Good Southern Living on Tap at The Owl

Owl Tap Room
75 Commerce St.
Apalachicola, FL



Just a few short years ago finding good craft beer in a small Southern town was about as difficult as finding a virgin along Florida State’s sorority row.

Yuengling was about as exotic as it got.

My how things have changed.

For the better.

The Owl Tap Room in the oyster capital of the world, Apalachicola, Florida, is a perfect example.

The beer list spelled out on a big chalk board declares, “Welcome to beer heaven!”

Heaven indeed.

Recently opened as the younger, hipper sister to the frumpy white tablecloth Owl Café next door, the Owl Tap Room sports 15 rotating taps of top notch regional and national craft beers.

And I do mean top notch.

Somebody who knows their beer does the ordering for this place.

Obscure high quality beers from America’s greatest breweries like Ommegang, Bell’s and Southern Tier pour from the taps.

The best beers from Florida and the Southeast are also well represented such as Cigar City in Tampa, Intuition in Jacksonville and Highland in Asheville.

The selection is continually changing as evidenced by the multitude of colorful tap handles hanging from the rafters.

Florida was one of the last states in America to develop a taste for good beer, so finding creative breweries in the Sunshine State can be a challenge.

One of the best is Cigar City. So I was excited to try their High Seas IPA, a flavor I’d never tried before.

Cigar City is famous for its delicious Jai Alai IPA, but this was something different.

Brewed in Ponce, Puerto Rico and then dry hopped with Simcoe hops on its journey back to Tampa in a refrigerated vessel, High Seas IPA has a spicy, fruity snap you’d expect from a top notch IPA.

My Highland Gaelic Ale was a poor choice to follow such a kick-ass brew. There is no way the much more subtle flavors of this ale could match up against a hoppy IPA. But it grew on me as I approached the bottom of the glass.

Next up I had to try Hop House Pale Ale from Ommegang.

Ommegang is a tiny brewery in Cooperstown, New York (home of the Baseball Hall of Fame) that has earned a world renowned reputation. Literally.

Legendary Belgian brewery Duvel was so smitten by the Belgian-style beers being produced by this little Yankee brewery that they bought the damn place.

That’s like Formula One inviting me to race my Toyota Solara in the Monaco Grand Prix.

The Hop House Pale Ale is a hoppy version of a fruity Belgian ale. The Belgian yeast reminds you of the style while the spicy hop finish puts a smile on your face.

Next up I wanted to try the Thomas Creek Porter out of South Carolina but the guy sitting next to me got the last one before the keg blew.

Luckily for me, they replaced it with something even better, Southern Tier 2X IPA, one of my favorite double IPAs from one of my favorite breweries in America. Southern Tier never disappoints.

While my brain could still comprehend what I was drinking, I finished up with pint of Bell’s Smitten Rye, a hoppy pale ale brewed with rye grains, which adds a nice spicy kick.

While clearly beer is the most important item on the menu in the Tap Room, you can also order food.

Good thing too considering all the hops and alcohol flowing through my blood stream.

Of course the reason everyone comes to the tiny town of 3,500 people on the “Forgotten Coast” of Florida is to slurp down fresh Apalachicola oysters.

At the Owl, they proudly serve “13 Mile Brand” oysters.

Most oyster eaters on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts aren’t pretentious enough to fret over oyster brands.

To most southerners, an oyster is an oyster is an oyster.

At most, you might hear them comment about the oyster being “salty” or “fresh”, which varies based on the wind direction and the resulting salinity of the water from which it was plucked.

On the West Coast or at the Grand Central Station Oyster Bar in New York City, you pay four bucks a piece for oysters from specific estuaries and then must commence to pretentiously waxing poetic about the subtle differences.

Here in Apalachicola, if your oyster carries a brand, it will probably be “13 Mile”, which is the only brand sold by The Owl.

13 Mile is the name given to an oyster dock owned for four generations by the Ward family located along Apalachicola Bay which is…you guessed it…

…13 miles from town.

