Dave's Oyster Bar - A busy place but no personality
- Robert Henley
- Mar 15
- 3 min read
Bar 1779 of 1800 different bars
Name: Dave's Oyster Bar - A busy place but no personality
Location: Gulf Breeze, FL (Midway)
Date: 03-14-2025
Web Site: NA, FB only
Overall Rating (1-10): 4
Provided by My Out n About - Robert and Sheila Henley
Description:
We have lived in the Gulf Breeze area for almost 15 years and never went to Dave's previous location or the newer one. We finally decided to stop by on a Thursday night and I have to say I was pretty disappointed.
When you pull up to the place the outside building looks pretty nice and has good curb appeal. Nestled in large oaks, the building looks like a nice established place. It stops there. The parking lot is gravel with no lines, people park at every angle and spacing.
When you walk into Dave's the feeling is you are walking into a warehouse. There is a good size bar in the back center and of course every seat was taken. The dining room tables are all in a large open room and very noisy. The tables are spaced apart nicely so you are not sitting on top of your neighbors.
Luckily as we walked up to the bar a couple was just getting up so we snagged 2 seats. The bartender promptly dropped off menu's and went to make other drinks. Unfortunately things evolved downward from there. For quite some time, the bartender did not return, he spent time going to opposite sides of the bar chatting with friends/regulars and not returning to us for many minutes. Finally another person who wore a soiled apron, maybe a shucker/bartender asked us what we wanted and we ordered our usual Bacardi and Waters. We also decided on an 1/2 pound of crab claws. ($23) Well, they don't have a liquor license so we decided to split a beer.
The crab claws came and were pretty small. Granted, there was a good amount of them, but small. They were lightly fried, but the breading left a funny taste. Also, being small I bit into a lot of small shell bits. I immediately wished I would have selected sautéed instead.
We requested cocktail sauce which was brought with the claws. It was almost tasteless to us. We realize that we tend to eat food a little more seasoned then a lot of people, but this was almost like a sweet ketchup.
We kept trying to get the bartenders attention to get some horseradish or Tabasco sauce, but once again he was "engaged" with his friends/regulars and didn't turn around or look down the bar for several minutes.
We finally received a large container of horseradish and seasoned up the cocktail sauce. Much better.
Bottom Line: This is almost always a busy place so maybe we missed out on what they are good at. After all we went to an oyster house and ordered crab claws. The warehouse feel, the poor service and the crab claw experience, make us not recommend Dave's Oyster House.
R&S Rating Scale (1-10)
Atmosphere: 3
Comfort: 5
Food Price: $22 for 1/2 lb of Crab Claws
Food Quality: 4
Liquor: No
Beer: Yes
Wine: Yes
Music: None that we could hear
Cleanliness: 3
Fun: 5
Staff: 4
Purse Hangers: Yes
Non Smoking: Yes
Restrooms: NA
Parking: 3
Camper/RV Parking: No
Provided by My Out n About - Robert and Sheila Henley
My Out n About provides valuable information to help others experience the fun things in life. We include, Restaurants, Bars, RV Parks and Adventures. This review and related comments are based on our personal experience at the business discussed and are not endorsed or solicited by the individual business. Your experience may differ.
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