Even your touristy joints are pretty good in Key West, as competition will knock out anyone turning in supbar grouper or key lime pie, but try to find some time for slightly off-the-radar classics like Eaton Street Fish Market.

Cero Sandwich

The market’s location on a residential block suggests this is serious fish for locals, but if you’re lingering on Duval or chasing margaritas and sunsets, it’s a moderate walk or short cab ride to Eaton Street, which is just a store with a few seats.

Cero Sandwich

We had to go for a fish we never heard of, which in this case was cero. The pinkish-hued fish was taken out out the refrigerated case and fried, where it became part of an excellent sandwich. Our culture doesn’t provide the variety of adjectives for fish description that are available to wine enthusiasts, so we’ll just call it superbly oceanic. Sadly we had to make a strategic decision to skip the smoked fish dip, which has been well-reviewed elsewhere – even we have limits so we got the sandwich plus the conch ceviche. The ceviche was brilliant citrus-y. Conch is sometimes more fun in theory than practice, but the accompaniments worked perfectly with this mollusk.

We don’t get to Key West often enough (o.k., just once in our lifetimes), so maybe our readers can let us know what we missed by skipping the dip.