Garcia's Seafood Grill and Fish Market (Miami, FL)

This is a bit late in coming, but here is the third of the four places I went during my 36 hour trip to Miami a few weeks ago; my uncle, cousin and I stopped in here for a quick drink and ended up having a snack as well.

Garcia's Seafood Grill and Fish Market is located along a river leading to the Atlantic Ocean, allowing their customers sitting outside to experience a working commercial river while enjoying the bounty of the same.  Having a few hours to burn before catching my flight home, and being full from the meal I had just eaten at Sugarcane, my uncle suggested that we grab a drink, and since Garcia's is close to his office and offers a nice view, he figured it would be a good place to go. 

My cousin and I ordered mojitos, while my uncle went simple with white wine (nothing to really comment on there), and I think I made a good choice.  I love mojitos in general, whether it's the real thing like this or the mixes like you'll find where I'm from.  This was a truly great mojito, with just the right amount of rum and sugar, and with a strong mint flavor.  Instead of a straw, there was a stalk of sugarcane, which over the course of the time I was drinking absorbed the flavor of the rum, so at the end I ended up just chewing on it for a while, which was delicious. 

Even though we weren't particularly hungry, we ended up ordering some oysters (supposed to be half a dozen, but we ended up with 18 because our waitress screwed up...a happy mistake).  I'm used to oysters from Maine and Cape Cod, so these were disappointing in their size and sweetness, but still delicious.  The real issue was that Garcia's doesn't hand shuck the oysters, instead using a mechanical shucker, which opens the oyster but does not separate the meat, so you can't just slurp them the way you're supposed to, and instead have to use a fork to eat them.  I don't know why they bother with this, as quite honestly it's not faster to use the mechanical shucker compared to a well trained person, and it's a less satisfying experience.  Maybe that's how things are done in Florida, but as a New Englander, it was not what I was hoping for. 

With our drinks we were served some multi-colored corn chips with tuna salad that was quite simply tuna and a little mayo, and was actually really delicious.  We ended up having two orders of this, which was complimentary.  Kudos to Garcia's for that.

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