Joshua Abril’s key lime pie business has a new location on Grand Avenue, just in time for the holiday season.
The longer Joshua Abril spent away from home in Miami, the more he couldn’t help but appreciate South Florida’s distinct culture. Whether it was Madrid, Lisbon or Berlin, wherever Abril’s travels took him, he couldn’t get home out of his head.
“I remember living in Madrid and unconsciously over-romanticizing aspects of Miami that were collective points during my lifetime,” said Abril. “Traveling definitely heightened my love for South Florida, but also my desire to emphasize the things that I love most about it and preserve those things.”
Abril’s key lime pie business, Fookem’s Fabulous, has been doing just that, serving South Florida’s traditional key lime pies since the 2020 pandemic.
“The source of inspiration for this business was trying to hold onto those quintessentially South Florida things that I love about where I’m from and that I want people to get the most out of when they come here,” said Abril.
This holiday season, he has stocked his first brick and mortar store, located at 3606 Grand Avene in Coconut Grove, with South Florida favorites. The store, which opened last month, will not only sell his famous key lime pies, but also jerk chicken sandwiches, key lime slushies and jerk hot sauce.
Since 2020, Fookem’s has always experienced a holiday rush, and this Thanksgiving’s rush was the biggest ever. While Abril called the rush on Thanksgiving “flattering,” he also wants to make sure he is ready for the rest of the holiday season.
To do that, Fookem’s will be serving pies on a first-come, first-served basis and will not take pre-orders, Abril told the Spotlight.
The opening of the new store will also help with this year’s holiday rush, but more importantly signals a milestone in a journey that began with a passion for travel.
Abril, as he is quick to say, has no formal culinary training, and his journey to becoming a pie-maker began in Madrid, where he moved after college to teach English in 2007.
His time in Madrid would inspire him to travel more, and over the next 10 years Abril, a video producer by trade, would spend about 60 percent of his time in the U.S. and about 40 percent abroad. He told the Spotlight he would either travel in-between or during freelancing gigs but still spend time in Florida.
During this time, he also came up with his signature key lime pie recipe with no intention of selling the pies or creating a business but just wanting to make a traditional South Floridia dessert.
“Unfortunately, the story’s not that romantic, but I started by looking for the simplest recipes possible on Google and adjusting accordingly,” said Abril. “But I guarantee that recipe isn’t the same now as what I found on Google that day.”
This recipe then went to the wayside for a couple of years and while Abril said he has pictures of him baking pies, the recipe didn’t become a key part of his life until the pandemic hit.
When Abril lost his job as a TV producer in Miami in March 2020, where he had been working since 2018, he wasn’t sure what his next steps would be, so he thought back to his travels and his appreciation for South Floridan culture.
He started to bake and sell his key lime pies shortly after that, at first selling them out of his house and then using a bike he purchased to sell them on the move.
Abril’s popularity would skyrocket as his business continued to grow. Not only were neighbors and customers raving over his pies, but he also was featured on ABC’s Good Morning America, MSNBC, in the pages of the Miami Herald and awarded key lime pie of the year from the Miami New Times in 2022.
Abril is now a known quantity on the Miami food scene and his new store establishes that even more, so don’t be surprised if you see customers lining up outside his store this holiday season, as they did before Thanksgiving.
Fookem’s Fabulous is located at 3606 Grand Avenue in Coconut Grove and is open Monday through Friday from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mini key lime pies begin at $6 and whole pies begin at $30.
