Visitors savor a mix of down-home eats and high-end cuisine at THE Beach
Tonight's dinner is seared sea scallops with fennel salad, a light Pinot Grigio and seven varieties of bread served with flower-shaped butter on chilled lemon leaves. Tomorrow, it's up-to-your-elbows barbeque, baked beans, corn on the cob, and 27 napkins. Perhaps your perception of fine dining in Florida was reserved for our sister cities farther south; if that's true, Northwest Florida invites you to sample her amazing eateries, from those with linen tablecloths and their own wine cellars to 'pass the succotash' cash-only family-style.
The proximity of THE Beach to the Gulf of Mexico means no end to seafood delicacies. You haven't really tasted seafood until you've had it on the coast; fish so fresh it was most likely swimming in the Gulf just that morning. Dozens of varieties are available on any given day: grouper, snapper, triggerfish, amberjack, shrimp and blue crab form the staple of most restaurant menus.
Maybe you're brave enough to try grilling fresh fish yourself. Pay a visit to Joe Patti's Seafood Market in Pensacola or Destin Ice Seafood Market in Destin to get an idea of the incredible variety available. Six or seven sizes of shrimp with heads on or off, live crabs and pre-cleaned lump crabmeat, about two dozen varieties of whole fresh fish or fillets, bay and sea scallops, live lobsters and crawfish. It can be overwhelming, so start with a nice white fish fillet like grouper. Get some Italian dressing and a little fresh cilantro and marinate your fillets for about four hours. Lay them on a hot grill (you might want to use a fish cage or a non-stick grill pan) for just a few minutes a side, depending on thickness. Do not overcook!!! Check it often to see how it flakes around the edge. Grill some fresh asparagus, serve with salad and a nice white wine, and you've got a fantastic meal!
If you think those microscopic shrimp in your salad back home are what you'll get down here, order up a plateful and come hungry. Fresh shrimp can range from about three inches long to monsters half as big as your arm. Shrimp steamed in a mix of spices and served cold with cocktail sauce and a frosty mug of beer is the perfect compliment to a day at the beach.
We like our other crustaceans, too-succulent blue crab, stone crab, Florida lobster, and those small, lobster-like creatures you might know as crayfish or crawdads. We call them crawfish or "mudbugs", and love them boiled in Cajun spices.
Preparation is the key to enjoyment, so restaurants serve fresh fish dozens of different ways - blackened, grilled, fried, panned, sautéed, broiled, or stuffed and cooked in a paper bag, then finished with delights such as mango salsa, sweet potato hay, or lump crabmeat. How exotic do you want to get? This part of Florida is seeing such an influx of new residents that we are indeed fortunate to be able to lure top-quality chefs from all over the globe.
Clark and Blake Brennan's School of Fish
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