Three miles off your seawall, the kitchen at Little Palm Island is being rebuilt around a Michelin-starred chef. Six miles the other direction, hundreds of boats are about to converge on Looe Key for a concert nobody can technically hear above the surface. And somewhere between the two, on a Friday night in July, the parking lot at Kiki's is going to look like every dive captain in the Lower Keys clocked out at the same time. If you already live on Little Torch, this is the summer where the island stops being the quiet stretch of US-1 between Marathon and Key West and starts running the weekend for everyone else.
The kitchen three miles offshore is under new hands
Little Palm Island Resort & Spa opened for business in 1988 and was voted among the world's Top 100 resorts by Travel + Leisure readers in 2023. That much is old news. What is not: the three-Michelin-Key resort announced a culinary partnership launching in early May that pairs Michelin-starred Chef Curtis Duffy with Executive Chef Rodrigo Albornoz to shape the next era of dining on the private island resort located 3 miles off Little Torch Key.
For residents, that matters in a specific way. The Dining Room has always been the special-occasion answer in this stretch of the Keys, the place you take in-laws when they finally visit. It is open to nonguests on a reservations-only basis, but no one under 16 is allowed on the island. A menu reset under Duffy changes what a Tuesday-night reservation off Barry Avenue actually gets you. If you have not been back since the last chef rotation, this is the summer to rebook.
Two practical notes worth keeping in a phone contact:
- The island is accessible only by boat or seaplane from a dock near mile marker 28.5, oceanside.
- Reservations for nonguests move quickly around holiday weekends and after any national press hit, and this partnership is going to draw press.
Why July 10 matters more than July 11
Every travel magazine will tell you the Underwater Music Festival is on Saturday. Locals know the Friday is the better ticket.
The 42nd Annual Underwater Music Festival splashes down on Saturday, July 11, from 10 am to 2 pm at Looe Key Reef in the National Marine Sanctuary, approximately six miles south of Big Pine Key. Festivities kick off on Friday, July 10 at 6 pm with an opening party at Kiki's Sandbar, a favorite waterfront hang at MM 29 Gulfside on Little Torch Key, with appetizers, tropical libations, and facts about the reefs.
That Friday party is, functionally, the resident event. Saturday belongs to the visiting divers hauled out to the reef on charter boats. Friday belongs to the people who live within a golf-cart ride of the parking lot. The festival is presented by the Lower Keys Chamber of Commerce and US1 Radio, and delivers an immersive experience that invites divers and snorkelers to dive into a whimsical undersea soundscape where marine melodies meet conservation messaging.
The reef itself is the point of all of it. Looe Key Reef is part of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, a protected area located about six miles south of Big Pine Key that's home to the continental U.S.'s only living coral barrier reef. If you have lived here long enough, you have watched that reef take punches. The festival broadcasts music through underwater speakers largely so people fall in love with what is down there and start protecting it.
A working map of the summer weekend
Rather than the usual restaurant roundup, here is what each place on the island is actually for, in the order a summer Saturday tends to unfold.
| Where | What it is for | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Parmer's Resort | Morning coffee on the water, or launching a charter | Little Torch Key |
| Kiki's Sandbar & Grille | Midday dockside lunch, live music, cornhole | MM 28.5 Gulfside, 183 Barry Ave |
| Tonio's Seafood Shack & Tiki Bar | Fresh seafood without the reservation shuffle | Little Torch Key |
| Boondocks Grille & Draft House | Late afternoon beer with a mini-golf detour for the kids | Ramrod Key |
| The Dining Room at Little Palm Island | The reservation-only anniversary dinner | Off Little Torch, 3 miles offshore |
Kiki's earns its spot in the middle of the day for a reason. You can arrive by boat and dock while you grab a bite and enjoy music, with a full restaurant and bar menu, kids' menu, desserts, and raw bar, plus they'll cook your catch for you. The beachy area has cornhole, life-size Jenga, connect four, and ladder ball, live music every night, and it's pet-friendly. There is also a bar and restaurant upstairs with air conditioning. Very few places between Big Pine and Sugarloaf handle "we caught a mahi, we have a wet dog, and we brought the kids" as smoothly.
