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Love & Best Dishes: Meet Michael’s Friend Paul Menta from the Hemingway Look-Alike Contest
Feb 16, 2025
Meet Michael’s Friend Paul Menta from the Hemingway Look-Alike Contest - Michael's friend Paula is joining to talk food, the Papa contest, Key West, and his Key West first legal rum distillery!
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0:00
- So I bet you're saying,
0:03
"Who are those two hunks
0:04
sitting in your living room, Paula?"
0:06
(Paula laughs)
0:09
Well, I'm real excited about today's interview,
0:13
because when Michael and I married,
0:17
when we first married, I said, "Michael,
0:20
is there anything that you wanted to do
0:23
that you have not been able to do yet?"
0:27
And he said, "Yes, Paula, it is,
0:30
I want to be a part of the Hemingway lookalike contest
0:38
down in Florida.
0:39
There's a lot of good things going on about 'em."
0:43
Do you remember telling me that, Michael?
0:44
- Yeah, I do.
0:46
- And I said, well, what did I say?
0:48
- Said let's do it.
0:49
- We gonna do it.
0:50
We gonna do it.
0:52
So today we are sitting here
0:56
with my Papa, Hemingway papa,
0:59
and next to Papa, we are sitting next to a wannabe.
1:04
Right, Paul?
1:06
- Well, so they all keep trying to get me to grow a beard.
1:10
- I was gonna say, where's your beard?
1:12
But I've been hanging out watching this contest
1:15
for about 30 some years.
1:18
And in the last.
1:19
- Oh, you're what, you're 31 or 32?
1:22
- Yeah, I'll be 33.
1:24
(Paula and Paul laugh)
1:25
On my 59th birthday.
1:28
But, and you know, I had a restaurant
1:31
catty corner to Sloppy Joe's,
1:34
so we were always tight with Sloppy Joe's,
1:36
and we enjoyed it.
1:37
It brought a lot of things into the community every year.
1:40
- You had a front row seat?
1:41
- Yeah, I mean, we got to see every year,
1:43
and we used to have a little,
1:44
we used to have a little scorecard.
1:46
We all bet who we thought could win
1:48
when it come down to the final,
1:50
'cause, you know, in the whole thing.
1:52
And about 12 years ago,
1:55
I got outta the restaurant business,
1:58
as you know, it is a battlefield, sometimes.
2:01
- Hardest way to make a living in the whole entire world.
2:04
- It is.
2:05
And I loved, I learned way back in culinary school,
2:09
I learned how to distill.
2:11
And so through the years, in summertime,
2:15
Key West in the summertime used to be nothing but tourism.
2:19
So you would leave, I'd be in South America
2:21
and doing jobs down there,
2:24
and, you know, we might've done a little bit of distilling
2:27
down there.
2:28
Made a little something outta things down there.
2:31
So it kind of stayed in my blood,
2:33
and 12 years ago I said,
2:34
What has not been done in Key West?
2:38
Because in Key West, everything's been done.
2:40
I mean, we really do have such an amazing.
2:43
- Even things that shouldn't have been done, right?
2:45
- Well, and that brought part of it,
2:47
hence the name of my company, Key West Legal Rum.
2:52
- Oh, this is legal.
2:55
- Yeah, this is legal, and people do the same thing.
2:57
I love that they say, "What's the name of your business?"
2:59
I say, "Key West Legal Rum" and they have a laugh.
3:01
"In Key West?"
3:02
And I said, yeah.
3:03
Because they think everything's illegal in Key West.
3:05
Which, it's not illegal, we just get away with it.
3:09
- Oh, okay.
3:10
- That's what I like to say.
3:11
So when I opened up the distillery,
3:15
we saw that they were doing that lookalike,
3:19
how can I participate?
3:20
And my girlfriend at the time, now being my wife.
3:28
- Pretty Crystal.
3:30
- Yes, pretty crystal, exactly.
3:31
I'm not stupid.
3:33
I might be ugly, but I'm not stupid, I'll tell you.
3:36
(Paula laughs)
3:37
So we were talking about it,
3:41
and Sloppy Joe's, I can just tell you
3:44
their commitment to community.
3:46
They said, "To get your product
3:48
in Sloppy Joe's is impossible."