Most days you can catch one of their 13 Mile Brand shrimp boats tied up to the dock downtown.

Maybe I need to become a more pretentious oyster eater because my half dozen raw 13 Mile oysters were some of the biggest, plumpest, most delicious oysters I had in Apalachicola.

Clean, salty and sweet, each slurp was a succulent taste of Apalachicola Bay.

My 13 Mile Brand oysters were like a mini vacation on the half shell.

And at less than a buck a piece, an absolute bargain. After all, if you only have to transport them 13 miles in the back of a refrigerated truck, it dramatically cuts down the transportation costs.

And dramatically ups the freshness.

The fried 13 Mile oysters were excellent too, perfectly prepared to a nice golden crisp. The horseradish dipping sauce was good but unnecessary.

While the menu in the tap room is a bit more modest than in the more formal Owl Café next door, there was a nice selection of options to soak up all that good beer.

I went with the alligator sausage sandwich.

There’s just something fun about eating an animal more dangerous than me.

In the swamp in my backyard I might be at a disadvantage, but here at the Owl Tap Room it was Suit757 at the top of the food chain as I admired the black grill marks on my perfectly charred tube of mashed up gator parts.

The sautéed onions and sauerkraut gave the gator a nice sweet and tangy accent.

Full of beer, oysters and gator, I stumbled out onto Commerce Street a happy man.

I mean I’m always happy after a good meal.

But what put me in an especially good mood was knowing that the craft beer revolution has spread even to this tiny nook of the American South -- one of my favorite destinations of the wide Suit757 map.

A trip to Apalach no longer means a weekend of washing down my oysters with a steady stream of Miller Lite and Yuengling.

In fact, as I crossed the street, I peered into the empty storefront that soon will be “Oyster City Brewing Company”. The folks at the Owl are building their own brew pub!

How cool is that?

Life in the Confederacy just keeps getting better.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Up the Creek with Kate Upton

Up the Creek
313 Water Street
Apalachicola, FL



They call this the “Forgotten Coast.”

And a trip to the small town of Apalachicola on the Gulf Coast of Florida’s Panhandle will help you understand why.

There are no interstates here. The nearest airport is an hour and a half away.

This is the northwest corner of Florida with more in common culturally, geographically and politically with Alabama than Miami or Orlando.

The tea and Southern drawls are sweeter here.

The Spanish moss hangs thicker here.

And the pace of life is slower here.

Apalachicola’s quaint beauty and rustic isolation is probably why Sports Illustrated chose this town to shoot its 2012 Swimsuit issue with Kate Upton.


Any town good enough for Kate Upton is good enough for me.

Mickey Mouse has his charms, I suppose, but when I travel the backroads of the Sunshine State, it is sugary beaches, cold beer and salty oysters that I’m looking for.

Apalachicola and the “Forgotten Coast” is where I come to find them.

A tiny town of just 3,000 people, Apalachicola is synonymous with oysters.

The Apalachicola River drains out of the farmlands of Georgia and Alabama spilling its contents into Apalachicola Bay where fresh water collides with the salty Gulf of Mexico, creating the ideal brackish cauldron of seawater that oysters crave.

Blessed by geography and God’s grace, this town is perfectly situated to take advantage of the bounty of one of Earth’s perfect oyster estuaries.

90% of the oysters consumed in Florida (and two thirds of the oysters consumed in the Southeast) come from this little bay in the “forgotten” corner of Florida.

As you might expect, Apalach, as the locals call it, has quite a few options for knocking back cold beers and the local delicacies served on a half shell.

Like Apalach itself, Up the Creek benefits greatly from its location.

Rising high into the air hard against the waterfront, Up the Creek is the ideal place to eat oysters in this ideal oyster town.

Fresh Apalachicola oysters always taste good. But they just seem even tastier when you eat them outside on a big porch overlooking the water with an ice cold India Pale Ale in hand.

