There's an old saying, "You can't go back again." Often in life it's true.
But there are exceptions. I love to come back to this Gulf Coast region of Florida in no small part because of a string of favourite restaurants I've enjoyed over the years. I visited three of them this week. All are golden oldies, and all thoroughly lived up to my expectations from previous visits.
One of my other old favourites has sadly gone from the scene, it's place taken by a sports bar which was of no interest to me. Instead, I gave a first go at another long-time place which I'd never visited before.
By the way, if you do not enjoy eating seafood, you can skip right over this post. I'm sure that there are many fine restaurants all up and down the islands, offering everything from pizza to burgers to steak to sushi to Tex-Mex or pure Mexican to French to whatever your heart desires. Since seafood of any quality is non-existent where I live, that's just about all I do eat when I travel to places like this where it is plentiful and tasty! So seafood is my focus.
Taking them in the order they appear from north to south, we'll begin with the new entry from this trip: Frenchy's Rockaway Grill, right at the end of Rockaway Street in Clearwater Beach. All I have to say here is, "Why have I never visited this place before???" But actually, I already know the answer. I did come here once before, on a very cold night back in 2011 with my husband. By the time we got seated, he was just about frozen, and I wasn't a whole lot better off. We had to toss in the towel and go somewhere else which was more "indoors" and better heated. But, as the photo clearly shows, Frenchy's Rockaway Grill (one of six different Frenchy's restaurants in and around Clearwater) is right on the beach -- literally so as the outdoor tables with the colourful umbrellas sit right out on the sand!
This visit was a different story altogether from that frozen night in 2011. It was sunny, the temperature was 23 C (73 F) and even an outdoor seat under cover was comfortable. Now: the meal. Frenchy's has a huge and diverse menu, and it took me some time to scope it all out. I finally settled on a cup of she-crab soup, and a seared tuna salad. The soup gets its name from the fact that it was traditionally made with the meat of the female crab, and with the crab roe (eggs) thrown in. Aside from that, it's a thick, rich cream soup with various spices and seasonings, and usually a dollop of dry sherry. Frenchy's claims this as a signature item with a secret house recipe, and it tasted fabulous.
The salad was a generous helping of spring greens and baby spinach, with crisp wontons, wedges of mandarin orange, and six thick slices of rare seared tuna crusted with white and black sesame seeds, all in a sesame dressing, with side dishes of soy sauce and wasabi. The tuna was absolutely top-notch. I had not tasted such wonderful tuna since my visit to Tahiti ten years ago when it was on the menu at every meal in the resort's restaurant. You haven't lived until you've eaten seared fresh-caught tuna along with your eggs and bacon from the breakfast buffet! But Frenchy's gave a first-rate experience, in its own way with this salad -- it's a real winner!
The service, too, was outstanding at every point (kudos, Richard!). This restaurant now goes into an honoured place on my must-return visit for the next time I come this way.
Next on the way south, and the first of my old favourites, is Crabby Bill's on State 699 in Indian Rocks Beach. At least I remembered to take pictures here (some places I forgot -- bad, bad, BAD!).
At busy times, you're quite likely to find a seat at the long communal picnic tables down the middle of the restaurant, or perched up on one of the many stools at the bar. Be sure to study the random assortment of signs, mottos, old licence plates, and the like on the walls.
This is old Florida at its chatty best, and it can be good fun. Last time I came here, I got into a conversation across the bar with a gent on his night off -- he was the bartender from my hotel! On this trip, I was there at lunch time, when it was much quieter, and I had a table to myself. Service was friendly and prompt. Like all their dinners, the grouper comes with your choice of two sides from a list of six or seven. The fish was tender, flavourful, well-seasoned (I ordered it blackened), and a good sized portion. The coleslaw is the sweet green variety, not the vinegar coleslaw of a Montreal or Toronto deli. Mac and cheese? Well, I don't do it very often but this is a great place to break the rule with some of the best I've tasted in a long time -- creamy and cheesy.
