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. Two of our favorite stone crab restaurants are reopening Oct. 16 for the season after severe flooding from Hurricane Ian.
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.
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.
Peace River Seafood in Punta Gorda is a true Florida crab shack; they don’t come more authentic than this. From its 1927 Cracker cabin to the buckets of fresh blue crabs, it’s a little piece of old Florida.
It’s the oldest continuously operating restaurant in Broward County, and, thankfully, nothing has changed in years. It’s a rustic old wooden shack now surrounded by mansions and yachts. History and atmosphere make it worth the splurgy prices — and the food is good.
JB’s is your original crab shack, a funky Florida kind of place where blue crabs are served steaming from the kitchen and dumped onto sheets of brown kraft paper that serve as your tablecloth. There’s an outdoor dining deck with a tiki bar overlooking Mosquito Lagoon.