Since this is the middle of winter -- and as I already explained, this is a world away from the warmth of Miami -- I opted for the heated glassed-in half of the deck.

Somewhat surprising for this remote crevasse of the Deep South, Up the Creek had a very nice selection of craft beer along with the usual ubiquitous mass produced stuff.

On tap were two of my favorite IPAs on earth -- Southern Tier out of Upstate New York and Cigar City Jai Alai out of Tampa.

I alternated between the two, hoping to settle the debate in my mind as to which one I liked best.

Unfortunately the results of my testing were inconclusive as my palette and mind got foggier as the afternoon wore on.

The Cigar City Jai Alai IPA was a little sweeter with a fuller alcohol kick than the Southern Tier but both are top notch facsimiles of the style.

I think. The details are a bit fuzzy.

It was an expensive experiment as Up the Creek charged six bucks a pint -- triple the price of the Bud and Miller Lite taps.

I think these small town places in the rural South are catching on that big city tourists want good beer -- but they are going to charge the hell out of them for it.

Meanwhile the locals snicker as they suck on their two dollar long necks of red white and blue.

Oh well. That’s American entrepreneurship at its best.

I’m certainly not going to fault them for giving me what I want and making a profit off it.

In this case, good beer was just an added bonus because I was here to eat local Apalachicola oysters regardless of beer selection.

Up the Creek didn’t disappoint.

I’ve eaten a lot of oysters in my day, but these were some of the most exquisite.

I ordered them in two ways -- steamed and “Southern Fella”.

The “Southern Fella” were steamed with finely chopped collard greens, butter, parmesan cheese and bacon bits.

They looked like a work of art -- almost too good to eat.

Almost.

Decadent is the only way to describe them.

Unlike oysters baked with goops of melted cheese, these gourmet oysters allowed the toppings to complement the oysters rather than overwhelm them.

I mean, isn’t that the point of eating oysters? To actually taste the oysters?

You are paying a buck a piece for them -- an absolute bargain, by the way, compared to the price you’ll pay for oysters in Portland, Oregon or New York City. You want to make sure you get that taste of the sea you can only get from a freshly shucked oyster.

If I wanted lasagna on the half shell, I’d have gone out for Italian and skipped the oysters altogether.

The parmesan butter and the tender greens enhanced the flavor of the oysters while the bacon lended a smoky crunch.

Bacon enhances the flavor of EVERYTHING!

But as good as the gourmet “Southern Fella” oysters were, I have to say the more simple steamed oysters were even better.

Unencumbered by competing -- though complimentary -- flavors, the succulence of Apalachicola’s famous shellfish shone more brightly with nothing but some butter, parsley and seasoned salt.


I jazzed a couple up with some Ed’s Red Hot Sauce, a local cocktail/hot sauce hybrid made up the road in Port St. Joe.

Like a miracle bra on Kate Upton, it was good…

…but unnecessary.

What made these oysters so extraordinary was the labor and care that went into serving them.

First of all, Up the Creek only serves the freshest, plumpest oysters.

Each and every oyster is shucked by hand, freed from the shell by severing the attaching muscle and left to steam in a bath of butter for the absolute perfect duration of time.

There is no grit or grime or shell fragments to deal with. All the work is done for you. All you have to do is pop the oyster in your mouth and enjoy.

Easy and delicious.

Almost too easy.

I found myself exclaiming the virtues of my oysters to my waiter while ordering up another couple dozen.

“I know what you mean! I’ve been enjoying them my entire life,” said my friendly attentive waiter in a coastal drawl.

I say too easy because the tab for my afternoon of oysters and beer came to nearly seventy bucks.

But worth every penny.

In fact, the next day I came back again.

While the temperature wasn’t any warmer, this time the sun was out.

So I opted for the open air section of the deck facing the bay and the oyster trawlers tied up to the pilings.

I scored the only picnic table in the sun, a crucial coup considering that 60 degrees with a breeze off the bay wasn’t going to work for me in the shade.

