiums, traffic jams, and gaudy T-shirt emporiums. Tourists spent $738 million in Destin during 2015. According to a local economist, 75 percent of Destin’s economy is tourist-based.

BURN THOSE BREAKFAST CALORIES OFF:

We walked the beach at Gulf Islands National Seashore. According to exercise research, given the same distance you burn 36% more calories walking in sand versus walking on a hard surface.

November 3, 2016

NEXT UP: Georgia