3:50
And they came to me and said, "Paul, we wanna put your rum
3:54
in our place."
3:57
And I said, "Holy cow!"
3:59
Like I was calling people, I was like,
4:01
"I got in Sloppy Joe's!"
4:03
And I said, "I gotta get a distributor."
4:04
They said, "Well, you'll probably have 10
4:05
by the end of the day once they find out they want you."
4:08
So I said to them, "I really wanna do something with them,
4:11
but I don't know what, to show my appreciation."
4:14
- Right.
4:15
- I said, "Wait a minute, Crystal,"
4:18
'cause now Crystal's a nurse.
4:20
And I said, "Crystal, did you do the scholarship?
4:25
Do I remember you saying you did the scholarship?"
4:27
So she won the scholarship twice
4:30
while she was in nursing school.
4:32
And the story she told me.
4:34
- Hemingway Lookalike supports.
4:36
- Yep, so the Hemingway Lookalike Society
4:38
gives out scholarships to writers and nurses,
4:42
and now they're even, I mean, let's fast forward,
4:45
we're coming up on year 43.
4:48
I mean, I'm watching them do things in the community
4:51
that are just amazing.
4:54
But it got her through a very difficult time
4:57
in nursing school, paying for books
4:59
and paying for things that are very expensive.
5:01
They've been doing this for 43 years.
5:04
So we were like, we have to do something.
5:06
What can we do?
5:08
So Sloppy Joe's gave us permission.
5:11
I brought one of the bottles here today.
5:14
This is from the 40th anniversary,
5:16
which I thought was special,
5:17
because I kind of remember somebody telling me,
5:20
a buddy of mine telling me that he didn't get a 40.
5:23
And I might have stashed a few.
5:25
So I brought one to leave at the house.
5:27
But, so this is the only time, once a year,
5:32
that you'll see Sloppy Joe's name on a bottle.
5:36
And through the Hemingway Lookalike Society,
5:39
we do whatever year it is.
5:41
So this year when it was 40, there was 40 bottles,
5:45
and we auction them off, and they go,
5:49
it goes for, one year I walked out.
5:51
I was so damn nervous, I don't know who was bidding.
5:55
They were up to $10,000 for one of the bottles.
5:58
They're about giving me a heart attack.
6:00
I walked out, I couldn't take it anymore.
6:02
(Paula laughs)
6:03
So these bottles go back into the community
6:09
as a form of education and everything.
6:13
In our distillery, we love to have a good time.
6:17
We used to look forward to, when I had the restaurant,
6:21
that Hemingway lookalikes are coming to town.
6:24
All the Papas are coming to town.
6:26
Now I look at it as, my family's coming to town.
6:30
I tell everybody, 'cause it's a big.
6:31
- It truly is.
6:33
- It's a big family.
6:34
- It's a family thing.
6:36
- It really is.
6:38
- The whole family will get involved.
6:40
I mean, the year that Michael won, I don't know,
6:43
our whole family was there, I think,
6:46
except for Jamie, because he had small children.
6:51
My son Jamie.
6:52
- Yep.
6:53
- But it's amazing.
6:55
- I remember it, 'cause it was pretty,
6:58
it was a tad bit loud when he was coming up.
7:01
- [Paula] It was a tad bit loud.
7:02
- I actually was standing next to him
7:04
in the final, down on the steps
7:07
when he was getting to go up,
7:08
giving him a pat on the back.
7:11
'Cause I was seeing a little glimmer
7:13
in some of the other papa's eyes.
7:14
And I said, "Huh."
7:16
I said, "I think this man right here is gonna win."
7:19
And it was easy, right?
7:20
- Yeah.
7:22
- It's easy to become a Papa, right?
7:23
- It didn't take him but eight years, Paul.
7:25
- Well, it was nine with the other, the first year.
7:27
- With the first one.
7:28
- But the first year, I didn't have a clue
7:30
what was going on.
7:32
I just wandered into town
7:34
and a bunch of people looked like me.
7:35
And I said, "God, there's a bunch of good looking guys."
7:38
(Paula and Paul laugh)
7:39
- Yeah, it's funny, he and his brother were just down
7:43
in Key West, gosh, how many years ago was it?
