Banana Cafe

Banana Cafe brings a French bistro sensibility to upper Duval Street, a small but firmly established presence in a part of town that sits closer to the Southernmost Point than to the harbor, giving French inspired breakfast and lunch fare a home among the guesthouses and quieter storefronts that populate this end of the historic district.

Classic French bistro dishes, crepes, omelets, and properly made coffee, tend to define this style of restaurant, a menu built around breakfast and brunch more than dinner, which suits its position along a stretch of Duval where visitors are as likely to be starting their day with a walk toward the Southernmost Point as they are to be looking for an evening meal.

The pairing of French technique with a tropical island setting is not unique to Banana Cafe within Key West, a town that has long attracted an unusually international mix of residents and restaurateurs relative to its size, but the restaurant has held its ground on upper Duval for long enough to become a fixture for repeat visitors who build a stop here into their regular morning routine while in town.

Being located toward the quieter end of Duval Street means Banana Cafe tends to draw a calmer, more local feeling crowd than the restaurants closer to the cruise terminal, a mix of guesthouse guests staying nearby and Old Town residents stopping in for a coffee and a pastry on their way through the neighborhood.

For a proper French breakfast or brunch within walking distance of the Southernmost Point, well removed from the loudest bar blocks of lower Duval, Banana Cafe offers a quieter, more European start to the day than most of the island’s other morning options.

The small scale of the cafe also lends itself to the kind of relaxed, unhurried service that a proper crepe deserves, cooked to order rather than assembled in advance, which means visitors should expect a slightly longer wait than at a diner style breakfast spot in exchange for food made fresh at the moment it is ordered.

For visitors who have spent a few days working through Key West’s more famous rum bars and Cuban sandwich counters, a morning at Banana Cafe offers a genuinely different rhythm, coffee and a crepe enjoyed at an unhurried pace before the rest of Duval Street’s crowds and noise fully wake up for the day, a small daily ritual that regular visitors to the island often come to treasure as much as any single dinner elsewhere in town.