Clear your plate: Coconut Grove Seafood Festival on Sunday

By Fernie Ruano Jr.

Let’s be real: Coconut Grove isn’t exactly the first place anybody thinks of when it comes to seafood – lots of seafood from a host of venders in a single afternoon (think: seafood festival, not wilting Dolphins at the end of a hot and long day).

But as much as a guarantee that your favorite professional football team is going to melt in the fourth quarter of a tight game, this is also real: The Coconut Grove Seafood Festival was such a smash-hit the first time around that it’s returning for a second consecutive year, Sunday, October 19.

So, if you wear shrimp on your chest with your camouflage shorts and drool in your sleep at the thought of endless stone crabs, the CGSF is tailor-made for you as festival organizer Tony Abelo has gathered up some of the top area restaurants, including Monty’s, Casablanca and Alba Seafood Italian, to be venders for the seafood extravaganza.

And all those restaurants will be cooking up plenty of lobster rolls, shrimp and fish to keep you walking around Peacock Park and coming back for more and more. And since it’s stone crab season, there will also be enough stone crab to make your head spin and drink another beer (responsibly, of course.)

Albelo is so serious about the Coconut Grove Seafood Festival he is having skydivers jumping out of a plane and into the park with a batch of stone crab in hand to mark the beginning of the stone crab season and unofficially christen the revving up of all festival-preparations.


But if you’re not to stuffed from all the stone crab, there will be a few added twists this year that you will likely savor.

In addition to a focus on Spanish and Caribbean food – namely paella and jerk grilled fish and Bahamian cracked conch - the Grove Wharf will have fish that can be purchased from their fresh market.


Also this year: Miami Kitchen Lab will host a cooking demo featuring Oscar Del Rivero (Jaguar Ceviche) and Igor Ferraro (La Bottega). There will also be live music provided by local mainstay Calypso while you feast on your favorite seafood.

Want in? Admission to the CGSF is $15 per person if tickets are purchased online; children under 12 are free. And once you’re inside, it’s pay as you eat.


There’s also a $65 VIP entrance that gives you access to the Rums of Puerto Rico Island Lounge, which will feature a mojito, rum punch and coquito bar, aside from a rum cake station, hand rolled cigars and coconut rum paella. And $20 gets you through the entrance on the day of the event.

 

Do you want to know more about this 305-reeking, beach-bumming, Cuban food-obsessed dude? Well, then.. You can connect with Fernie @wordbyfernie (Twitter) and Fernie Ruano (Facebook) and visit http://www.latinbeatsvibe.blogspot.com . Who knows? If he really likes you, he might even give you his email.