Minorcan chowder is a tomato-vegetable soup that looks like Manhattan clam chowder but definitely doesn’t taste like it. The difference is datil peppers, grown only in and around St. Augustine, Florida, which give Minorcan chowder a fruity pepper punch. The shock and awe come on slowly, beginning with a glow at the back of the throat that soon blossoms to set tongue and lips tingling. Chopped clams, shreds of tomato, corn kernels, and hunks of potato ride a slow-rolling capsicum wave that swells with sweet-tart citrus zest.
There is no Minorcan chowder on the island of Minorca in the Spanish Mediterranean, nor anywhere other than Florida’s northeast coast. The pastel orange datil pepper pods, which resemble habañeros, arrived in the late eighteenth century in the hands of Minorcans who came to work the once-ubiquitous indigo fields and finally settled in St. Augustine. They likely picked up the New World peppers in Cuba, as there are none in Spain, and while no Florida restaurant is entirely devoted to Minorcan cuisine, datil pepper– charged food is served in and around St. Augustine.