Miss Bee’s Bolivar Buzz

Shannon WilliamsBy Shannon Williams
As I have written several times in this column, I love Lobster Bisque! Part of the fun of traveling, is to seek out Lobster Bisque in all kinds of places. Since I usually travel to a beach of some type, there is usually plenty to be found. On my birthday trip, we started out with having some in West Palm Beach, it was good, and then I had some more on the cruise ship. I have had it several times before and it is good, but not knock your socks off. We spent some time before and after our cruise in Florida. On our last night, we decided we had not had our fill of seafood, so I started to look to see what I could find. It was still stone crab season, and I wanted to have some stone crab claws. We had Lobster in several forms on the ship, but the night we wanted a Lobster tail, they were out, thus the search was on for Lobster, Lobster Bisque and snow crab! How hard could that be?

In the past, and I mean way past, you would find a good restaurant by asking the hotel, or people who had traveled to that location before or you drove up and down the street until something “looked good”. All that has changed with the internet, as you can find out the good, the bad and the ugly about where to eat, long before it is time to eat. At times, it is great fun to look and read the reviews and study the menus as you decide. I have found that the more people you have in your group, it gets hard. They all look at different sites and then go over the menu like a food critic, and sometimes it takes the fun out of just trying a new place and spend time going over the menu as you have a drink.

I like both Yelp and Trip Advisor, so I spent some time seeing what I could find. We wanted something local and also did not want a really high dollar restaurant (of which there are many in that area). Kelly’s Landing in Fort Lauderdale was our choice for the night. It was a local and had been open since 1987. The evening did not start out well. We were using an Uber for our transportation, and I entered the location of the restaurant wrong (I was off by one number UGH!). The driver was young and he really needed to take a customer service class. When we finally found Kelly Landing, it was at the end of a little strip mall and from the outside it did not look like much at all.

As soon as we walked in, all of that changed. We were greeted with a big Hello by a woman who appeared to know everyone in the place and was ready to be our new best friend. We had gone early (4:30 pm) as we had a very early flight to catch and wanted to make it an early night. It was a good thing, as, once we were seated, the line started and it grew rapidly. The waitress was at our table in no time and was just a delight. We asked her about what would be best, telling her what we had hoped to eat.

We started with “Lobstah” Rangoons and they were a HIT! I told her of my love of Lobster Bisques and she said that I had to try the “Lobstah” Bomb! I will never be the same! It is served in a sourdough bowl and it has a normal scoop of Lobster, but to make it the bomb, they add 4 oz of Lobster in big chucks! Paul had the New England Clam “Chowdah” and loved every bit of it. We should have stopped there, but oh now we were on a mission. We ordered a couple of stone crab claws, they were good. I think if I am in south Florida during Stone Crab Season, I have to have some, but I forget that while it is good, it is not my favorite crab. Then we started in on our Lobster tails, we each got a one-pound tail, but I know mine was much more. By now, I was covered in Lobster juice and pieces, but I stayed the course and dug into my tail! It was worth the wait and just so good. You would think we would have been finished, but we had some dessert which was good, but I wanted another BOMB!!

It was a winner winner Lobster dinner! This summer, I had gone to the Golden Nugget in Lake Charles for a little get away and got a sports book ticket for the Astros to win the world series. Well, that was a winner and while I did not make a big bet, the winnings from that ticket made a huge dent in our bill for the evening.

So if you are ever in Fort Lauderdale, make sure to check out Kelly’s Landing; but I have to tell you that Rudy & Paco’s in Galveston has a great Lobster Bisque!

[SW: Feb-21-2023]

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