“This is the perfect pie.”
That’s what Florida chef Kia Damon decided after her first forkful of Terry’s Key Lime Pie, a cult-favorite version of the state’s most famous dessert. Sold at longtime citrus stand Bob Roth’s New River Groves in Davie, Florida, since the 1970s, the pie isn’t like most you’ll find scattered across the Sunshine State. It’s a no-bake pie, with an ethereally light texture, a pale yellow hue, and a shimmery surface.
“It was so glistening I thought I could see my reflection in the surface,” Damon recalls.
The pie is the brainchild of Terry Roth, the wife of Bob Roth’s New River Groves’s eponymous owner. As Bob and Terry’s daughter Lisa, who now runs the farmstand in South Florida, recounts, “She couldn’t find the flavor that she liked for Key lime pie. No one made it up to her standards. So when she was pregnant, she started to experiment.” After finally landing on a recipe, Terry piled pies onto a golf cart to transport them the short distance from her kitchen to the bright orange fruit stand on the other side of their property.
The pie immediately took off, although some people balked at the unconventional approach. It’s not a real Key lime pie, they’d complain. The filling isn’t green! No matter: Customers came back again and again to enjoy it, and word spread, first across the state, and then across the country. “We’ve had people come from all over the world to try our pie,” Lisa says. Bob recalls customers coming straight from the airport to grab a slice. Damon can confirm: While waiting in line, she met a man who had driven all the way from Pennsylvania to try it.
“We’re not famous any more for our citrus,” Bob says. “We’re famous for our Key lime pies.” In the half a century that New River Groves has been serving Terry’s pie, “it’s kept us in business all this time.”
Terry passed away in 2002, but her legacy continues in each slice. She successfully helped petition the state government to designate Key lime as the official state pie, sending two hundred pies to Tallahassee in 1988. She trained the pastry chef who makes the pies today, and each serving is exactly the same as the versions Terry churned out in her kitchen for decades.
The secret lies in the unique no-bake filling, but there’s another card up the Roths’ sleeves. They make their pies with their own special Key lime juice; they won’t divulge any information about it except that it’s a blend, with a touch of lemon juice included. The good news? You can order a bottle to make your own pie at home. Or better yet: Just get the whole darn pie.
