Dining Out Gulf Coast: The Brick Wall Sports Bar & Grille, Port St. Joe, FL

We ventured over to Port St. Joe again for our Friday night meal.  The last time we dined at The Brick Wall things were a little hectic and the waitress didn't write down our order, and we never got our baked oysters, and so on and so forth.  I know, I know, every restaurant has one of those nights where things go awry.  

So we decided to go into this meal with a good attitude.  Yes, it was a Friday night.  Yes, it is a sports bar.  Got it.  We were told at the hostess stand that the kitchen had requested a little break to get caught up so the wait would be 30 minutes or so.  We agreed to add our name to the list and went outside to wait on a nearby bench.  Within about 15 minutes, we were sent a text message and reported back to the hostess stand.  We were seated in the very back booth which was fine because we had hoped it might be a little more calm in that corner.  It was not.  lol

Our server, Christian, did his best to shout over the music and the crowds around us.  We did our best to shout back to him.  

First up, let's get something to drink.  Sweet Harold order a Long Island and I ordered an Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy a/k/a Lemonade with Lemon Vodka.  Both were refreshing and a nice start to our meal.

I have been craving crab claws and was happy to see them on the menu.  Here's me, waiting anxiously for them to arrive!

There were 35 crab claws in this serving along with a spicy cocktail sauce for dipping.  I did share some with Sweet Harold.  The breading was light and they were served fresh out of the fryer hot.  

They were well worth the wait!

Grouper and shrimp are Sweet Harold's favorites.  He decided to try their fried shrimp along with fries and slaw.  The eight shrimp in this order were LARGE.  The fries were average fries and the slaw was a little too "wet" with mayo dressing for his liking.  

See?  From the picture above, it's difficult to determine which is the slaw and which is the tartar sauce.

He did enjoy the shrimp.

I had the fried grouper fingers with a baked potato and steamed broccoli.  More on the broccoli in a minute.

The baked potato could have baked about 20-30 more minutes.  The broccoli, we both agreed, was the best we've ever eaten in a restaurant.  It was perfectly cooked and seasoned with butter and garlic.  

The grouper's batter could have used more seasoning.  It was a little bland.  Or maybe the grouper should have been seasoned more before being battered.  Either way, it needed more flavor.  

We had ordered a side of hush puppies, but they were delivered to another table by mistake.  By the time we received OUR order, we had finished our meal.  But they were quite tasty with bits of jalapeno.  The texture was good and they were made with white cornmeal (a personal favorite).

Here are pictures of the menus.

All things considered, things went as well as could be expected on a Friday night in a small beach town at a sports bar.  We didn't have any conversation because we couldn't hear each other.  We could have yelled at each other like all the other tables appeared to be doing, but I didn't think anyone would care to hear the "elders" conversating.  

Service was spotty, but no fault of our server.  We knew the kitchen was swamped, and it was the runner's responsibility to get the food to the correct table.