Rum Bar - Key West

We were looking for something tall and cold and stumbled into the Rum Bar (and, if the truth be told, stumbled out again two hours later), which is located down aways on Duval in Key West.  A tiny place with what looks like the world’s biggest collection of rums (at least in ratio to its size) Rum Bar turned into a good choice for a mid-day respite from the heat and humidity of Key West and its wandering throngs.  The first exchange was not promising in that, when I asked if they had umbrella drinks the crusty old codger behind the bar actually said, “We’re not that kind of place.”  Oh, really, thinks I, and you introduce yourself as ‘Bahama Bob’ and feature every cutesy-named rum drink possible?  The fact that Rum Bar doesn’t decorate their exotic drinks with little umbrellas doesn’t mean it’s not an umbrella bar.

There seems to be some extra fruit flavoring (a dash of special liqueur?) in the best rum drinks and the Planters Punch served at RB certainly packs in summa dat .  Among the four of us we had a Pain Killer, a Dark & Stormy, a couple of Rum Runners and, even, one lost soul who ordered Bloody Mary’s with an extra double-dollop of eye-watering, freshly-ground horse radish added, which to me makes the BM too rough on the palate for ordinary human beings.  And, of course, the aforementioned Planters Punch.  It was a fine couple of hours but also proved that major-proof liquor and a hot, steamy, summer day aren’t really a good mix, fruity or not.