Customers sniff a stack of Kent mangoes.
THE LONG, LOW BUILDING proclaiming ROBERT IS HERE emerges from Florida farmland like a homespun miracle. What awaits inside are mountains of fragrant fruit, some with textures of armor, others the colors of a Keys sunset. The devoted locals and lucky visitors on their way to the Keys or Everglades National Park, tipped off to make the turn off U.S. 1 near Homestead, become part of a not-so-secret society when they enter the legendary fruit stand.
Calling Robert Is Here a “fruit stand” is like calling the Empire State Building, well, a building. It’s a palace built to fruit, with a quirkiness that is quintessentially South Florida. The air is humid and heavy with sweet tropical scents, mangos and bananas ripening alongside – dragonfruit? Jackfruit? The aisles are papered with names and descriptions as appealing as their aromas. A golden orange canistel is described as having the texture of a “creamy egg custard,” while guanabana is more like “cotton candy.”
“Guanabana is the most unusual and difficult of our fruits to find,” says shop founder Robert Moehling. “I grow them. Grenada is the only country we are allowed to import guanabana from, because they don’t have the Caribbean fruit fly.”
There is something of Willy Wonka in Moehling. In 1959, six-year-old Robert’s dad tasked him with selling cucumbers on the roadside. He wasn’t successful the first day, so he and his dad made a hand-painted sign declaring “Robert Is Here.” He sold out, then added tomatoes and yellow squash.
From the start, goats and turkeys would amble through. Then, in 1992, after Hurricane Andrew destroyed the home of a friend’s 100 giant Galapagos tortoises, Moehling loaned him space. He still has a herd of tortoises, alongside cows, donkeys, emus, geese, ducks and pheasants. Animals continue to show up. “People kind of use me as a refuge,” he says.
Alongside whole fresh fruit (which staff are happy to peel, cut and pack), Robert Is Here sells preserves, pickles, chutneys and jellies that run from traditional—apple butter and bread & butter pickles—to arcane, like champagne mustard and “Gator Jam” with ginger, apple, tangerine, orange and raspberry. Smoothies and milkshakes beckon the thirsty traveler, nothing in them except for fruit and ice (smoothie) or milk (milkshake).
Robert is still very much here, alongside a rotating cast of friendly employees who appear picked with similar care to the fruit. They offer advice (a pound of key limes should make enough juice for a key lime pie) and warmth in equal measures.
The secret to Robert’s long time here? “I think my stubbornness,” the man says. “And it’s just fun.”
