Staple Florida Dishes: From Tallahassee to West Palm Beach

Tracing Black culinary migrations through family recipes and family history

Video: My mom, husband and I cooking fried shrimp, grouper, conch fritters and oysters in my parents’ kitchen

Florida raised me on flavors that don't fit neatly into Southern food narratives. There's something magical about growing up between North Florida's mossy oak-lined roads and South Florida's salty breezes. Between my childhood home in Tallahassee and extended family in West Palm Beach, my family's culinary heritage bridges these worlds and creates a food story as diverse as Florida itself.

As a kid, my paternal grandmother's kitchen smelled of pancake batter hitting hot cast iron and dark amber cane syrup waiting in glass bottles - the only syrup I knew existed until kindergarten. Down in West Palm, my aunt's fried shrimp arrived still crackling from the fryer, while my mother's conch fritters connected us to waters beyond our shores.

This isn't the food of glossy magazines that flatten Southern cooking into one homogeneous experience. Black Florida foodways carry footprints of specific memories and migration stories - neighboring families bringing their culinary traditions south, meeting Caribbean influences that traveled across warm waters. What emerged is neither purely Southern nor Caribbean, but distinctly Florida—distinctly ours.

Zora Neale Hurston understood this culinary complexity decades before food writing became trendy. In her collection Zora Neale Hurston on Florida Food: Recipes, Remedies & Simple Pleasures she documented how my home state's foodways reflect the cultural intersections unique to Florida. Hurston recognized what I experienced firsthand - that our tables tell migration stories, preservation techniques, and community celebrations that differ from county to county, household to household. As she gathered recipes and food traditions throughout the state, she was mapping cultural identity as much as flavors.

This is the first in my series exploring Black Florida foodways - the dishes that built me and that I now prepare for my own family, keeping these traditions alive one generation at a time, measured in cast iron and family stories.

Fried fish and grits

Saturday mornings in my childhood had a rhythm. My granddaddy would disappear before dawn, fishing rod in hand, only to return triumphant in the afternoon heat, cooler heavy with the day's catch. Trout, bream (brim), mullet, jack, bass, catfish, red snapper - whatever had been biting that day.

He'd clean them right there in the kitchen, his knife moving with practiced precision while we kids watched from a safe distance, squirming and squealing "eeeewwww" at the innards and scales that would sometimes fly into our faces. But disgust quickly turned to anticipation as Grandma transformed those fillets into our sacred Saturday evening meal.

Her cast iron skillet—seasoned by decades of use - would sizzle as fish hit hot oil, the tails and fins still attached as if to remind us these weren't just meals but creatures that had given their lives for our sustenance. Grandma always made a few baked pieces for herself, health-conscious before it was fashionable.

They'd sit together, my grandparents, sipping hot Lipton orange pekoe black tea alongside their fish, the steam rising between them like prayers. We children were forbidden from eating jack fish - "too many bones," they'd warn. Sometimes we'd choke anyway, learning painful lessons about patience at the dinner table.

Our church fish fries were community celebrations where the same tradition played out on a larger scale: styrofoam plates bending under the weight of golden freshwater fish with the tail still on, each serving coming with a mandatory slice of white bread. The finishing touch was always your choice of mustard or Crystal hot sauce - sometimes both if you were feeling bold.

The grits served alongside were deliberately plain - just butter, salt, and pepper. Some made them creamy with milk or heavy cream; others preferred water. But the simplicity was intentional. Grits were a canvas that let the fish's flavors take center stage.

Hush Puppies

My mother's hush puppies were little orbs of diced bell peppers that would soften and sweeten as they cooked.

These weren't just side dishes but appetizers that couldn't wait for the main event. We'd hover near the kitchen, snatching them hot from the drain paper, popping them into our mouths despite their temperature. They accompanied everything from salmon croquettes to full seafood spreads, sometimes with a cooling side of coleslaw.

Conch fritters

The Bahamas might be just 50 miles from Florida's coast, but their influence stretches much further through dishes like conch fritters. My mother's version features a slightly sweet batter that cradles tender pieces of conch, green bell peppers, and a blend of seasonings that spoke to our family's particular taste.

Football season and FAMU homecoming celebrations always mean a batch of these fritters will be mandatory. Friends and family gather in our living room, the game on the television merely background noise to the more important social connections happening over plates of food. Each fritter tells a story of cultural exchange, of how Caribbean flavors had sailed across waters and found new homes in our Florida kitchens.

Watermelon

Some of last summer’s backyard watermelon harvest

My granddaddy's plot of land just outside Tallahassee in Leon County was a watermelon wonderland. A master gardener with secrets passed down through generations, he could coax hundreds of seeded watermelons from Florida soil—each one massive and sweet in ways store-bought melons can only aspire to be. His harvest wasn't limited to the expected red varieties; under his care, pink, yellow, and deep orange watermelons flourished in neat rows that seemed to stretch endlessly under the summer sun.

It's because of him and my dad that I developed what feels like a superpower: the ability to smell a watermelon and know precisely when it's ripe. A slight tap with my knuckles confirms what my nose already knows. This wasn't casual knowledge but essential family wisdom, passed down with the same care as old hymns and family stories.