If possible, the beer and oysters tasted even better in the sweet salt air with warming sunshine beating down on a bright blue afternoon.


After more of those delicious oysters and a couple more pints of IPA, I decided to explore the Up the Creek menu a bit further.

You think I would pass up the alligator, sausage, shrimp and crab gumbo?

Not a chance.

As good as it sounded -- big chunks of gator and sausage in a spicy crab meat broth warmed me up as the pelicans enviously swooped by searching for their own meal.

I had to try the alligator burger too.

Made with fresh ground up alligator meat and topped with a sweet mayo and a spicy slaw, this was one of the strangest sandwiches I’ve ever eaten.

It’s hard to describe.

The burger had the consistency of a swampy crab cake.


Okay. I know that is not helping much.

Like a gatorey chicken salad? Is that better?

No?

I don’t know.

It was odd. The meat was white, crumbly and surprisingly bland. Most of the flavor came from the tasty condiments. And the dousing I gave it with some tableside “Tiger Sauce”.

Oh, well. At least I can now say I’ve tried an alligator meat burger.

That might be the most I can recommend about it.

The side dish was the highlight -- fried green beans.

Vegetables taste so much better when they are breaded and deep fried. Especially when dipped in Up the Creek’s homemade rémoulade sauce available on the topping bar inside.

As I paid my tab and hit the road for civilization, I realized that this place is the ideal personification of everything an oyster-eating journey to the Forgotten Coast should be.

Up the Creek has the freshest plumpest oysters and the nicest views of this quaint bayside town.

Now I can see why Sports Illustrated chose this place as the backdrop for shooting Kate Upton in her various states of undress.

The American South never looked so good.

I wonder if she’ll ever come back to Apalach.

I know I will.

Hey, Kate, if you want to meet me on the deck at Up the Creek for a few dozen oysters, the t-shirt is on me.

Rating: Bought two shirts! (One for me and one for Kate.)

Picking Fist Fights in the Bluegrass State

Hall’s on the River
1225 Athens Boonesboro Rd.
Boonesborough, KY




I plead guilty.

I’ll be the first to admit it. I bear an anti-Kentucky prejudice.

Call me a bluegrass bigot.

The quickest way to pick a fist fight in these parts is to tell a Kentuckian that his state isn’t part of the South.

I understand the sensitivity. Who wouldn’t want to be a southerner?

We have nicer weather, tastier food, better music and hotter chicks.

Oh, and we don’t care how many or what types of guns you own. In fact, the more you have, the safer we feel.

So I get it.

But here’s the problem.

Kentucky is NOT a southern state.

Kentucky didn’t secede.

Or sure Kentuckians will whine that their politicians in Frankfort were forced to remain in the union at the point of federal firearms, but still…

…the fact remains, Kentucky never officially joined the Confederacy.

Therefore, Kentucky is NOT a southern state.
That and the fact that unlike every southern state, Kentucky still forces its workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment.

So I don’t care if the Wildcats play football in the SEC. Kentucky isn’t a southern state.

Case closed.

However, as you drive up and down the rolling hills of western Clark county, past the ancient stone walls and picket fences, through horse and cattle farms and by the old leaning red barns that dot the bluegrass fields south of Lexington, even an anti-Kentucky bigot like me has to admit, this sure FEELS like the South.

Tucked down in the bottom of a hollow at the bend of the Kentucky River, you’ll find Hall’s on the River, a quintessential Kentucky culinary landmark that has been serving up the best uniquely Kentucky dishes for decades.

Down here in this part of the Commonwealth, the Southern accents are thicker, the pickup trucks are muddier and the camo trucker caps are worn more sincerely than in vast swaths of Georgia, Alabama or Tennessee.

In fact, as I pulled into Hall’s parking lot I thought for sure I could hear Kentucky kickass-country-rocker Chris Knight singing “River Road” over the ripple of the water flowing by the pilings:

So drive til you can’t drive no more
Til the road runs out and the green water rolls
Think you’ve gone as far as you can go
Well the party’s just getting started on River Road

As if to testify to Kentucky’s southern authenticity, Hall’s menu is stocked with southern fried delicacies.

