2017 Florida RV Trip, Days 30-31, Alphy’s Catfish House & Joe Patti’s

When I went back to reference this post on a new one I couldn't find it because I hadn't posted it, so I'll do it now then put it in the right order later.

On my agenda for the day after Christmas was watching the West Virginia – Utah bowl game even though I had little expectation for a WV win without their star quarterback.  But to get the day star started, we decided to give Alphy’s Catfish House a try for breakfast.

It was nearly full when we got there (a good sign) and we had to wait a few minutes for a table to be bused.  The place is run by a husband and wife originally from Ohio and we ended up eating in the Ohio State corner with flags draping the walls, but I did not allow that to ruin my meal J.

Bev and Pat had chicken fried steak with hash browns, biscuit, eggs, and gravy on the side, but no way would I go to a catfish house and not order southern fried catfish with eggs, hash browns and biscuit.

They both thought their steak was frozen rather than fresh made and we all thought the hash browns had a little of an unusual flavor – like they were using old grease from the deep fryer to cook with.  Also the biscuit was over cooked for me, but the catfish was very good as I expected it would be.  So I would eat there again but it would not be my go-to place for other than fish.

While I watched football the girls did their usual – went shopping.  This was a great example of two many bowl games – two mediocre teams, playing in a pretty meaningless game, with very few people in the stands – lots of good seats available between the 40’s.  WVU lost and looked way worse than mediocre – the offense embarrassed itself.

The next day we made a trip into Pensacola to visit the famous Joe Patti’s Seafood where they sell fresh fish wholesale to the public, but first we had lunch at their place next door – Captain Joey Patti’s Seafood Restaurant.

It was your really basic place serving the food in plastic baskets with plastic utensils.  It was pretty full when we got there about 2pm but we were seated promptly and the service was quick and efficient.  We asked the waitress for the best thing on the menu and she replied scallop and oyster dinner so Bev and I ordered that and Pat had the flounder basket – dinners had four sides and baskets had two.

We all thought the fish was pretty good but not great, but the sides were all very good – if you like sweet hush puppies.  One of their selling points is the very fresh fish at reasonable prices.

After eating, we went next door to the seafood store and it was absolutely overwhelming.

The long seafood case had volumes of about any seafood I could think of plus crawfish – I’ve never seen anything like it.

There was all kinds of other things (like soups, sandwiches and beer) that made it a one stop shop.  In spite of the crowd they have a very efficient way of serving customers from the fish case.  After you have a look at what is available, you get a number and as soon as one of the dozen or so providers is available they call a number, you raise your hand, and they wait on you until you are done – it took about 5 minutes for our number to be called.

We bought 10 pounds of jumbo frozen Royal Red shrimp ($7.49/lb), four Norwegian salmon pieces ($8.99/lb), and a nice slice of tuna loin fillet ($15.99/lb) for Cindy.

With our basket of goodies we headed to one of several checkouts where we were run-up, bagged-up, iced-up, paid-up, and out the door in a very few minutes.  These folks know how to move large amounts of people through their store and have it be a pleasant experience – wouldn’t I love to have Joe Patti’s at home.

Then we drove around downtown to check out the shopping potential for the girls – it was a fine way to spend a gray, windy, 50 degree afternoon.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

12/26-12/27/17 Event Dates