7:47
- I don't know, gosh, I don't know.
7:50
- Your children were young.
7:53
- Anthony was probably 13 or 14.
7:56
- Okay, so 25, 30 years ago.
7:59
- 30 years ago.
8:01
- Yeah, 'cause we've been together 23 or 24, married 21.
8:06
But he, they were down there,
8:08
and Michael said, looked around,
8:10
and said, "Great time of day."
8:13
And all these years later, after he and I married,
8:17
I asked him that question,
8:19
and he still remembered the feeling that he had,
8:23
and he wanted to go try for it.
8:26
- There's very few beauty contests I win.
8:30
(Paul and Paula laugh)
8:32
But when it comes to fat guys with a beard,
8:34
I got a pretty good shot at that.
8:37
(all laugh)
8:40
- So Paul, are you active in running for Papa now?
8:44
- Not at all, because what I like to consider myself
8:47
is I'm part of the support mechanism for my family.
8:51
We all have somebody in our family that helps us out.
8:54
So this is what I can do to support what all the papas
9:01
and all the wannabes do,
9:03
that me and my wife can contribute to.
9:05
I'm telling you, it's with every bit of a heart.
9:09
But I want to go over something,
9:13
because we make it seem like it's so,
9:14
what he went through and what these wannabes go through
9:18
to become a Papa is, it's hard.
9:22
You're not, it's not, you could have.
9:24
- It's almost like campaigning for an office.
9:28
We had posters, and t-shirts, and hats.
9:34
- I had a big old Michael hat.
9:36
- Yeah, yeah, big posters, just like a campaign.
9:40
- Yeah.
9:41
- And how many people you think you were competing against?
9:44
Probably about, what, about 121 people?
9:47
- I think it was about, I think it was more than that.
9:50
- Yeah.
9:51
- It was about 170.
9:54
But the guy that won the year before me, Richard Filip.
9:58
- Yep.
9:59
- And I, we were, we were neck and neck,
10:00
and gosh, we really had it rolling,
10:04
the campaign and the screaming and cheering.
10:07
- Yeah.
10:08
Yeah, they had as much support in their crowd
10:11
as we had in ours.
10:12
So you put the two of those together competing.
10:17
- And he actually rented the Pilar.
10:21
- That's right.
10:22
That's right, that's the year he brought it down.
10:25
- And I told him, I said, "I would've voted for you."
10:29
I said, "Good job."
10:32
(all laugh)
10:34
- Yeah, he did good with that one.
10:40
- He sure did.
10:41
- Yeah.
10:42
Michael said, "I can't beat Philippe on that one."
10:46
(Paula laughs)
10:46
- But I mean, what people don't get, I think is,
10:50
now there's a little bit,
10:52
there's possibly a little bit of beverages
10:54
that go on during the days of that competition.
10:57
And there's different events.
11:00
There's the fishing, there's the yo-yo fishing down there.
11:03
- [Paula] I love the yo-yo fishing.
11:05
- It is, it's really fun.
11:07
But what people don't think about is, it's July.
11:12
Now July in Key West, the heat index is around 120 degrees
11:16
with a hundred percent humidity.
11:18
And then all of a sudden they tell you,
11:20
"Hey, put on the Hemingway sweater and everything."
11:24
And I've seen a couple guys.
11:26
- [Paula] Pass out.
11:27
- And pass out because I mean, you're crammed in
11:30
with all these, Sloppy Joe's is packed.
11:32
These guys are all lined up,
11:34
and then they have to go and speak.
11:35
They only get a certain amount of time
11:37
to impress the judges.
11:38
- 15 seconds.
11:39
- 15 seconds.
11:41
- 30 seconds you had for your song, right?
11:44
(Paula laughs)
11:45
- Did you sing?
11:46
- Oh yes, he sang!
11:49
- I sang two or three songs.
11:50
- Sing, sing one of 'em, short.
11:56
- I did it to the, I was like Weird Al,
11:59
I would pick a tune that everybody knew,
12:01
and then put my words in,
12:04
and I would actually come up with them on the way home,
12:06
on the airplane.
12:07
- When we left one year, by the time we got on the plane
12:10
and got back home, he had the entire song for next year.