For fine dining outside the private island, Florida is the place for fresh seafood, with Tonio's Seafood Shack & Tiki Bar offering some of the best, and The Dining Room, with its French-Latin inspired dishes, for a more elegant meal.
And when someone from off-island asks where the tiki bar is, the honest answer is on the next key over. Boondocks Grille & Draft House & Miniature Golf is located on Ramrod Key and is the "Largest Tiki Bar in the Keys."
Booking a boat when the reef fills up
Festival weekend is the one Saturday a year when even seasoned locals have trouble getting a spot on a boat, because every visiting diver in the Southeast has the same idea. Two names worth knowing, both operating out of your own neighborhood:
Torch Key Charters. Owned and operated by Captain Danny Clark, specializing in fly and spin fishing for bonefish, permit, and tarpon on the flats in the lower Florida Keys.
Capt. Lenny Zappa. Running a charter boat out of Parmer's Resort on Little Torch Key, fishing anywhere from the inshore channels to the offshore waters.
If the goal is reef rather than rod, Ecotour the Keys offers kayak mangrove tours, snorkel tours, island picnics, back country nature viewing, and sunset cruises, with tours led by marine conservationists and captains that have degrees. Their mangrove routes are what to do the week after the festival, when the water finally empties out again.
One thing to keep in mind if you are considering putting your own boat on the reef that Saturday:
"Just remember that the marine sanctuary has strict rules about where boats can anchor to prevent damage to the coral."
That is not a bureaucratic footnote. Enforcement gets tight during festival weekend for obvious reasons, and the anchor rules are the reason the reef is still worth broadcasting music over.
Mid-week, when the island belongs to residents again
The rhythm of summer here is basically two-part. Weekends belong to the traffic coming down US-1. Mondays through Thursdays belong to the people who already live on Barry Avenue and the canals off Pirates Road.
A few things that make midweek worth planning around:
- Beach walks without company. A great little beach with paths leading out into the ocean that you can walk along or snorkel along, with lots of unique seashells on the ocean floor, an abundance of upside-down jellyfish to watch for, and not a lot of people.
- The Dining Room on a Wednesday. One recent guest described being seated on a Wednesday evening at a table right on the beach, along with just one other couple, everything clean and beautifully decorated, with citronella tiki torches and deet-free insect repellent provided by staff. Two couples. On a beach. Three miles offshore. That is a midweek move.
- Kiki's upstairs bar. The downstairs beach is the show. The upstairs air-conditioned bar is where you go when it is 92 degrees and you have been outside since 6 am.
Why the whole island feels louder this year
Two things are converging. The chef change at Little Palm Island is going to bring national food press back through here for the first time in years. The Underwater Music Festival is now in its fifth decade and still growing. Both of them route through Little Torch's docks and driveways, not Marathon's or Key West's.
That has the practical effect residents already feel. Restaurant reservations tighter on the shoulders of holiday weekends. Charter boats booked earlier. Traffic on Barry Avenue on a Friday afternoon in July that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. None of it is bad news. It is just the summer to plan a little further ahead than you used to.
The good part of living somewhere the rest of the country is discovering is that you already know the shortcuts. You know Kiki's dock fills starboard-side first. You know Boondocks has parking when Kiki's does not. You know the reef looks better at 9 am than at noon. And you know that when a Michelin-starred chef signs on with a resort three miles off your seawall, the reservation you want is the one for the second week of May, not the first.
If you are thinking about how the Lower Keys are changing and what that means for your property, or if you have friends asking whether now is the right time to look at Little Torch, Halley Haack and the Karen Haack Team have been watching this stretch of water since 1970. Talk to a Lower Keys real estate expert today.
