Florida Tacos and Beer

As you probably all know by now, no trip is ever complete for us unless we've checked out the local taco and beer scene. Below are some of the highlights of our taco and beer adventures in Florida.

Tacos and Beer!!!!

3 Daughters Brewing

After our first day out climbing, Katie and I wanted to hit up one of the many breweries near the climbing gym in St Petersburg. We decided on 3 Daughters quite simply because it was the only one open. The rest in the area didn't open for another hour. But despite not picking the place based on what we heard about the beer, we were not disappointed. 

Katie and I enjoying a refreshing beer together in the brewhouse.

We were able to start our visit with a flight of 4 of their beers plus a smaller sample of a couple others. The taproom was a little on the small side, but it was air-conditioned. So we were just happy to get a break from the heat. The barkeep was also super nice. I got a chance to talk with her a bit while Katie took a potential job-related call out in the car. (Don't worry we'll be making a job update post here soon) Once Katie returned, we determined our favorite beer was their coffee blonde, which as it turns out was what we were attempting to make with our friend Nate at the end of July.

The flight that helped us determine our favorite 3 Daughters beer

After our flight we decided to split a pint of that coffee blonde. The barkeep was nice enough to pour two half glasses without asking, which meant we probably got a little more than a normal pint. Not a bad way to go at all. She also told us we should go into the brew house where they had a bunch of games we could play with views of the brewing equipment in action. So we did just that and were very impressed with the wide variety of things to do. We played several of the games as we finished off our pint. It was a great visit. I would definitely go back again.

The brew house

Canning line in action

Shuffleboard tables and darts

All the tables had different games printed right on them

Katie playing the hook and ringtoss game.
There's a pretty nice stage behind her too. I bet this place would be great to see a show at!

Katie playing checkers with me.

I just looked up what their name came from and on their "about" page of their website it says "How many beers does it take to put three daughters through college? The owners don’t know the answer, but certainly hope to find out." I just thought that was pretty funny and worth sharing.


Darwin Brewing Co.

We wanted to check out a brewery near-ish where Kirk lived so that we could easily drag him along. We picked Darwin Brewing because it had good reviews. We did our usual tasting flight. Nothing was bad, but we weren't impressed enough to splurge for a pint of anything we tried. It was still a fun experience to go grab something with Kirk

Darwin's coaster

Our flight

Random Taco Truck

Kirk didn't have a lot of positive things to say about any Florida Mexican restaurants, but he also hadn't been that adventurous in what he tried. He pointed out a taco truck that he had never been to a few miles from his house. We pretty much drove by every day while we were oot and aboot, so it was calling our name. I tried to look up its name, but it wasn't listed anywhere even though its always on the same street corner every day. For some this may be a deterrent, but for Katie and I that spells out potential authentic taco excellence!  

For some reason we didn't get around to trying it until the last couple days of our visit. And of course those last couple days had to be the days a tropical storm/potential hurricane was hitting Florida. Well we were determined to try it out despite the weather. So we waited for a lull in tumultuous rain and set out in the Kirk's truck in case the streets were flooded. When we arrived it was still raining a bit, so we even had to order under an umbrella. 

A determined taco enthusiast

I was still all smiles though... totally worth waiting in the rain.

We ordered 6 different kinds of tacos and took them back to Kirk's place to eat. Man were they good. Their tortillas were super fresh and delicious. All the different styles were great, but the al pastor was our favorite. It may even rival our favorite al pastor tacos in Holland. Our only complaint was they were a little skimpy on their fillings. But each taco was only $1.50, so its hard to complain too much. I would highly recommend trying them out.

Our very authentic tacos.

Casita Taqueria

We stopped by a Trader Joe's after climbing one afternoon and saw a sign that's hard to ignore: "BEER...TACOS". We of course had just bought some perishables and couldn't risk them going bad. So we were responsible and tabled the visit. But we made a mental note of the place and hoped we'd be seeing it again. Well luckily another opportunity arose. We wanted to get in one more visit to the climbing gym in St. Pete on our last full day in town, but the Skyway bridge had been closed since the day before due to high winds of the Tropical Storm. We were a little annoyed with this because by Friday the winds really weren't that bad at all, but the bridge did eventually open up for the evening. So we made Kirk go with us with the hopes we could get him to climb and then grab dinner afterwards. We were unsuccessful in getting him to climb, but we were very successful in finding another delicious taco joint in town. That place was Casita Taqueria.

The sign that drew us in

Casita Taqueria actually had two locations. So we went to the one closer to the climbing gym, not the one we saw by Trader Joes. It's always a good sign when you walk into a place and there enough variety of tacos that sound good where our order ends up being "one of every taco please". We did get a beer as well. We tried a local IPA called Milo's IPA from St Pete Brewing Company. It paired quite well with our tacos.

Kirk having a near death experience

Our taco platter with 9 different kinds of tacos

The tacos were quite delicious. Our favorite was surprisingly the barbacoa taco. We don't usually love that style of taco because it tends to be too greasy. But theirs was perfect. The variety of ingredients and styles felt very similar to one of our favorite Michigan spots: Imperial, which we last went to back in May. That means though that they also were a little on the pricey side. But given that this was our last night in town, Kirk treated us to dinner. So who was really counting :) ... Thanks Kirk for a delicious end to our time in Florida!