Naples/Bonita Springs/Marco Island, Florida

We're doing some traveling in a couple months. We'll be staying on Marco Island and I'll be hungry. What are some recommendations. We'd love to go to the places the local hang out.

Are there any buffet brunches worth the visit?
What are some local dishes?
Who serves up the best?
What are some places we should not miss?

We went to Marco about 4 years ago, and the meals we had in Marco were of the serviceable-at-best sort. I'm not saying they were bad, I'm saying we had a number of perfectly decent meals, sometimes with local charm (breakfast in particular), but the highly recommended you-gotta-try-this-place ones were not noticeably better than the ones selected at random by us. We joked that we had found the Wichita (our hometown) of Florida; it was all very middle American, comfortably undemanding. That was fine for a relaxing vacation, and when we wanted a standout meal, we went to Naples (which has been covered pretty decently in this thread and others, mainly by Rev Andy).

The thread that MikeG led you to still stands with my recommendations. A few new places I would add to the list are Zen, for excellent sushi, Bleu Provence for bistro, and Nektar, for very expensive Mediterranean. All are in old Naples. Can't recommend anything on Marco. However, on the Isles of Capri, near Marco, Backwater Nick's is a fun seafood restaurant. Very casual with reasonable prices, right on the water. Excellent fried grouper and terrific bloody mary's. Grouper is the ubiquitious local cuisine.

I was at Cru in Ft. Myers recently, by far the best restaurant in the area. Very hip and modern, excellent food.

elrushbo wrote:I was at Cru in Ft. Myers recently, by far the best restaurant in the area. Very hip and modern, excellent food.

My new favorite restaurant.

I was in Naples a couple of weeks ago, and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food. It being spring break, I was not able to get into Andy's fancier recs, and sadly missed Andy hisself because I gave him such short notice, but I can say I did not have a single bad meal (okay, we hit Mickey D's for a breakfast snack on the way to the beach one morning and that was not good, but it also was what I expected and just sustenance) in Naples.

Perhaps, given my experiences in other parts on Florida, my expectations were not so high, but we did eat well.

Pazzo's was a decent fancy dinner in downtown Naples.

The Old Naples Pub was a good stop for a quick lunch, since Tommy Bahama's (strongly recommended by Andy) was too packed and we were hungry.

Had a surprisingly good lunch at Pelican Larry's-Pine Ridge.

I will let Andy & Gary enthuse about Grouper and Chips. All I have to add is that they do know how to handle a deep frier, and the ingredients are great. Ahh, grouper.

Also had a pleasant dinner, mostly Vietnamese food, at a little diner next to the Grouper and Chips on Tamiami near downtown, but I cannot find the name. The owner had just bought the place in the last year after moving down from Champaign. Awful dessert, but decent Pho, and beef salad. Cannot find the name at the moment.

This is a useful link http://www.naplesnews.com/restaurants/

We did have one truly awful meal - rubbery overcooked Grouper, sweet gloppy sauces - at the Castaways near the airport in Tampa. But that was certainly not Naples. Cannot say anything about breakfast buffets, though, as I would tend to avoid them...

Nice plug for Naples Dave. Hopefully we can meet next time you're in the area. Is the Vietnamese restaurant you mentioned possibly Miss Saigon? It's been mentioned as recently opened and been spoken well of. Sounds like the right area also. I haven't tried it yet but will soon.

RevrendAndy wrote:Nice plug for Naples Dave. Hopefully we can meet next time you're in the area. Is the Vietnamese restaurant you mentioned possibly Miss Saigon? It's been mentioned as recently opened and been spoken well of. Sounds like the right area also. I haven't tried it yet but will soon.

No, Miss Saigon was a bit north of there. This place is literally next door to Groupers and Chips, and is really a diner. But the cook/owner is a Vietnamese lady, and she had a couple of specials that were decent with a menu of somewhat ambitious diner selections.

I can certainly imagine going back & will give you more notice next time, Andy. Thanks for the tips.

dicksond wrote:Also had a pleasant dinner, mostly Vietnamese food, at a little diner next to the Grouper and Chips on Tamiami near downtown, but I cannot find the name.

alas I can't locate the name either but agree decent (and cheaply priced) Vietnamese food at this place.

We really enjoyed Swan River Seafood http://www.swanriverseafood.com/index.htm
Not only is it a restaurant but it is also a market that has a WIDE variety of fresh seafood to choose from to cook yourself on the grill at your condo/hotel. They also have pre-cooked items such as shrimp as well as seafood pates to take to a beach picnic or as an appetizer in your room before you go out for the evening.

Growing up in Naples, I'd offer the following:

Fernandez the Bull
Excellent cuban food in a cafe environment. A few years ago they moved from North Naples to the East Trail and into a bit simpler interior, but their food remains the best Cuban food the city has to offer and some of the better Cuban food I've had outside of Miami. Their ropa vieja with yucca shouldn't be missed, nor should the palomilla steak. The highlight though is the garlic'd Cuban bread they serve with their house-made hot sauce.

Pastrami Dan's
Totally overpriced pastrami sandwiches. I cringe when I pay the $9 for one of these (I remember when they were $5 or so), but it remains one of the best sandwiches in the city. Nothing remotely approaching the likes of Katz's, but for Naples, it's my favorite deli sandwich. Their sides are terrible by the way.


Fernandez the Bull
1265 Airport Rd S
(239) 659-2996

Pastrami Dan's
586 9th St N
(239) 263-3431

We dined at Rumba Cuban Cafe near downtown Naples a few nights ago and loved it. Our appetizer was Rumba Chips with thin sliced plantains topped with absolutely delicious pork and rumba cheese sauce. This was followed by a refreshing avocado salad with sliced onions and an excellent vinaigrette. Masitas de Puerco was sterling in all it's porcine wonderfulness and Ropa Vieja was as good a version as I have found.

They don't have a full liquor license but offer mojitos made with a wine, which was pretty good all things considered. It was chock full of fresh mint. The wine list is weak, which is to be expected, but they allowed us to open our own bottle for a $15 corkage charge. The servers and helpers were extraordinarily friendly.

http://rumbacubancafe.com/