The Food Shack in Jupiter, FL.

Egrets and sandpipers. Palmettos. Orange groves. That is my image of Florida. When I rented a condo for two weeks in Jupiter, I never gave a thought to restaurants. I’ve been here two days. Two dinners in local restaurants has provided one more reason to travel to Florida – or at least to Jupiter, Florida.

We’d never have found, nor put up with the wait to be seated at, the Food Shack, without the recommendation of our well-traveled daughter. She was here two weeks ago and through Zagat, found this tiny eatery in a strip mall. After driving for two and a half days from frigid Wisconsin, we arrived at The Food Shack at 7:30 PM to find people sitting on benches outside, standing in groups in the parking lot sipping wine, sprawled in and on cars. There were 30 people outside, waiting to get in. We were told our wait would be 30 minutes. We waited perhaps 45. Inside the Food Shack we were fortunate to be seated at the bar. It was amazing. The restaurant only holds 50 people and changes its hand-written menu every day. There were 5 guys in the kitchen whipping out fabulous salads and seafood dishes in a long, narrow kitchen in which they could hardly pass each other - and never did. The chef (and owner, we surmised) dumped piles of shrimp, skewers of scallops, quarter-pounder-sized crab cakes on a hot griddle right in front of us. Often he had ten or twelve large filets of fish on at once, each having been put on at a different time. He’d just push his spatula down gently on the top of each and that seemed enough for him to determine exactly when it was done. A plate of a special salad for that entree would show up behind him, he would gently place the main dish on it, a waiting waitress would drizzle on the appropriate sauce and garnish and serve it to a drooling customer. This did not take long. We had our meals in just a few minutes after being seated in the packed, tiny restaurant.

A tiny problem was obvious with just a glance at the menu. It was almost entirely seafood. The Man Who Prefers To Eat Animals Who Chew A Cud was going to have to be very generous to his lovely wife. He was. Beer-battered, deep fried is the only preparation that can make a swimmable item edible. And there it was among the starters: Beer-battered grouper cheeks over a salad of Asian pears, strawberries, bananas and greens for $12.50. And standing out like a cow on the beach was the special plate of the day: Barbequed short ribs served with a skewer of ginger crusted sea scallops, sweet potatoes O’Brien, and a slaw of apples, cabbage, almonds, grapes and crasins for $26. It easily fed the two of us. For my starter I ordered a red-skinned potato and crab cake that came atop a salad of greens, yellow tomatoes, strips of pimiento, green olives and pine nuts. And if this only SOUNDED good, that would be one thing. But it was ALL delicious. Even The Man admitted it was, in his expansive description, “good.”

A better critic, my daughter, the one who has lived everywhere from Finland to Alaska to London to Connecticut and traveled everywhere, said she would move to Jupiter just to eat at the Food Shack. Now THAT’s a five-star recommendation.

Stirring the Pot