10 Florida Restaurants Tourists Pack (and 5 Locals Go To Instead)
A family from out of state waits ninety minutes for a table, snaps a photo of the sign, and pays double for shrimp.
Two miles away, a Florida couple walks straight into a counter joint and eats better for half the price.
Same night, same city, two completely different dinners.
These are the Florida restaurants tourists pack, and where locals eat instead. Let’s start with the tourist-packed restaurants.
Joe’s Stone Crab
Joe’s Stone Crab has fed Miami Beach crowds for generations, and you’ll spot the crowd out front before you spot the sign.
The main dining room won’t take a reservation.
You give your name, then stand near the door while tuxedoed servers rush trays of chilled claws past you.
Prices rise with the market, so a platter of large claws can cost more than your hotel night.
It’s worth it once.
Tourists line up anyway because the claws come cracked and iced the way few kitchens bother with now.
Versailles
Versailles runs on Cuban coffee and tour buses in the heart of Little Havana.
Out front, a walk-up window called the ventanita pours cortaditos to a standing crowd all day.
Politicians stop here to shake hands whenever they want a Miami photo.
Visitors pack the dining room for ropa vieja and flan, then fight for a parking spot on Calle Ocho.
Columbia Restaurant
The Columbia Restaurant sprawls across a full block of Ybor City, Tampa’s old cigar district.
Waiters toss the 1905 Salad tableside, spinning the bowl until the garlic and Romano coat every leaf.
A flamenco show stomps through the back dining room most nights, dinner and a floor show on one ticket.
Bus tours love it.
Tour groups book the tiled rooms months out, so a walk-in on a Saturday can mean a long wait for sangria.
Bern’s Steak House
Bern’s Steak House turns a Tampa steak dinner into an event on South Howard Avenue.
The wine list runs to thousands of labels, bound like a phone book from back when phone books were thick.
You order your steak by thickness and weight, then finish upstairs in the Harry Waugh Dessert Room.
Book weeks ahead.
Out-of-towners come for the kitchen tour and the cellar, and the tables stay full on a Tuesday.
Sloppy Joe’s Bar
Sloppy Joe’s Bar holds the busiest corner on Duval Street in Key West.
Ernest Hemingway drank with the owner at the original location, and the bar moved to this Duval corner in 1937.
A house band plays from noon, and cruise passengers filter in straight off the ships near Mallory Square.
T-shirts fly out the door.
You’ll pay resort prices for a rum drink, but the people-watching on Duval comes free.
Cabbage Key
Cabbage Key sits out in Pine Island Sound, and you can only reach it by boat.
Ferries run from Captiva and Pine Island, dropping day-trippers at a dock with no cars in sight.
Thousands of dollar bills, signed and stapled, cover the walls of the old inn.
The cheeseburger here supposedly inspired Jimmy Buffett, though that story stays a rumor.
Boat required.
The ride out is half the draw, so vacationers pay for a cruise and a burger in one trip.
Flora-Bama
The Flora-Bama straddles the Florida-Alabama line on Perdido Key, half beach bar and half maze of decks.
Each April, contestants line up on the sand for the Mullet Toss and fling a dead fish across the state line.
Bushwackers come out blended like frozen milkshakes, and bands play across several stages at once.
One bar, two states.
Newcomers wander the decks for an hour just to find the water, and the parking lots overflow by noon.
Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. plants a slice of the Forrest Gump movie at Universal CityWalk in Orlando.
Servers quiz your table with “Run, Forrest, Run” license plates, flipping them to signal whether you need anything.
The menu runs shrimp a dozen ways, boiled, fried, and skewered.
Movie quotes included.
Theme-park crowds pour in between rides, and the gift shop moves as much product as the kitchen.
Ocean Deck
The Ocean Deck sits right on the sand in Daytona Beach, one of the few spots where the tables face open water.
Reggae and rock bands play late on the upstairs deck, loud enough to carry over the surf.
Beach crowds have filled it for decades, back when Daytona still raced cars on the hard-packed sand.
Sand in your sandals.
Spring breakers and families pack the deck at sunset, and the kitchen sends out fried shrimp by the bucket.
Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville
Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville anchors the far end of the Orlando CityWalk crowd with a full island theme.
A fake volcano erupts on schedule and pours margarita mix down its side while the speakers loop Buffett’s hits.
You can grab a cheeseburger, a Landshark lager, and a five-o’clock-somewhere refill at any hour.
Flip-flops encouraged.
Park-hoppers treat the wait for a table as part of the show, and the frozen drinks keep coming.
Psst! How much do you know about Florida’s food scene? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Florida Food IQ
Test yourself on Florida’s most famous dishes and the spots that serve them. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Which Florida city adds Genoa salami to its version of the Cuban sandwich?
Where Locals Eat Instead
Skip the wait lists and the tour buses, and this is where you'll find Floridians eating.
El Siboney
El Siboney sits a few blocks off Duval Street, which is exactly why Key West locals love it.
The dining room is plain, the portions are huge, and the roast pork comes with black beans and sweet plantains.
No band, no Hemingway T-shirts, no cover charge.
Just dinner.
You'll eat better here for half of what the Duval crowd pays, and the regulars know it.
La Camaronera
La Camaronera runs a stand-up counter in Little Havana, a short drive from the Versailles crowds.
The Garcia family has fried fish here for decades, straight from the market case up front.
Order the pan con minuta, a fried snapper fillet on Cuban bread with the tail still poking out.
Grab extra napkins.
There's barely a dining room, so Miamians eat elbow to elbow and love the mess.
Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish
Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish smokes mullet over red oak just south of St. Petersburg.
You sit at an outdoor counter or a shaded picnic table, no reservations and cash in hand.
The smoked fish spread and the German potato salad have kept the same regulars coming for generations.
Bring cash.
Gulf storms have knocked the place around, yet the family fires the smoker back up every time.
Star Fish Company
Star Fish Company serves fried shrimp on paper plates at the docks in Cortez.
Cortez is one of Florida's last working fishing villages, and the boats unload a few steps from your table.
You order at the market window, claim a picnic table on the dock, and watch pelicans work the water.
Sunset included.
It's cash only and often packed by dusk, so locals show up early with a cooler of their own drinks.
Lester's Diner
Lester's Diner has poured coffee on State Road 84 in Fort Lauderdale since 1967.
The coffee comes in a 14-ounce cup, the kind that keeps a trucker awake all the way to Miami.
That's a lot of coffee.
The menu runs long, from Greek omelets to hot open-faced turkey, served whenever the road crowd rolls in.
Snowbirds and night-shift nurses share the counter, and nobody here waits an hour for a table.
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