Fin Caribbean Small Plates

Sweet, sweet dinner at Fin. My husband and I came here during a visit to Key West, and it was by FAR our favorite meal. It’s tucked away from the madness of Duval Street, with a wonderful little patio. I did the tasting menu, and my husband just ordered a la carte, and we were both in love with the meal. He loved his prawns, and I can’t even pick just one thing that I loved the most. Yes, it’s a tasting menu, but for once I loved the small plates, and I left full and happy. Each plate was delicious, unlike other tasting menus where only 2 of the 8 plates is even worth having. The owner was incredibly nice and friendly, and great service. I would highly highly recommend any Key West visitor to eat here, and wish we hadn’t waited till the last night!

Wow! One of the best meals I’ve had in a long time. The tasting menu with wine paring is excellent. The service is impeccable.
This is one of the best higher-​end restaurants in key west. Do yourself a favor. Don’t eat at 90% of the schlock restaurants on Duval street. Spend a few extra dollars and have one of the best meals of your life, you won’t regret it.
One final word. Try something you normally wouldn’t. The chef is a master.

Wow, a friend recommended FIN! Service was outstanding, outdoor and indoor seating are both nice. Spacious tables unlike many other places on duval. Romantic, new /​current atmosphere.
Food was the best! Pork belly sliders were flavorful, lean, smokey and slightly sweet. Yummm! Yellowtail fillets on top of black beans were perfectly done. Hanger steak with truffled potatoes was great!
Tapas/​small plates is wonderful because it allows you to sample a lot, and each dish makes you want more when it’s all gone.

To put it shortly, I think Fin can seriously be considered the best high-​end restaurant on the island. Our meal on the last evening of this trip to Key West was superb.
We visit Key West each year and have had a chance to sample many restaurants over that time. As a set of New York City-​based foodies who have had the privilege to experience some of the greatest restaurants in many parts of the world, we are often let down by Key West’s «best» restaurants, most of which we’ve chalked up as typical overpriced tourist places that don’t always give the highest level of attention to ingredients or preparation. This is not the case with Fin.
The owner is extremely personable, engaging and knows every bit about every ingredient in every dish (and these are often very complex dishes). He has a well selected wine menu that contains several good values, although it can also get pricey. Nonetheless, when asked for recommendations, he often skewed toward the more reasonable end of the price list.
The food is high-​end, but the atmosphere is pure Key West — casual and welcoming. We enjoyed hanging around for a couple of hours eating, drinking wine and enjoying our time with friends. The owner and the chef did everything they could to ensure that our experience was enjoyable. It’s small place, so the focus is on service and quality.
A few words about the prices that other reviewers have complained about: They are, relatively, on the high side, but
don’t mistake that for meaning «overpriced». The prices are what I would expect from a place of this quality. As a guide, there were three of us who ate dinner and we were stuffed afterward. Two friends joined us late for dessert, so they prepared a dessert platter for 5. We also had two bottles of $ 50 wine ($ 100 total for wine). The total bill was $ 230, which brings the cost to about $ 40 per person before the wine. Again, IMO, reasonable for this type of restaurant, particularly given the high-​price, Duval Street location. There’s no sort of scam going on here — the menu and prices are posted on Duval St and it’s clearly advertised as a «small plate» format. If you don’t want something along these lines, there are a million other choices on the island (although you’ll be pressed to find comparable quality).
We’ll be back next year…

Perfect! Tasteful. Quaint. Yummy wine selections to go with the yummy food. Excellent service… James you are fabulous! A little hard to find, have to be looking for it. Very quiet. Double thumbs up.

Fin is a truly amazing restaurant. First of all, the décor is very clean and beachy. Also, the staff are extremely friendly and conversational. The festive colors of the restaurant are truly spectacular. Finally, the architecture and design are very simple and modern.
The food at fin is creative and adventurous. The flavors are well mixed, and well used. They have a wide variety of food and are able to serve customers who cannot eat certain ingredients. The Tapas style plates are perfectly sized considering the oversized portions of the large majority of restaurants. Although the prices are high for the small portions and the low cost of most gourmet in Key West, the food quality and service more than make up for it.

