For many, it’s the traditional way to start a Florida Keys experience: Take lonely, wild Card Sound Road from Homestead to Key Largo and stop at Alabama Jack’s for conch fritters on the way.
Alabama Jack’s has been an outpost in this mosquito-filled crocodile habitat since 1947.
It’s the sort of dive bar and restaurant that would get mentioned in a Jimmy Buffett song. (But I don’t think it ever has.) Alabama Jack’s is long on atmosphere and short on pretense. We’re talking plastic utensils and a roll of paper towels on the table.
But the view overlooking a canal and the mangroves is beautiful and the prettiest red-wing blackbirds flit around the railing looking for a fallen French fry. In the water, hundreds of fish are visible circling with similar ambitions. It’s decorated with license plates and it looks like the next hurricane will blow this shack away. Of course, it has survived dozens.
If you’ve been around as long as Alabama Jack’s, half the world says “it’s not what it used to be.”
I can’t vouch for what it was like in the 1950s, but if you stopped at the restaurant/bar a decade ago, I can assure you: it hasn’t changed much. And that’s a good thing.
Don’t stop at Alabama Jack’s because of the food. My conch fritters (for which Alabama Jack’s is famous) were OK; the sweet potato fries were good.
No. Stop here because it’s authentic, and the world is full of places along busy suburban highways that are trying to capture instantly the 70-year-old patina and ambiance that Alabama Jack’s comes by naturally.
You can’t compete with the real deal, which is what Alabama Jack’s is.
It’s shabby and it’s proud.
There was a real Alabama Jack, but it turns out he was actually from Georgia. Apparently on one of his first jobs, he was given the nickname to distinguish him from other men named Jack, perhaps because of his southern accent.
His real name was Jack Stratham and he had been a riveter working on the Empire State building; then a worked on pipelines/refineries around the world. His wife Alice became well-known for her crab cakes. They bought the lease for the property on Card Sound Road to use as a weekend place after World War II to keep their boat. Out of this beginning grew Alabama’s Jack’s restaurant. Jack Stratham died in 1977.