Dining around the Gulf of Mexico

We just took our spring break in Perdido Key, Florida, where we traveled around Pensacola as well as Gulf Shores and Orange Beach in Alabama. We visited three waterfront restaurants.

The first was our resort's beach club, Lost Key Beach Club. We went there on Sunday after sitting on the beach a while. It's a cozy place with a small swimming pool out front.

This was one of my favorite meals of the week. It was just shrimp tacos and onion rings, but they were really impressive. Those were some of the best onion rings I've ever had. Our friends thought this one looked like a treble clef. All I know is that it was delicious.

Photo courtesy of our friend Natasha Jones.

The next day was my birthday. I had chosen The Crab Trap on Perdido Key for that evening, but when we got there it was roped off for renovations. It looked busy a couple of days later, so that seemed strange. Looking now on Google Maps, it says it's permanently closed! Not sure what's going on there.

We ended up going all the way to Orange Beach, to a place called Coastal. 

This is a really fun place with a huge bar and even bigger lawn full of tables just off the beach, on the Gulf side. There's live music and a very large shop.

We ordered a couple of appetizers, and our kids learned they like fried crab claws. Then they brought my birthday dessert, which was probably a mistake, but I didn't mind. I forgot what it was, but it was delicious.

I think I had fish tacos for dinner, and they were just ok. But I loved the appetizers and dessert, and certainly the atmosphere.

Neither of those had been on my list to visit, so they were pleasant surprises. On Wednesday we played mini golf and then looked for a place to eat. Most places were beginning to close by the time we went looking. Lulu's Gulf Shores, named for Lucy Buffet, couldn't seat us within the hour. That place is on Portage Creek and is therefore a waterfront restaurant, though I hadn't noticed it on the map before.

Finally we found a place that was open and had tons of seating available, and it was on my list though I didn't realize it until later. We ended up eating at GTs on the Bay, which has a long dock extending into Wolf Bay that you can walk out onto. So we visited some sleeping pelicans out there while we waited for our food. It has a large sandy playground that our kids enjoyed. The restaurant is really huge and has a very large patio. They had live music also. It was amazing. I forgot what I ate, but it was really good. I highly recommend GTs.

My wife took this lovely photo from the dock looking back at the restaurant.

Of those three restaurants, I liked Lost Key Beach Club best for the food and GTs for the atmosphere. Coastal had pretty great atmosphere too, as well as good apps and dessert.