Unique Eats, Bars & Seafood Shacks

My idea of a great choice for a place to eat on vacation is a restaurant with a story behind it. Here are eight historic restaurants that fit that criteria — from Prohibition rum-runners to 1980s drug-runners; from authentic 1920s grand hotel to an authentic 1950s diner.

In the rural Redland area in Homestead, you can tour Fruit and Spice Park, where you taste exotic tropical fruit. The big Redland International Orchid Festival is here May 17 to 19, 2024.

Comprehensive guide to Florida’s craft breweries, next-gen neighborhood taverns for sipping suds, playing games and meeting new friends.

Spring in Florida is blueberry season. Blueberries have become one of the most popular u-pick crops in the state. Our guide helps you find farms where you can go in the fields and experience where food actually comes from when you’re exploring Florida’s backroads.

Sebring, a small town along the lovely Lake Wales Ridge in Central Florida, is staking a claim for something new — Florida’s first (and only) craft soda festival, the Sebring Soda Festival. Local small-batch sodas made with real sugar are making a comeback, partly as an outgrowth of the craft beer phenomenon. This Sebring festival is a good opportunity to taste what it’s all about.

This weekend’s St. Augustine Lions Club Spring Festival has reimagined its seafood festival past.

Our favorite pit stops for road food (and cocktails) along the Overseas Highway.

Cap’s Place is Broward’s oldest restaurant, where rum-runners and gamblers reigned, and presidents and celebrities visited. It’s a rustic old wooden shack now surrounded by mansions and yachts. History and atmosphere make it worth a visit.

Stone crab season starts Oct. 15 and Everglades City, a small, isolated fishing village south of Naples, is a place to feast on this Florida favorite in an authenic Old Florida atmosphere.

Cinnamon rolls and the fall season are both back; Knaus Berry Farms reopens Oct. 31. This 50-year-old institution south of Miami has generations of devoted fans. It’s a good stop for an Everglades trip or a day exploring the Redland.

Stock Island is a workaday island next to Key West with marinas, fishing and shrimp boats. It’s off the beaten path, a place where you can find great restaurants, luxe resorts and some funky charm.

Robbie’s Marina is a don’t-miss stop as you drive through the Florida Keys. Dozens of tarpon, some more than 6 feet long, gather at the dock and lunge for fish from visitors. The restaurant there, the Hungry Tarpon, is highly recommended , too.

Four of my favorite stops in the Keys are a little hard to find, and that’s part of their charm. They’re off the Overseas Highway in neighborhoods — and they’re worth discovering.

If you want to savor the flavor of the Florida Keys, spend a little time at a tiki bar. Our favorites profiled here are unpretentious waterfront spots where you’ll get good fresh fish, fried everything and a big serving of Keys atmosphere.

Mangoes may be the reason I can never leave Florida. Here are favorite Florida mango recipes discovered or developed during my 30-plus years of worshipping these beautiful fruit.

Everyone wants to discover that funky inexpensive spot where locals go. In Key West, that would be Hogfish Bar & Grill on Stock Island, which wins raves for fresh off-the-boat seafood.

The historic agricultural area surrounding the Homestead entrance to Everglades National Park offers so many cool experiences — a park where you can see and sample exotic fruits, a historic village of shops and restaurants, a local tropical-fruit winery and famous fruit milkshakes and cinnamon rolls.

Rooted in the boisterous days of pirates, wreckers and rum runners, inebriation is an established ritual in Key West. Celebrate with locals at these favored watering holes away from the hordes crawling Duval Street.

The Marathon Seafood Festival calls itself the Original Marathon Seafood Festival to emphasize it’s the real deal – indigenous and authentic. Marathon is a fishing town, and you don’t get fish any fresher than here, unless you catch it yourself.

The Fort Myers Beach Shrimp Festival goes back to 1959. After severe destruction from Hurricane Ian, it was cancelled in 2023 and is back much change in 2024.

Fresh Florida seafood is best enjoyed in an authentic Florida fish shack, ideally with an outdoor deck overlooking the water. Here are a few of our favorites.

The Pensacola Seafood Festival kicks off the festival season in Florida.

It is possible to go to Key West on a budget. Here are some frugal tips on lodging, interesting budget restaurants and free places to go.

Driving U.S. 1 north of Titusville, you would never know Oak Hill even existed. But this gateway to the Mosquito Lagoon is worth finding. There’s fascinating history, a great fishing pier and the sort of atmospheric, out-of-the-way waterfront seafood shack that we love to discover.

Stopping at Alabama Jack’s, a fish shack and dive bar on a remote road between Homestead and Key Largo, has been the classic way to start a Keys trip for decades. We revisited the open-air waterfront spot recently, and we’re happy to say: It’s as shabby and atmospheric as ever.

No Name Pub has been around since the 1930s, and it looks like it. It offers tasty food in a historic building, but what makes this the king of Funky Florida is the decor: $90,000 (some say) stapled to the walls and ceiling.

Archie’s Seabreeze is an iconic beach bar on Hutchinson Island in Fort Pierce that has been drawing a mix of tourists, locals, young & old since 1947.

The beach town of Marco Island is all manicured and modern, but here are four adventures into the wild and authentic Florida that are within a quick drive. You can wade across a lagoon to a wild beach or have lunch in a funky fishing town or stroll on a boardwalk into a beautiful old growth cypress swamp.

This historic restaurant near Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park at Cross Creek is a great place to eat like a cracker. It offers an old Florida ambiance and menu.

Lionfish are gobbling up native species on Florida Keys reefs. Now you can gobble them up instead. Several Florida restaurants are serving lionfish, said to be delicious.