Finz: Overlooking Nothing But the Gulf
9300 Emerald Coast Pkwy., Sandestin, 267-4800
By Bruce Collier July 1, 2004 Issue
1/2

Finz is actually two restaurants in the same split-level building. On the ground floor is a casual—for Sandestin, that is —dining room open daily at 11 a.m. and offering appetizers, soups, salads, and sandwiches. Some of the high points of a fairly extensive menu include oysters Rockefeller, crab cakes, gumbo, New Orleans BBQ shrimp, cold smoked beef salad, seafood muffeletta salad, burgers, po-boys, grouper Pontchartrain, Cajun-basted chicken, and New Orleans-style bread pudding. There’s live entertainment and a dance floor. Patio dining is offered and after 5 p.m. you can get dinner. Prices range from $4 to $22, and children are welcome.

Upstairs is Finz Loft. The Loft opens at 6 p.m. and is for grownups, though our server said that he has seen exceptions made for well-behaved youngsters, but generally you must be at least 16. The Loft is quiet, tastefully decorated, with comfortable chairs and a bar at a slightly raised level from the dining room. Plenty of windows give every table a good view, and a small balcony affords an opportunity to slip outside between courses.

We dined in the Loft, so I can only comment on what we ate there. I did notice that the downstairs dining room serves Louisiana’s celebrated Zapp’s potato chips as a side dish. You have to admire that.

The menu at The Loft is one page, and offers only two non-seafood entrées. It is entirely possible, however, that the menu changes, so you may have something different to choose from. Prices in the Loft range from $7 to $45. We ordered cocktails, both of which were just right. Our server described the special, and left us to choose.

To start, my friend ordered a warm spinach salad. I divided my appetite between the Crystal Oysters and a Portobello mushroom bisque. The spinach was served in a tidy mound, sweetened with a roasted shallot and cane syrup dressing. Circling the greens were endive, sautéed shrimp, artichokes and hard-boiled eggs. It looked, and tasted, splendid.

The oysters are marinated in hot pepper sauce—Crystal, I would guess—and honey. They came fried on a mousse of roasted garlic and mascarpone. I ate them all. The bisque was something new to me—fragrant, intensely mushroomy and made even richer by a smoked walnut pesto. The bisque is garnished with an even richer walnut/basil quenelle, floating like a small dumpling in the bowl.

Served with all this was a basket with a generous amount of warm bread that was both buttery and yeasty. Finz serves real butter, and lots of it, with the bread.

Other appetizer and salad choices included crab cakes, a wild mushroom and Brie “French toast,” lobster Rockefeller, Mardi Gras salad, and tuna and melon salad.

Main courses came next. My friend ordered the pan-seared snapper, which came topped with lobster claw meat and a roasted asparagus and andouille salsa. Mashed potatoes were substituted at her request. She did not care to try the “lobster bacon potatoes” usually served with the dish. That meant that I got the claw meat garnish. Sometime I will have to try the combination of lobster and bacon on potatoes.

I ordered the evening’s special, a huge plate of saffron flavored linguine. On the pasta were tomatoes, chopped asparagus, scallops both seared and smoked, and a dab of Louisiana caviar. “Opulent” describes it best. I got through about a third of it and boxed it up for later. My friend had done the same with hers.

Other main course choices included a pair of buttermilk battered lobster tails, roasted Creole duck, sautéed crab-crusted grouper, pan seared scallops, and grilled filet of beef. Most of the dishes have a Louisiana Cajun or Creole accent.

As we stood on the balcony admiring a lightning storm over the Gulf, our server cleared away, boxed our leftovers, and slipped us the dessert menus. We had to choose from among bread pudding, creme br°lée, strawberry “soup,” chocolate cake, and various “shooters.” The latter are assorted highly flavored desserts such as mixed berries, espresso, and so forth served in small shot glasses. We ordered the soup and the chocolate cake.

The cake was a kind of bombe; full flavored and just the right size not to overwhelm. The soup was one of the more interesting desserts I have had. A small slice of vanilla pound cake was topped with a rich, white chocolate ice cream (more like gelato), and placed in a “soup” of strawberries and slightly sweet Riesling wine. It didn’t look like a lot at first, but the flavors were distinctive and strong. It was just right after all of the substantial food I had had before.

We ate at Finz on a rainy weeknight, and enjoyed the relative quiet, as well as the music, which was recorded oldies, in the Loft and a live duo downstairs. The staff is experienced and very accommodating, the food is imaginative and attractively presented, and the location cannot be improved upon.