Rum Runners: Beyond the Two Pianos
Villiage of Baytowne Wharf, Sandestin, 351-1817
Hours: Open daily 11am to


By Bruce Collier February 21, 2008 Issue

We ate at Rum Runners on a recent, chilly weeknight. If you have been to Baytowne Wharf, you know that much of the restaurant and retail strategy there is predicated on warm weather. Warm weather means people walking around, checking out the multiple shopping, dining and entertainment choices. When it’s cold and gets dark early, the place takes on a buttoned-up, hunkered-down look that must drive the business owners to muttering distraction. However, for the hardy types that visit during these months — snowbirds for whom 32 degrees in February constitutes a warm spell — Rum Runners offers a warm and cozy sanctuary.

A look at the lunch and dinner menus posted outside the restaurant, indicates a wide variety of appetizers, soups, salads, wraps, sandwiches, burgers, and main course dishes, with an emphasis on Gulf fish and seafood. When we were seated inside, our server brought us a one-page version of the outside menu. He said that during this time of year, the kitchen has limited the offerings. What follows is a sampling of what is available right now.

Our menu offered six starters, three salads, four sandwiches and wraps, five entrÈes, and a list of house specialty drinks. There’s a full bar, which I am sure is fully operational year-round. Our server kept a friendly eye and ear out for us all evening. Though we pretty much had the place to ourselves when we arrived, the tables were filling when we left.

Rum Runners sits in a two-story “house,” with wide entrances, a patio (no takers that night — al fresco would have been much too fresco), and a main dining area. There are plenty of tables, and the famous dueling piano stand. We didn’t see any performers, but I know the place jumps in the summer. The walls are decorated with coastal-themed artwork, and there’s a lot of brightly painted wood and palm trees scattered artfully about the place.

I was dining with a fellow squid-enthusiast, so we split a generous order of fried calamari. It came on a bed of mixed greens — enough to qualify as a small salad — a crisp, greaseless mound of tender rings. The sauce, already applied, was a sweet chili glaze, dotted with black sesame seeds. My friend and I agreed it had an Asian flavor, and that another basket wouldn’t have killed us either. Still, we moved on.

Other appetizer choices that night were coconut battered shrimp; “naked” fried wings, a smoked chicken quesadilla, cheese sticks, and beef nachos. It was a nice mixture of bar snacks and more upscale beachside tidbits.

I felt like having something from the land that night, but not too far inland, so I ordered grilled jerk chicken. My friend ordered grilled mahi mahi. Both came with mashed potatoes and steamed mixed vegetables.

My chicken — two breast portions — was marinated in a peppery jerk, grilled, and then served with a tangy orange glaze. It was just peppery enough to warm me up, and paired well with the mashed potatoes and lightly seasoned carrots, broccoli and green beans. My friend’s mahi mahi — three chunks — was not spiced, but rather glazed with a fruit coulis. It was tender and lived up to its status as Official Fish of the Emerald Coast.

Other dining choices that night were a fresh catch sandwich (grilled or fried), hurricane burger, Hawaiian grilled chicken sandwich, chicken club wrap, filet mignon, lobster ravioli, and Cajun-style trigger fish with lump crab meat and tasso cream sauce.

The full menu, which will return come summer, offers such lunch and dinner items as paninis, dinner salads, lobster bisque, shrimp or chicken pasta alfredo, ribeye, Ahi tuna, pecan grouper, and other items.

We ordered a dessert, large enough for two, from the three offered (they always have three). It was a three-level chocolate cake, with a thick, ganache-like middle layer, topped with dark chocolate icing, chocolate sprinkles, chocolate syrup and reasonably-close whipped cream. The other choices were key lime pie, which I have enjoyed at Rum Runners before, and a cheesecake.

I last ate at Rum Runners several years ago, in warm weather. The menu has changed, and service is now at a high level of friendliness and efficiency. I was pleasantly surprised to find tasty, well-prepared comfort food, especially in a place named for Prohibition-era liquor smugglers. That’s all legal now, so why wait for spring to give it a try?

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