12:15
- But one of the songs was to the tune
12:18
of "Beverly Hillbillies" and said,
12:22
♪ Lemme tell you a story about a dude named Captain Mike ♪
12:24
♪ When he was a youngster, he'd fish, drink and fight ♪
12:28
♪ Then one day he was down there in Key West ♪
12:30
♪ Ran right up on this Hemingway contest ♪
12:33
♪ Old dudes everywhere. ♪
12:36
♪ Pot bellies, gray beards, and hair. ♪
12:39
♪ I don't think I'd ever win a beauty contest ♪
12:41
♪ But I got a good shot being a Papa in Key West ♪
12:43
- That's awesome.
12:44
(Paul applauds)
12:46
That's awesome.
12:47
I love that.
12:48
- Yeah, he was very different from the other contestants,
12:52
being willing to sing.
12:54
- I actually wrote a book about Paula.
12:57
So the end of the song was.
13:00
♪ I keep his spirit going, I kind of got his look ♪
13:02
♪ You ain't gonna believe it, but I even wrote a book ♪
13:05
(all laugh)
13:07
- Come on.
13:08
- But I think what.
13:11
- "My Delicious Life with Paula Dean."
13:13
- Yeah, that was my book.
13:14
- That was Michael's book.
13:15
- That's a great title.
13:16
- And then what what probably won it is,
13:20
a good friend of ours used to give a cheer, a toast,
13:25
and it was to good ships and wood ships,
13:28
but my favorite ship is friendship.
13:31
So I dock ships, so I used that, I just kind of stretched it
13:38
and I said, "I thought I was a expert on ships,
13:44
or a professional.
13:46
Thought I knew everything about ships.
13:48
There's cargo ships, and railroad ships,
13:50
and whaling ships, and sailing ships."
13:53
And I just named a bunch of ships.
13:55
And I said, "Well, since I entered this contest,
13:59
I've learned a lot more about ships.
14:01
Stewardship," and I had something to say about that,
14:04
"scholarship, give somebody a hand up instead of a handout.
14:10
But my favorite ship of all is friendship.
14:14
And that is no bullship."
14:16
- Yeah.
14:17
- [Paula] No bullship.
14:18
- And there's no true words.
14:19
I've never seen a, we see a lot of things
14:22
come through Key West.
14:23
There's no tighter group of people,
14:25
because it's once a year that you get to compete.
14:29
But we're all in contact throughout the whole year.
14:33
Midyears coming up soon.
14:34
- Yeah, I was gonna say, how does this affect you,
14:37
Paul, in the community throughout the year?
14:42
- You know, so for me, everything is,
14:45
we like to say, the power food, drink, and community
14:52
is something that's really strong.
14:55
It brings people together.
14:56
So things like this.
14:57
- It's a common denominator.
14:58
- This, for me, just, I fit into it like a glove,
15:05
because I love my community,
15:08
and these guys love our community.
15:11
And it was like, so adding it to something that I could do
15:17
as part of a community thing every year,
15:20
and when things have come up, look,
15:23
we all have times or disasters,
15:26
and disasters can be this big or that big and everything.
15:30
There's been a couple times where I've said to the guys,
15:32
"Hey, I don't know if you know this is going on down here."
15:36
And boom.
15:37
- They're right on it.
15:38
- They're right on it.
15:40
But you call family.
15:41
- That's right.
15:43
- When you need.
15:43
- When you're down, you call family.
15:45
- You need help.
15:46
- Absolutely.
15:47
Paul, I just recently realized that you have been
15:50
to culinary school.
15:51
I have not.
15:53
I graduated some will come later
15:56
from Granny Paula's Kitchen, my grandmother's kitchen.
16:00
And so I was so excited when you agreed to come up
16:04
and share a recipe with us.
16:07
Because there's good food in Key West, y'all.
16:09
Without a doubt there's good food.
16:11
So our next video, Paul and I are going to get
16:15
in the kitchen, and he is gonna share what dish with us?
16:19
- Well, I'm gonna share with you from a sauce
16:24
that has any, see, I learned to cook
16:26
from my grandma as well.
16:27
And my grandma was the one that pushed me
16:29
to go to culinary school later.
