After a busy day here in the office, it was decided to take our 15 year old grand-daughter out to eat, instead of staying in for dinner.   The decision involved a trip of about 10 miles through some of Central Florida’s back roads.   We were going to take her to a local  restaurant – I use that term very loosely.     Sometimes, the best and most authentic food can be found where the locals eat, and in this case, we were heading to a fish shack eaterie on the edge of Lake Pierce.  We have taken some of our vacation home owners there, and they have found it to be a fascinating experience – and the food’s not bad either!

The Cherry Pocket Seafood and Steak shack is reached via back roads through citrus groves, and along side canals.  You’ll see cattle ranches and horse paddocks; you’ll drive along roads where both sides of the road has watery ditches and overhanging oaks.

Cherry Pocket

We entered the atmospheric and rustic dining room; the first notice we saw was the instruction that says No Whining, and we took in the decor , which is full of quirky items such as old numberplates from cars, stuffed fish, and many others too numerous to mention.  Greeted by a very friendly waitress we were shown to our table and handed the menu, which turned out to be the Cherry Pocket Times, a printed newspaper with articles about the origins of the Fishing Camp on the front and back pages and the extensive menu on the inside.

The bar ceiling itself is covered in currency notes, and again looks really quirky

cherry pocket

The Cherry Pocket Times  can be retained as a souvenir of your visit, and if you wanted to take home further proof of your dining experience, you can purchase one of Cherry Pockets’ very own T shirts, some of which have inventive messages on the back of them.  Cherry Pocket was originally an Oyster Bar and still sells oysters on the shell, so your T-shirt will have images of oysters on the front under the logo.   Hence the messages on the back of the shirts!

The experience of dining at Cherry Pocket, quite apart from the food, is the clientele.  This Fish camp Seafood and Steak Shack has been around for many years.  Situated on Lake Pierce, and reached through the back roads of Polk County, or by boat across the lake, it is a popular spot for locals and fishermen to eat and drink .  You will see genuine fishermen and native Floridians.  You might meet cowboys – we did, on one of the occasions we were out there.

Casual and laid back, staff are friendly, and if eating outside appeals to you , they have a deck and  tiki bar where you can sit and eat, while watching the alligators in the lake. Occasionally you’ll be treated to some impromptu music as a local fisherman may pick up a guitar and start to play.  Local alligators do apparently know the place well, and can be sometimes persuaded to lie on the boat ramp for photo opportunities.  There was a gator just offshore, but obviously we weren’t flavour of the month, so it didn’t come forward for us or our cameras.

When we first went to Cherry Pocket some years ago, there was no glass in the shack windows at all, just mesh screening, with sheets of polythene that could be rolled down if it rained.  They seem to have upgraded a little, and now there is glass in the window frames, but the floor and the tables are the wooden originals.

This is not the place to wear your best outfit and posh shoes;  it is still a working fish camp, so there are small rental shacks among the oak trees, and the paths are sand, not tarmac or concrete.  The boat ramp still has its fish cleaning shed and  the  original “dunny” or  ” outhouse” on The Hill, as it’s called, is still in use.  This is original Florida as it used to be, and is worth a short trip for a dining experience you’ll rarely find in “tourist land”

Follow my grand-daughter’s blogs about her vacation experiences too on http://jetsettingteen.blogspot.com