There's a great discussion going on over at Chowhound about the frustrating nature of Florida produce. Everything is grown down here, but it always seems to get shipped up north before the locals can get their hands on it. And it's frustrating to think that New York City gets the best of our produce while we have to settle for fruits shipped from California. Here's what lax2mia had to say about it:

After endless attempts at finding local, Florida grown or sourced produce and seafood I've almost had it.

Was in NYC this weekend and dropped into Dean and Deluca. While looking through the produce I saw picture perfect meyer lemons and some not so good looking fava beans. Where were both of them from? Yep, Florida grown baby. At the fish counter what did I see? Whole pompano and skate wing. Guess from where?

I'm so sick and tired of our best local product being shipped out and almost impossible to find locally. When was the last time Publix had pompano? But I'm sure every Publix will have farm raised Chilean salmon at $5.99 a pound. And meyer lemons? Last time I saw them at a local market specializing in produce (Norman Brothers) they were imported from California. And fava beans are non-existant until spring when we get them in from the West Coast?

I've got plenty of theories, all of which tick me off. One is that growers and fisherman get more for their product if they export it out of state. To me this doesn't hold water because the lemons and beans were going for the same price as the specimens we get from California. Is it that Floridians don't care about what's growing in their own backyard and farmers don't have a choice but to export their product? Possibly. Ask your friends if they know (a) what a meyer lemon is and (b) that they're grown in Florida.

As for restaurants, we're still way behind the curve on this one. The only one we can think of that gets a good portion of local items on its menu is Michael's Genuine Food & Drink. According to another Chowhound post, Table 8 also uses some local citrus and lettuce, as well as fish. Local fish is common (although not as common as one would think). We also learned from that same post that Florida is the 12th largest beef producer in the country -- who knew? It'd be nice, for once, to see one of these steakhouses that seem to open up every five minutes around here use Florida-raised beef.

Does FLA export its best stuff? [Chowhound]
Going Local Florida [Chowhound]
Michael's Genuine Food & Drink [MenuPages]
Table 8 [MenuPages]

Photo: Flickr