16:30
- Did she?
16:31
- She said, "You need to take it to another level
16:34
so you understand the business and all about it."
16:37
- Well, let me, I hate to interrupt you,
16:39
but that is so wonderful that your grandmother said that.
16:42
Let me tell you what my grandmother said to me
16:44
when I told her I was getting in the food business.
16:48
We were over the phone, I was living here in Savannah,
16:50
she was still in Albany, Georgia.
16:52
And I went on and on and on about what I was gonna do.
16:55
And it was just silence.
16:57
And I said, "Grandma?"
16:58
I thought we'd lost connection.
17:00
She said, "Have you lost your damn mind, Paula?
17:05
Paula Anne?"
17:06
Because she and my grandfather
17:08
was in the food and lodging business.
17:10
So she knew how hard it was.
17:11
- Yep, yeah.
17:13
- But good on your grandma.
17:14
- No, and my grandmother, I would watch her cook.
17:17
We'd have 40, 45 people for Sunday dinner.
17:21
And I would wake up on Sunday mornings
17:24
and I'd hear "Sunday with Sinatra."
17:26
And to this day when I hear Sinatra,
17:28
I can smell the marinara cooking and the memories.
17:32
And she would cook for 40 people in the tiniest kitchen
17:34
you've ever seen.
17:35
And never break a sweat, never yell, never scream.
17:39
Like you see all this stuff on TV and everything.
17:41
So she really, she put a passion in me
17:45
and kind of lit that fire.
17:46
So I wanted to take it further.
17:48
But one thing I did learn from her,
17:51
and she used to say about my grandmother,
17:54
and my family's from Southern Italy and Sicily, in Syracuse.
17:58
- Okay.
17:58
- And she said, "So a good chef is a good thief,
18:04
because as a chef, you steal other people's recipes."
18:09
- That is true.
18:10
- "And you make your version of it,
18:12
because if you think you're creating something new,"
18:16
she said, "then you're a fool."
18:17
- Yeah, right.
18:19
- And so what I've brought for you today is,
18:23
it's called Key West Old Sour.
18:26
It's a key lime sauce.
18:27
So you can use it as a condiment, you can cook with it.
18:31
You're even gonna see, I'm gonna make you a little surprise,
18:33
for a little later, we did a little quick,
18:35
no bake key lime pie, but not like you would think.
18:37
It's not gonna be a pie.
18:39
And so I stole this recipe fair and square.
18:43
(Paula laughs)
18:45
It was taught to me by locals down there,
18:46
'cause when I was down there as a young man,
18:49
on people's tables and on restaurants,
18:53
there would be a bottle and you'd be, "What's that?
18:54
What's that there?"
18:55
"That's my old sour."
18:56
And everybody bragged.
18:57
"Well, mine's two years old."
18:58
"I got a 5-year-old."
19:01
Everybody had a different thing,
19:03
but it was never really commercially produced.
19:06
And so I'm gonna make you
19:08
sweet and old sour key west pink shrimp,
19:12
which are just, they're a treat.
19:15
- I am so excited.
19:17
Because let me tell you where I feel like I'm the weakest
19:21
in the kitchen is in sauces.
19:24
You know, the southerners, we into gravy, red eye gravy,
19:29
brown gravy, milk gravy, but not sauces.
19:36
And I wanna learn sauces so bad
19:39
and be able to feel good about it.
19:40
So you ready to get in the kitchen
19:41
and teach this old girl something?
19:43
- Well, I'm gonna teach you, and it's easy.
19:46
Sauces are simple.
19:47
So we gonna show everybody how simple it is.
19:49
- Listen, it's just something that scares the badook
19:53
out of me.
19:55
- Well, we'll fix that right up.
19:56
- Yay, y'all stay tuned.
20:01
So I can't wait until y'all see the next video,
20:05
because Paul and I gonna be in the kitchen making a sauce.
20:13
See y'all there.
20:15
(Paula laughs)
20:19
Hey, y'all, it's Paula Deen.
20:20
Now, if you enjoyed this video, be sure to like it
20:24
and click the subscribe button as well as the notification
20:28
and bell to be alerted when I post a video.
20:32
Love and Best Dishes Y'all.
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