In our community, watermelon wasn't just fruit but social currency. No gathering was complete without it - whether a backyard BBQ, church meeting, fish fry, birthday celebration, or any excuse to come together. Watching adults slice open melons with practiced precision was theater; the collective gasp of approval when a particularly perfect specimen revealed its sweet interior was our standing ovation.

Today, my family grows watermelons in our backyard, continuing what my granddaddy started. We cultivate heirloom varieties alongside Crimson Sweet, each one carrying stories of the Black farmers who cultivated these seeds through generations. When my children press their ears against the rinds listening for that hollow sound that signals ripeness, I see my granddaddy's ritual continuing, taste by taste, seed by seed.

Garlic Blue Crabs and Snow Crab Legs

Our family’s Kwanzaa feast from a few years ago: crab legs, lobster tails, potatoes, corn and lemon wedges

In North Florida, we ate so many mounds of snow crab legs we should have sprouted pincers and shells by now. The ritual is second nature - crack, extract, dip, savor. Unlike the tourist traps that charge by the pound for what locals consider birthright meals, our tables groan under the weight of these treasures from cold waters.

Meanwhile, in South Florida, my childhood was punctuated by buckets of garlic blue crabs. Imagine KFC chicken buckets, but served outdoors under palm trees instead of fluorescent lights. Those blue crabs - cooked alive and drenched with garlic, salt, and secret family seasonings that vary by household but never by quality - created frenzied communal eating. We would attack these mounds like archaeologists at a precious dig site, methodically picking every last morsel of meat from chambers and crevices most people wouldn't have the patience to explore.

By the age of five, being able to break open crab legs with our bare hands and extract the meat in perfect, unbroken cylinders is a rite of passage. No tools, no mallets - just small fingers learning dexterity through determination and hunger. I still remember the pride swelling in my chest when my mom nodded approval at my first perfect extraction, a silent acknowledgment that I had earned my place at the table. Children who needed help were gently guided but expected to master this essential skill; dependence on tools was considered a tourist's weakness.

My family rejected traditional Christmas dinner a long time ago. No ham, no turkey -instead, we host an annual crab boil that has become our sacred tradition. Snow crab legs emerge from steaming pots alongside bright yellow corn cobs and ruby-skinned red potatoes studded with a slices of lemon. Fried fish, butterflied shrimp, bright red lobster tails, creamy grits, and rich gumbo orbit the table like supporting characters, but the snow crabs are unquestionably the stars of this production.

We measure holidays not by gifts exchanged but by pounds of crab shells discarded. The table becomes a joyful battlefield - hands glistening with garlic butter, special crab-cracking tools passed from person to person, voices rising over the satisfying crack of shells. These sea bugs aren't just food. In our family, they're law - the unwritten constitution that governs our most meaningful gatherings.

Oysters from the Apalachicola Coast

Our order of freshly shucked oysters from Barefoot on the Bay, a mandatory Panama City Beach restaurant stop. Crystal hot sauce and saltines are non- negotiable.

My husband's Panama City roots reveal themselves most clearly in his reverence for Apalachicola oysters. When we visit his hometown, our itinerary is built around them - either mountains of fresh bivalves ordered at weathered waterfront restaurants or trips to local markets where we buy them by the sack to shuck ourselves on kraft paper-covered tables.

I'll admit a personal confession: oysters aren't my favorite. But my family's devotion has made me an appreciative witness to what I now recognize as a legitimate cultural practice. The devotion runs so deep that when my mom visits us in Atlanta, she arrives with a cooler of ice-packed Apalachicola oysters, transported across state lines like precious cargo. The gesture is not for herself but for my husband - a mother-in-law offering that says more about understanding family identity than words ever could.

The preparation varies by individual preference, creating an unspoken map of personality at our table. My husband and son prefer them raw - briny and unadorned, or occasionally fried to golden perfection with a side of Crystal hot sauce and extra large saltine crackers. My mother opts for them broiled with butter and a delicate crust of parmesan and fresh bacon bits. But one rule remains absolute and non -negotiable: these oysters must never be too large and must come exclusively from Apalachicola Gulf Coast waters. No exceptions, no substitutions.

This isn't mere preference but something closer to religious conviction. My husband possesses what seems like supernatural ability - one taste and he can detect if an oyster has been sourced from Virginia or New Orleans waters. The betrayal registers immediately on his face with a the meal that is irreparably compromised. I've watched restaurant servers wither under his quiet but firm questioning about oyster provenance.

What might seem like stubbornness to outsiders is actually something more profound - a connection to place that survives distance and time. These oysters, with their distinctive taste shaped by the freshwater flow of the Apalachicola River meeting Gulf saltwater, represent more than food. They're a taste of home that cannot be replicated, a flavor memory that keeps my husband tethered to the coastline that shaped him long after he's traveled beyond it.

I'd love to hear from readers with different geographical backgrounds - do any of these Florida staples mirror foods from your homeland? What dishes connect your family's history to mine across waters and borders?

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[This is the first installment in my series "Black Florida Foodways" exploring the unique culinary heritage that shaped my childhood and continues to nourish my family today.]