In lieu of the expected Vacation Content®, I give you Part 1 of our Space Coast Restaurant Guide. Not that anyone suspects otherwise, but our reviews are always objective and impartial and we never benefit from them. Well, we haven't yet, but who's to say? Each review concludes with a gator-rater out of 5 gators, reflecting the Floridity of the establishment (which is really--beyond the prospect of fresh fish--what you're here for.) What is Floridity?
(To be clear from the outset, Floridity, as a idea, shares some conceptual overlap with, but is not contiguous with, the "Florida Man" mythos--that skinny, chain-smoking methhead who's been arrested for strapping a live alligator to the hood of his truck, or the tattooed, weed-dealing sex criminal discovered to be hording a suspiciously huge number of taxidermied racoons in his trailer. Florida Man is normally found in the interior of the state, not necessarily at the beach, where we are.)
Back to my original point: what makes a Florida place great in a specifically Florida kind of way? This is a non-exhaustive list:
1.) Fresh fish on the menu. There'll be a posted menu of rotating species, which may or may not actually be available, but they've always got some mahi.
2.) Live music--classic rock or country--or at least a stage that suggests live music is sometimes played there. When the band isn't playing, it's modern country over the PA.
3.) Ample outdoor, covered seating, and at least one large outdoor bar.
4.) Some combination of corrugated metal sheeting and dried palm fronds acting (superficially) as roofing, usually above the bar areas.
5.) A whole bunch of crazy crap on the walls. Often an uncoordinated collection of curios, broken surfboards, beer signs, brightly-colored scraps of 2x4, cancelled license plates, and old-timey nautical gear, with stickers filling in the gaps between items. The edifice may actually appear to be made of this stuff, but no, no one would ever insure it. (If you actually want to go to a place that's literally like this, check out Bomba's Shack in Tortola, BVI. Actually, Google just now tells me it's permanently closed. RIP Bomba's. A Real One if ever one existed.)
6.) Clientele: a few Florida Mans posted up at the bar; youngish retirees with tobacco-stained goatees here for the daily happy hour; tattooed, somehow rich, blue collar guys in their 40s and 50s (also with goatees) wearing trucker hats, sunglasses with neoprene straps to keep them from flying off, and pastel t-shirts with big, technicolor logos on the back featuring swordfish or mahi mahi jumping out of the water above a punny, vaguely sexual slogan (e.g., "Sinkers Bar & Grill, Vero Beach, FL - We've Got Big Cans," etc.). Bonus points if they're wearing crocks, jorts, a braided belt, or a cell phone holster; tons of unsupervised kids running around. Out in the parking lot is likely to be a succession of Real Big Trucks adorned with threatening, seditious messaging.
7.) Boring beer selection. And, in fact, a pretty bad drinks menus overall. Taps will be Bud products, though not always Bud Light because of politics, and Yuengling for some reason. Occasionally a local craft brew sneaks in. Mixed drinks will be brightly-colored and treacle-sweet.
8.) The waitstaff uses terms of endearment with customers. Northerners may find it condescending or simply "not done" for some other poorly-grounded reason of contemporary petit bourgeois morality, but they do not care about that down here. You're "hun" or "darling," and since they're the ones working hard for you, you keep your trap shut and enjoy the mothering.
The more of the above you have the more authentic Floridity you've captured, though this raises the question of from whence authentic Floridity comes. If we carve out St. Augustine and maybe Miami Beach, most of Florida--the part below the Dixie panhandle bit, at least--is still pretty much just a recently-settled swamp. And you sense that its manifold Bar & Grills, as highly curated spaces, have been assembled according to a pre-fabbed notion of what such an establishment ought to be, one that has itself been cobbled together from all manner of bits and bobs of pop-culture flotsam and stray Jimmy Buffet lyrics. Hence, we get a lot of incongruous Polynesian tiki décor, Beach Boy-era surfing paraphernalia (surfing is not really a Florida pastime, Cocoa Beach excepted), and of course the mandatory neon It's Five O'Clock Somewhere sign, with accompanying parrot (not native to Florida). As there exists neither a parent culinary culture nor aesthetic to speak of, these places don't so much express said concepts (as would, say, a pizzeria in Napoli or even a German restaurant in Milwaukee) as they do invent and perpetuate them. So on one level it's mostly faked, yet it is nevertheless authentic insofar as it's faked, because that's its essence, built as it is around a hollow core. A copy with no original, Baudrillard's simulacrum. And in that sense, Floritidy is a highly American sensibility. I love all of it so much.
