Florida Keys Restaurant Review: Porky's Bayside

In the heart of the Florida Keys is a little barbeque joint that makes some fine vittles. Porky's Bayside is located at Mile Marker 47.5, in Marathon, Florida's Old Town. Having been a regular at Porky's, it would be difficult to write and unbiased review. So to solve that potential conflict of interest, Jack and Tony, from Pennsylvania were selected as taste testers.

While Porky's offers a wide variety of slow smoked beef, chicken and pork, the true test of a barbeque restaurant is the pork sandwich. Okay, all you Kansas City, BBQ fans, this is the South! Pork rules the Southern Barbeque universe! The pork sammy, with coleslaw and barbeque beans reign supreme in Dixie.

In the Keys, barbeque beans have a rival, black beans and rice. So for the taste testing, Jack had the BBQ beans and Tony tasted the black beans and rice. Before we move onto the meat of this review, let's explained BBQ beans. Unlike baked beans, BBQ beans include chucks of tender barbeque pork, barbeque sauce and a secret ingredient that I can't tell you.

Jack sampled the BBQ beans first. Knowing he was under the gun, he did is level best to savor the first bite on a beer cleansed pallet. Nodding his approval, he spooned up another mouth full to verify before pronouncing the beans, "very good". While we discussed the beans, a more northern tourist spouted off about baked beans needing drippings and brown sugar. Yankee please! BBQ beans are where it's at son!

I tried to get Tony's review of the black beans and rice, but he was too busy eating to talk. Jack moved into the coleslaw, but this time his taste testing was less professional. After inhaling the slaw, he said he loved the crispness and flavor. It is hard to tell if he tasted it at all, the way he wolfed it down.

Tony seemed to be doing Bill Cosby impression as he had a bit of this and a bit of that, all the while sort of dancing in his chair. Back to Jack, this time he properly beer cleansed his pallet before tasting the pork sandwich. Jack's brow developed a furrow or two as he tried to find the right words. "It is tender, but I don't think it has enough sauce." was Jack's response.

"Well heck son, that's why you have five different sauces sitting in front of you," I answered. After filling Jack in on the sauce line up and how mixing was allowed to create your personal favorite, Jack gave it another go. He nodded his head and gave a sauce-covered thumb up. (By the way, the red squeeze bottle is hot sauce. So before slathering it all over everything you may want to taste test first.)

Tony was finally was back down from pork heaven and ready to answer a few questions.

How was the black beans and rice? Tony, "Good."

How was the pork sandwich? Tony, "Good."

With that, Tony broke out his internet access, super cell phone and started googling my penname to see if I was legit. While Tony is not much of a talker, he is a great AdSense clicker. I made almost 20 cents with all the clicking he did on my blog.

Jack was ready for a dessert, so I recommended the deep fried key lime pie. Jack wasn't too trilled about the recommendation until I explained. Porky's key lime pie is actually a key lime cheese pie recipe. The deep fried version is coated with tasty flavored breadcrumbs and frozen solid, before being deep-fried. This unique fried dessert recipe is the brainchild of a former porky's manager named Richard. It is plated and served with drizzles of artistically placed fruit syrups

Jack got his pie and gave it a big thumb up. "I never thought I would like deep fried pie, but that was great!" Jack exclaimed.

Porky's Bayside offers seafood, Cuban pork and a variety of specials along with the chicken, beef, and pork barbeque. They have a short, but well-selected wine list, cold beer and some blended frozen drinks that can be virgin or have wine based alcohol mixed. No hard liquor is available. There is nightly entertainment in season with local one-man musical acts.

Stop in Porky's bayside sometime for some good southern barbeque, given two sauce-covered thumbs up by Jack and Tony. Think I might have to mosey down to Porky's and review the ribs. Not the Danish baby backs, the real deal BBQ pork ribs. Better get my bib first, this could get messy!