Fin served a delicious and unique meal. It’s the best food I’ve had in key west and my husband and I plan to go back again before we leave. I haven’t seen anything else like it on the island.
Portions were small but the idea is to order multiple plates in a meal. It is expensive but you get what you pay for. The have a cheaper tasting menu and during the summer all food is ½ price.

This is an update. Fin finally made Unilocal radar and they now have a website. I wrote my original reveiw rather quicklyand am re-​visiting simply because it did come up on Unilocal and I have discussed my experiecen there several times since. I have upgraded my rating to 2 stars because of a few factors. They are a business and they are making a go of it as they say. But they need some tweaking in the menu and portion/​price area. There are many pretentious, overpriced «flash in the pan» restaurants in KW. they come and go but this one could be a keeper… IF…
OK.They call themselves «Fin — Caribean Small Plates» My biggest problem is the «small plates» idea. A lot of wine bars have small plates and while the food is normally good, it is still verrrrry pricey when you look at portion vs price. Compare «small plates» to a Tapas place… Tapas restaruants price thier items at $ 6-​$ 9 generally and you get an appetizeer sized portion. three of these make a full entre. So for comparison sake if you were to triple the portion and the price at a tapas place you end up with a full entrée and a price around 15 to 25 bucks. OK, that is reasonable. So a «small plate» is supposed to bigger than a tapas place or an appetizer but not a full entre. Fins «small plates» are way overpriced if you look at them this way… even for duval street For example from their menu… Yellowtail snapper $ 15. This is an appetizer portion at most places. Maybe a little bigger but still if you … $ 30 for an fish entrée? OK if it is a huge portion or stuffed with cash… I continue… Caribbean root veggies $ 9… $ 18 for veggies… Well. OK but they better be damn good veggies for $ 18 bucks. How about Key West pink shrimp $ 14. Under our model $ 28 for shrimp? Again… really needs to be a great shrimp dish. Heres the one that is the «drives the point home»…Dry aged Prime NY strip $ 20… Doubled to $ 40 for NY Strip??? Maybe a porterhouse or another cut of meat but I had the NY strip and what I got was 6, one quarter inch thick, 3″ x ¾ «inch slices of steak. About 4 ounces of meat. Double it to $ 40 for eight ounces of NY Strip??? Even 10 or 12 ounces…
Was it bad food??? No, the flavors and the quality of food was OK (for the most part. See my note on the Ahi Tuna) but when you are staring at six little strips of beef (run of the mill NY Strip) for $ 20… it would have to be outrageously good beef for you to say. $ 40 bucks??? yeah but … damn this is good!!. Didn’t happen… Plus I was still wondering what possessed them to murder the Ahi tuna… here is what the menu says… Aji amarillo pepper crusted tuna, smoked corn with basil and passion fruit bbq sauce. $ 12. This is on their «Beginnings» or appetizer menu. The «passion fruit bbq sauce» was… just BBQ sauce. Ahi tuna… where? Couldn’t taste it… I thought when I ordered… wow this is creatve… Yeah, well BBQ sauce doesn’t go well on Ahi Tuna if you are following along at home…
So there. I am a little worked up over this just because I have talked to a few people about the small plate idea and we have determined it is a scam. Not a Bernie Madoff type of scam but a way to squeeze profit margin out of the dining public. If you read the article at the URL below, it has more of the «spirit» of my argument. The key part is being satisfied. If I have to have 1 appetizer and two small plates to feel satisfied or full, that could be 40 to 50 bucks for one person… I reserve that level of expenditures for true fine dining. Not for the average «johnny come lately» place. I am OK with a Tapas places because they are, as I mentioned earlier, resonalble… $ 6 to $ 9. sometime a little higher but that is for the lamb or the shrimp etc… NEVER do you see a $ 20 Tapas plate…
Le Fin!
BTW «Fin» in french means «end»