The key lime pie (the quintessential Florida dessert) wasn't off the top shelf but it still had good flavour and a good rich crumb crust.
By the by, if you're located down at the south end of the chain, there's another Crabby Bill's location in St. Pete Beach. Not to be confused with another local chain called simply "Crabby's",
My next pick is Conch Republic on State 699 in Redington Beach. This is one of the two ultimate seafood restaurants of all the many I've visited in this region through the years. The menu is full of interesting touches which allow for a huge range of meal experiences. The key one for me was the opportunity to upgrade any appetizer to a meal by paying $5.99 extra to add a side and a salad. As I get older and my appetite declines, I wish such options were available in more places -- and especially in areas like this where even the appetizers can be pretty enormous. Fried conch strips with a spicy remoulade dip, house-made potato salad, and Caesar salad with absolutely the most garlicky dressing I've ever tasted -- and the croutons appeared to be made in house. The bread was also house-made, I think, and certainly hot out of the oven.
But I knew that, even after all that carb-laden main course, I simply had to go for the key lime pie. I've never been handed a bigger serving.
I'm ashamed to say I ate it all. As a diabetic, I should have run in screaming horror from almost that entire meal, and I certainly paid for it in spades through the restless, dream-ridden night that followed.
The heartbreak of the week was the disappearance of Sea Critters Cafe in Pass a Grille. With an open-air deck out on the wharf overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway, there was no better place to get that fresh-from-the-boat vibe -- in fact, you could even arrive by boat and tie up out back! Sea Critters always had a diverse assortment of fresh fish, more so than most places, as well as shellfish. Alas for the good old days.
My final old favourite is clear out of the region of this blog series altogether. It's located on the west side of US41 (the Tamiami Trail) just north of the border between Bradenton and Sarasota.
All I can say is that, as ever, the Anna Maria Oyster Bar justified every second of the 80 minutes of driving each way, not to mention the cost of gas and tolls (since you have to cross Tampa Bay on the Sunshine Skyway to get there). I first came to this restaurant way back in 2001, when I rented a house in Bradenton for 2 weeks of intensive writing time. I've come back on every visit to the region ever since.
It's a bright, cheery, restaurant with plenty of windows letting in the daylight. The first thing that always hits me is the quirkiness of hanging a roll of paper towels from a coat hanger over the table -- that's your stash of table napkins!
The Anna Maria Oyster Bar has a big, diverse menu, full of possibilities. Since it was lunchtime, I was drawn from old experience to the blackened grouper sandwich. The sides I ordered it with were the side dish winners of the trip, hands down. Their signature coleslaw is a magical treat in itself, as the traditional cabbage salad is flavoured with tiny little bits of chopped pineapple. The combination is irresistible! My second side was their house-made chips, which in Canada are sometimes called "kettle chips." These didn't come out of a bag either. This restaurant knows exactly how to fry up the thin-sliced fresh potatoes so that they are all completely crisp and utterly delicious.
What's that you say? Oh, yes, the fish! Half a pound of grouper, no less, as moist and tender as your heart could desire, dished up on an oversized bun with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and pickles. I knew from previous experience to eat it with knife and fork, as the bun's underside quickly collapses from all that moist, tender goodness. And there was the sole drawback of the experience, as the paper liner in the basket-like dish had no staying power at all when the juice from the fish and the coleslaw attacked it. Otherwise, I was in heaven.
The grand finale, the house-made dessert of desserts, was a key lime pie that remains triumphantly at the top of my list as the best-tasting example I've ever eaten anywhere. I'm sorry, but I was so preoccupied with the food that I utterly forgot to take a picture of the sandwich. However, here's the pie.
After that massive feast, all I wanted or needed for dinner that night was a dinner salad!
To close out, here's a map showing the approximate locations of each of these great eateries.
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The moral: when it comes to these restaurants, yes, you can go back!
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