The Salty Pelican Bar & Grill

The Salty Pelican occupies the corner where Centre Street meets the waterfront, which is the best real estate downtown and the reason the rooftop deck is the hardest table in Fernandina Beach to get at sunset.

It is a seafood bar and grill in the coastal-Florida idiom: fried and grilled local fish, shrimp several ways, oysters, tacos, burgers, a long draught list. The room downstairs is loud and casual; upstairs is open-air with a direct view west across the Amelia River to the marsh and the Georgia line, with shrimp boats working below.

What to expect

Wait times at peak. There is no way around it — the rooftop is small, the location is the best in town, and everybody wants the same hour. Arriving well before sunset or eating at the downstairs bar are the two workable strategies.

The kitchen's strengths are the obvious ones: local shrimp, fried or grilled, and whatever white fish is running. Fernandina Beach is a shrimping port with a claim to the modern shrimping industry's origins, and shrimp here is not a novelty item.

Where it sits

At the bottom of Centre Street, a two-minute walk from the Fernandina Harbor Marina, the Palace Saloon and the whole downtown restaurant cluster. Parking is free on-street and in the public lots nearby, and the walk from anywhere in the historic district is short.

It is on the river, not the ocean — a point worth making because visitors reasonably assume a rooftop seafood bar on Amelia Island faces the Atlantic. For beach-adjacent dining you want the oceanside spots on Fletcher Avenue instead.

Practical notes

Hours, the menu and whether reservations are taken all change, and we have not confirmed the current position — check with the restaurant directly. Downstairs is generally the better bet with small children; the rooftop is a bar-first environment in the evening.