Frog legs. Catfish. Chicken fried steak. Fried green tomatoes. Sweet tea.

Hall’s is a taste of Old Kentucky.

My waiter said that in the summertime, the catfish on your plate sometimes comes straight out of the river flowing under the floorboards below the restaurant.

No meal at Hall’s can begin without a sample of the restaurant’s world famous beer cheese, a uniquely Kentucky concoction of sharp cheddar cheese, beer, garlic and cayenne pepper.

Spread on Saltine crackers, Hall’s beer cheese is a cheesy, flavorful condiment with a slight kick of spice, perfect to wash down with…

…what else?

Beer.

Somewhat surprising for a rural southern-style joint straight out of a Chris Knight song, Hall’s has a pretty decent beer selection.

Of course you are not allowed to step foot in the Bluegrass State without sampling Kentucky’s famous Bourbon Barrel Ale.

Aged for months in real Kentucky bourbon barrels at a distillery in Lexington, the predominant flavors are oak and vanilla while the malt and hops fade into the background.

Bourbon Barrel Ale packs a hefty punch -- both to your blood stream and your wallet.

Usually served in a ten ounce snifter for close to ten bucks, this is sippin’ beer. But at over 8% alcohol, at least you get some bang for your ten bucks.

I don’t think this is the kind of beer Chris Knight was singing about though.

Well there’s a cinder block juke joint down by the riverside
It’s where I carry my cash from the working week
They got a waitress that will turn your head
Bring you catfish and cornbread
Beer bustin outa the keg like it’s springin a leak

No. But it could very well have been Falls City bustin out of those kegs, an old school Kentucky brew that went extinct for decades and is now making a comeback thanks to some enterprising entrepreneurs in Louisville.

This cloudy pale ale has a nice mildly hoppy flavor as I sipped it admiring the view of the river below.

Also on draft, was Old Man Winter, from one of my favorite breweries in America, Southern Tier.

This microbrewery from Lakewood, New York (Yankees are good at a few things) makes some of the most delicious stouts and hoppy ales that have ever graced my liver.

Both hoppy and malty at the same time, Southern Tier’s Old Man Winter is perhaps the single greatest reason to endure the dark days of winter.

Just to prove to my loyal readers that it is possible for Suit757 to eat fruits and vegetables (as long as they are fried), I ordered a combo of fried green tomatoes and fried banana peppers for an appetizer.

The tomatoes were firm and crisp with just a thin coat of batter and topped with honey mustard and everyone’s favorite condiment -- bacon bits.

Fried banana peppers are another one of those uniquely Kentucky novelties.

These peppers were huge!

Butterflied, battered and fried, they had nice peppery flavor without the sting from the seeds.

Somewhat inexplicably, the dipping sauce provided was a standard issue cocktail sauce. Yuck.

I managed to save room for my entrée, a southern fried combo of catfish and frog legs.

Yes, frog legs.

Meaty, juicy and tender, these appendages came from some mighty large amphibians. Kinda like really tender chicken wings.

Only more rednecky.

Cool.

 

The catfish was pretty bland and dried out, but livened up a bit with a few splashes of Frank’s hot sauce.

On the side came a “tangy slaw” -- a vinegar-based cole slaw that yielded more sweet than tang.

The green beans were prepared just the way I like my vegetables -- spiked with bacon.

The southern-rooted cuisine was matched by the ambiance.

Perched high on stilts way above the Kentucky River, Hall’s has survived numerous floods, fires and other disasters through the generations. A high water mark just below the roof line -- and at least 40 feet above the current river level -- decorates the waiting area.

A cozy fireplace and friendly staff add to the southern hospitality.

So, yeah, I have to admit, Hall’s on the River in central Kentucky has its stilts firmly planted in the South.

Too bad you have to go to that damn Yankee Bluegrass State to get there.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt