Cocodrie’s: Hearty Food on the Gulf, With a Louisiana Breeze
8649 Gulf Blvd., Navarre Beach, 850-939-8777
By Bruce Collier June 3, 2004 Issue
1/2

With summer season officially here, even locals get the urge to head to the beach, and the bars and restaurants springing up on it. Cocodrie’s on Navarre Beach fits the classic mold. It’s a rambling wooden and concrete structure, with a large outdoor patio bar, and equally large dining rooms with windows on the Gulf. An inside cocktail lounge with TVs offers your choice of conversation starters. The restaurant gets its name from a bay in Louisiana, and Cocodrie’s menu favors Louisiana-style coastal seafood. Nevertheless, you can dine very well off the land, too. Service is brisk and friendly, and the portions are generous.

We ate on a weeknight just before Memorial Day, and though Cocodrie’s does not accept reservations, we were able to get a table in the rapidly filling restaurant. The management makes the most of the space, but no one seemed crowded. We ate on the patio, enjoying the cool breeze and the Gulf view. Picnic tables, spacious and canopied but still basic wooden picnic tables, constitute the furnishings on the patio. If you like your chairs with backs, dine inside.

The menu offers appetizers, soups, salads, sandwiches, and more substantial seafood and non-seafood entrees. Much of the seafood is fried, but you can find blackened and grilled meat and fish as well. Daily dining specials are listed on the flip side of the beer menu, which offers a nice selection of domestics and imports, included several of Louisiana’s justly famous Abita Springs brews. We ordered cocktails, which we were both happy to see came in real glasses, not plastic cups. Plastic is often used at even posh outdoor bars, and martinis just don’t drink as well out of a to go cup.

For starters, my friend ordered fried shrimp and I got stuffed mushrooms. Her shrimp were numerous and hot, but the uniformity of size and breading convinced us they had been frozen. The kitchen sent out plain ketchup instead of horseradish cocktail sauce, but they fixed that later. Overall, they were okay. The stuffed mushrooms looked and tasted freshly made, with a smoked mozzarella and seafood stuffing. Other appetizers included chicken fingers, fried crab claws, spinach and seafood queso dips, and crab balls. Soups included chicken and andouille gumbo and shrimp and artichoke. Salads are also available as sides or meals, with fried or blackened catfish, shrimp, grilled beef tenderloin, and pecan chicken to dress up the greens.

We skipped the salads, though my friend’s meal came with a good mixed salad. The sandwiches, among them seafood po-boys, burgers, chicken and grilled grouper, were tempting, but we likewise passed on to the main courses. Cocodrie’s serves lunch, which is where I tend to eat sandwiches, but I noticed many of the children dining outside were enjoying them.

My friend wanted a steak, and Cocodrie’s did well by her with a 12-ounce center cut sirloin, cooked as ordered and served with crisp shoestring fried potatoes. The sirloin usually comes with Parmesan smashed potatoes, but the restaurant substituted. Rather, they brought out the smashed by mistake, then brought out the fries, but let us keep the smashed. I tried a bite. Green onion and peppers dominated, and I thought highly of them. They came in a mountain, as did the shoestrings. I lived and ate in Louisiana for 10 years, and the words “small” and “portion” are never used together. Cocodrie’s has imported that philosophy into the panhandle.

I went for broke and got the seafood platter. Layered atop the aforementioned mountain of fries were a catfish filet, three fried and two stuffed shrimp, four fried oysters, crawfish etoufée (with rice, in case my carb level had plummeted), and a cup of gumbo. The fried shrimp were much better than the ones served as an appetizer, and the other fried items were hot and crisp. The etoufée had a pretty high crawfish count. The gumbo was very thick, with big chunks of smoked sausage and a few odd bits of chicken. It made a nice change from all the seafood.

We almost forgot to order dessert, but the waiter reminded us of it and we succumbed to two of the three items offered. I got the bread pudding, my friend ordered a chocolate cappuccino cake, and we left the carrot cake for another day. My bread pudding was a fine example of this New Orleans standby, a huge cornerstone of pudding, laced with cinnamon, raisins and nuts, with a hot lemon sauce and cool (real) cream and an orange slice on top.

The chocolate cake itself was decent, moist and all that, and about the size of a sliced tire. The white cream “cappuccino” icing/filling had an odd taste, not reminiscent of cappuccino, just sticky and sweet. Get the bread pudding—you’re vicariously in Louisiana anyway.

Navarre Beach has changed quite a bit since I first visited in 1979, but the tradition of the Florida beach bar/restaurant never fades. If your day or night travels take you to Navarre, and you have a hunger for a meal with a view, cross the bridge to the bay of Cocodrie’s. Right now, Cocodrie’s is also offering breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., so you can make a day of it. Welcome to summer.