End of the Road: Florida Panhandle Road Trip!

 Marina Oyster Barn

A no-frills restaurant with a dozen tables and booths overlooking the Bayou Texar, the Marina Oyster Barn originally opened as a boathouse and bait shop in 1968.

The following year the Rooks family began serving raw oysters, boiled shrimp, gumbo, chowder and fried mullet. The menu has expanded to include catfish, grouper, flounder, scallops and shrimp, available fried, broiled or grilled.

 

For baked oysters, try the sampler platter: Oysters Rockefeller, Texar Crabsters, Texar Shrimpsters, and Supreme Steamed with blended gooey cheeses.

If you like them raw, local East Bay oysters are big, plump, and slightly salty.

“Our East Bay local oysters, in my mind, are the best,” said the young man shucking my order. “And I’ve eaten oysters from Apalachicola, Texas, and Louisiana!”

505 Bayou Blvd, Pensacola, 850-433-0511, www.marinaoysterbarn.com

Flora-Bama Lounge

In the not-to-be-missed category: Flora-Bama Lounge is a classic roadhouse bar, complete with live music on three stages, and an oyster bar that serves them raw or Cajun-steamed, as well as peel-and-eat shrimp, and all things fried, including pickles.

The slightly spicy gumbo, thick with okra and tomatoes, is laced with tiny shrimp. Located on the beach, a spit away from the Alabama border, it’s where beach bums and bankers mingle. “We get 10,000 people here in April for the ‘Mullet Toss,’” said Keri Ann Spitzer, a bartender who gave up her bank manager job to work here.

Save yourself a Yankee northerner’s embarrassment and pronounce it like the locals: Flora-Bama rhymes with the neighboring state, and not our current President.

17401 Perdido Key Dr., Perdido Key, 850-492-0611; www.florabama.com

Well, Perdido was the end of the road for my Florida Panhandle road trip. Hope to get back one of these days...and then keep heading west along the Gulf all the way to New Orleans!