My ex was born and raised in the Keys and we had a vacation house there. He drove me up and down the Keys looking for a REAL Key Lime Pie.. At restaurant after restaurant, we’d order it and every single time he’d say, “That’s not it” no matter how delicious it was.
No frills, no whipped cream, etc. The real Key Lime Pie was seasonal, no imported limes. No fancy crusts.
Hard to believe, but Trader Joe has good Key Lime Pies in the freezer. As close as you can get, I think. A seasonal thing, they really are using Key Limes.
Used to have the real thing with real Keylime juice... as we had 4 or 5 highly productive key lime trees... long ago.
Still have the Key West Garden Club cookbook from 1901— even has sea turtle soup- from back when they were plentiful and sold from live turtle kraals at the docks.
And, we still call the (Hemingway) house by its correct name— the Stephen Mallory house. Those native born Conchs who are still alive with us.
Seems one can only find key limes in Southern grocery stores and a lot of them are from Mexico or maybe the Bahamas where they still grow them. Fantastic difficult to describe real lime taste also quite good with gin and tonic, or rum and Coke!