Yada, yada, anyway, on with the reviews!
Coconuts on the Beach
A beach bar glown up into a full service restaurant, Coconut's is right on the beach, so there's no false advertising here. Its seating is mostly outdoor on a giant, covered deck, and it's usually hopping, so it feels like you're part of the party. Sadly, the food is mostly pretty meh (stick with the mahi sandwich), avoid the pastas (wtf?). They hawk branded, novelty booze glassware: once upon a time, that meant big, heavy glass tiki cups, but today you get cheesy, branded light-up plastic mugs. Clientele during the day is a mixed bag of families, young retirees, Florida Mans, and hard-bodied industry workers. Turns more clubby the later it gets. Love it here.
Florida Factor: 🐊🐊🐊 Spot on food and drink menu, and that location(!), trends more South Beach than Daytona Beach.
Fish Camp Bar & Grill
You'll hardly know you're inside a Best Western when you step into Fish Camp, a sprawling Cajun-themed joint that feels like a redneck Rainforest Cafe. They were selling beers for $2 a pint, so that's where it's at. They also had a Harry Potter trivia contest going on when we visited (we finished second), which was a lot of fun, if thematically disorienting. A WHOLE BUNCH of crazy crap of the walls, and various gator dishes on the menu. The rice in my jambalaya was dry. Love it here.
Floridity Factor: 🐊🐊 Nails the swamp theme, but feels a lot more bayou than Everglades.
Dolphins Waterfront Bar & Grill
Ooh la la...you've driven out to Merritt Island to the Cadillac of Space Coast Bar & Grills. Set way back on a canal amidst sailboat docks, Dolphins is a classy, upscale version of the B&G's at the cruise port. The canal is actually lousy with dolphins. We saw a bunch just lazing around right off the deck. Bills itself as the largest tiki bar and restaurant on the Space Coast, which seems legit, as they've built a truly massive Polynesian-style longhouse here. Both the grub and its corresponding bill are a step or two above the average. I had an incredibly delicious and inventive fish curry stew, and everyone else in our party ate real good, too. They even had fish on the kid's menu--quite a welcome change from the normal fatty fried fare our kids have to choose from. Love it here.
Floridity Factor: 🐊🐊🐊 Large, outdoor, dockside, and tremendously inauthentically Hawaiian (and thereby pretty Floridian). You'll need plenty of shekels to hang, though, so don't expect many Florida Mans livening up the joint.
Coasters Taphouse
In the strip Mall with the Publix, this was a Beef O'Brady's until it reinvented itself as a beer and gourmet burger bar. They do have a much more interesting selection of beers than you normally get out here on our barrier island, even a Gose, if I'm not mistaken. The dropped fiberglass ceiling tiles make you feel a bit like you're at work, though likely helped dampen the sound of 5 rowdy children in our party. Service, like the retirees next to us, seemed chagrined to see the 5 children, and no one called us "hun." Cheers for the inventiveness of the menu special that combined mahi, artichokes, and capers, jeers to overcooking the mahi.
Floridity Factor: 🐊 Kind of an upscale, burger-centric Chilis, but could be anywhere, and not necessarily on a coast, either.
Ellie Mae's Tiki Bar
Now we're talking. Ellie Mae's opened up four years and a half ago, and does a tidy trade up in Cape Canaveral. Lots of interesting clientele, like the extraordinarily drunk Florida Man evangelizing the patrons, who stayed at our table arguing theology (poorly) for 15 minutes. The outdoor tiki deck has live music and even live sand to sink your feet into. Drinks aren't altogether expensive, and you're almost guaranteed to be called something endearing by the extremely extroverted waitstaff. If Joanie's Beachside Cafe (see next series of reviews) was a bar, this would be it. Chef recommends the peel and eat shrimp; pairs well with the mai tai. Not yet entirely ramshackle, and the peppy logo looks like something free off the Vistaprint site. Maybe someday it'll degenerate enough to get that 5th alligator! Love it here.
Floridity Factor: 🐊🐊🐊🐊
The Wendy's Next to Sea World
Not in Cocoa Beach, but we did go here after a day at Sea World's Aquatica waterpark in Orlando. The kids were hungry, and it was a stop of desperation. It's a lot like the Wendy's by your house.
Floridity Factor: No gators. Frosties are as delicious as you remember them, however.
Stay tuned for the next installment of this series, which comes out when we eat at enough other places to make reviews for them. Toodles!
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