There is one dish on this coast that every kitchen makes and everyone has an opinion about, and it is smoked fish dip. Kingfish or amberjack or mahi, smoked over oak or citrus wood, flaked and folded into mayonnaise with lemon, pepper and whatever else the cook will not tell you, served cold with saltines, a jalapeño and a lime wedge. It is lunch, it is bait for conversation, and it is the first thing we order anywhere.
How it is made
The fish is brined overnight, smoked low for a few hours until it is firm and golden, then cooled and flaked by hand. The good kitchens leave it coarse; the bad ones blend it to paste. The mayonnaise is the minimum needed to hold it together, the lemon is fresh, and the pepper is black and generous. Some add a little cream cheese for body, some a dash of hot sauce; purists add nothing but scorn.
The ranking
The Boathouse Kitchen in Stuart makes the one we would send a visitor to first: kingfish, oak smoke, coarse flake, a jalapeño you can taste. The Tiki Dock’s is smokier and sweeter and goes better with beer at sunset. The Mangrove Market’s smoked-fish stall sells it by the tub to take home, which is the honest way to eat it, on a porch, with a view.
All three kitchens are fictional. The dish, the method and the arguments are not.
The one rule: eat it the day you buy it. Fish dip does not travel, does not keep and does not improve.