Get to Know Pensacola, Florida | Listen

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Save room for fresh seafood and diverse dishes in this coastal town

Florida is blessed with a bevy of big, flashy cities (Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville), and sometimes oceanfront Pensacola is left out of Sunshine State culinary conversations. It shouldn’t be. Super-fresh seafood, thanks to steady catches pulled from the Gulf, provides a firm foundation for “P’cola” cuisine, but the diversity of its dining options (classic American, Southern, Italian, and more) from a stable of established restaurants and flurry of new eateries—more than 50 opened in the area in 2023—shines, too. Together, they earn the city a star seat at Florida’s food-scene table.

James Briscione, Pensacola’s own celeb chef, Food Network personality, and previous executive chef at Angelena’s, says an additional ingredient boosts the city’s culinary credentials: its people. “You can have amazing restaurants, but if people don’t get them, appreciate them, and support them, they won’t last,” he says. “For a long time, Pensacola was dominated by cookie-cutter seafood spots, but now this great food culture is building, especially downtown, and it’s because the community is building up around it all.”

Best Places to Eat and Drink

Best Brunch Restaurant: George Bistro + Bar
This spot’s buzzy energy pairs perfectly with vibrant dishes from a menu that’s all over the map (in a good way). Begin with an aromatic cucumber-basil martini before diving into a bowl of crisp “George Fries.”

Best Cocktail Bar: The Well
Go full-on Florida with a sip-stop at this chic downtown cocktail bar with tropical drink favorites like the rum-soaked and fruit-packed Island Fever and mocktails like the Tropical Storm, a pineapple-lime ginger-beer punch. @thewellpensacola

Best Fine Dining: Angelena’s
Angelena’s delivers coastal Italian cuisine rooted in coastal Florida with a menu that blends Southern and Italian traditions built on harvests from farmers’ fields and Gulf fishing boats.

Best Old-School Seafood Restaurant: The Point
Folks visit this local haunt for good fun and good food including steamed deep-water royal red shrimp, crisp-fried mullet filets, and spicy blackened daily fresh catches served with stiff drinks and a side of live bluegrass music.

Best Night Out: McGuire’s Irish Pub
Hearty Irish fare like shepherd’s pie and boxtys mingle on the menu with shrimp scampi alfredo pasta and prime steaks. The Senate bean soup is comfort in a bowl and is only 18 cents, the same price it was in 1977, when McGuire’s opened.

Best Seafood Market: Joe Patti’s
On busy weekends, it’s not unusual here to see a sheriff’s deputy handing out numbers to ensure crowds stay orderly while waiting to get their locally caught shrimp, flounder fillets, whole red snapper, or stone crabs at the market.

Claim to Fame

The Bushwacker
The Bushwacker, an ice-cold, creamy coffee-flavored cocktail that’s basically a boozy milkshake, is the unofficial beach drink on Pensacola’s sugar-sand beaches (and the adjacent Alabama coast). Flora-Bama Lounge (cozied up to the Florida-Alabama state line) made the concoction famous, but Sandshaker Lounge made it first—at least in the US. Sandshaker claims that after enjoying bushwackers in St. Thomas in 1975, its owner brought them stateside. The recipe remains a secret, but the drink is rumored to get its kick from a blend of several sources, including regular rum, spiced rum, amaretto, coffee, and chocolate liqueurs.

Where to Stay

Oyster Bay
Visitors ready to take a bite out of Pensacola’s culinary offerings will need a place to rest their heads and should chart a course to Oyster Bay’s calming coastal environs. Recently renovated and washed all over in soothing white, the boutique hotel is nestled between Pensacola Bay and downtown. It may lack an on-site restaurant and bar, but the property hosts dinners with guest chefs and sits within a mile of the lively the Palafox Street area, home to more than 25 restaurants and food trucks, five breweries, multiple bars, and several bottle shops. But its appeal goes beyond looks and location. Warm hospitality and stellar service from its friendly staff rack up rave reviews, too.