Sanibel Island Restaurants BeachHunter.net |
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Sanibel Island RestaurantsWe spent 10 days on Sanibel on our honeymoon so we had a chance to try out a number of the islands restaurants. Because we are not big eaters, two restaurant meals a day was plenty for us. Below are some photos of a few of the restaurants we patronized. Our breakfast favorites:
Lunch Favorites (we usually did not eat in a restaurant for lunch)
Dinner Favorites
We can't say enough great things about the Over Easy Cafe. If you're tired of restaurants that serve cole slaw and French fries with everything you'll be pleasantly surprised at the offerings here. And their breakfasts are wonderful. The Island Cow is a Sanibel landmark. We thoroughly enjoyed their breakfasts, but their other meals were rather unremarkable considering that there are so many other good restaurants on Sanibel. We enjoyed our breakfast at the Lighthouse Cafe. I've read some TripAdvisor reviews that complain of slow service and bad food, but we did not experience that at all. The food was quickly prepared and was very tasty. They have homemade strawberry preserves which are very good, but more like syrup than preserves. We ate lunch at the Sanibel Cafe one day and found it clean and quiet, and the food was very good. We would go back. Cabbage Key is always a favorite and you can read about my experience at the restaurant on Cabbage Key. Jerry's Grocery has a wonderful restaurant where we had dinner twice. We were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the food, the reasonable prices and the excellent service. Next time we're back on Sanibel we'll eat at Jerry's more often. The Thistle Lodge restaurant was wonderful and was one of the two "high-end" restaurants we enjoyed. It is located at the Casa Ybel Resort, right next door to the Ocean's Reach condos where we were staying. It is a beautiful resort and restaurant. We intended to go back again before we left, but didn't have time. One evening we visited Ellington's Jazz Bar. The jazz was absolutely over-the-top excellent. A lot of jazz is just noise to me, but I enjoyed every minute of the music at Ellington's. We even danced several songs, which made Sue happy. The evening's entertainment didn't come cheap though. We each had a glass of wine, an appetizer, and a dessert. The final bill, with tip, was about $80. That's about double what we normally like to spend, but since it was our honeymoon we splurged. And, when you consider the caliber of entertainment it was actually a bargain. We only tried one restaurant on Captiva. There was no bike path on Captiva and parking is an issue so we didn't spend much time there. The last night we were on Sanibel we drove up to Blind Pass for the sunset, then to Captiva for dinner. The Green Flash Restaurant sits right on the bay (Pine Island Sound). I was pleasantly surprised at the interesting selections on the menu and at the high quality of the dishes they prepared. The Green Flash will definitely be on our list next trip.
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The Lighthouse Cafe is a modest breakfast spot, not far from the lighthouse on the south end of Sanibel. |
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Inside the Lighthouse Cafe. The walls are covered with framed images of lighthouses, many of which were brought in by customers. We enjoyed our breakfast here. Service was quick and the food was very good. We were here in the off season and we arrived for a late breakfast, so we didn't have to wait for a table. |
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A hearty Island Cow breakfast. Plenty to eat. |
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Outdoor seating at the Over Easy Cafe. The weather was so hot when we were here we chose not to eat outside. |
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Inside the Over Easy Cafe. We absolutely love this place and could have eaten here every day. |
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A couple of "summer salads" at the Over Easy Cafe. |
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We ate dinner once at the Island Cow and decided that we preferred their breakfasts. This is a fish sandwich I ordered. I don't care for fries and after a couple of days eating in restaurants I was sick of cole slaw. |
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| Sue's Island Cow dinner was a wrap of some kind that came with a basket of potato chips and, what else, cole slaw. After that we just said "no" to Island Cow, except for breakfast, which we heartily recommend, especially for big appetites. |
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| Now THIS is a meal! This is our wedding dinner at the Thistle Lodge. It was fabulous. It was in the middle of the off season so the restaurant was not crowded. The service was very good, but just a bit slow. I had the sense that they were perhaps a bit short-staffed that evening. We were not inconvenienced by that a bit because we were here for a leisurely dinner. Wonderful atmosphere. We look forward to returning. |
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| This is the restaurant on Cabbage Key, as you can probably tell by the dollar bills hanging from the ceiling and plastered all over the walls. I think they said that about $10,000 falls off the walls each year and they donate it to charity. Something like that. We were the first ones to arrive off the Lady Chadwick so we had the whole place to ourselves for about 10 minutes. |
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