The Salty Crab Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Fort Myers Beach

So listen, I have never left a 1 star Yelp review before. And I would love to be critical of the food, but unfortunately I can't comment on that becausewe never got to eat. We showed up at 7:45, told them we had a party of 10, they said it would be 45 minutes. We were there for the scenery and decided we would wait. We went out back to wait on the beach and feel the breeze. After 45 minutes my dad went to ask if we were going to be seated soon, he was told there other large parties ahead of us waiting to be seated and it would be a few more minutes. My very pregnant sister-in-law went to the bathroom and checked again and was told they were short servers, but noticed that the party of 8 that had come in right after us was already seated, the hostess had hugged her when she put her name in, so I'm guessing they were friends? After another 15 minutes and no table, my dad went to the hostess again and she said we would be seated next. He passed three open tables on the way back to us and assumed that's where we would be seated, so he told us to go up and sit down. But apparently we were NOT going to be next. When we went to sit down, the manager very rudely came over and told us that we would not be served if we chose to seat ourselves and when I commented that we had been waiting for over an hour and they should give people more realistic times, she said "a large party" had accidentally been deleted from the system and they couldn't seat us immediately (despite three open tables) because seating 2 large parties back to back would "crash the whole restaurant." I can only assume we were the large party that was "accidentally" deleted from the system. She never once apologized for their mistake, never gave my dad a chance to explain why he was trying to "seat himself," and when we told her we were leaving, she said "that's fine." We went to Nervous Nellie's instead and even though they were 15 minutes from closing, they kept the kitchen and bar open to serve us and we spent our $250...

You know how there are many places that have incredible views or atmosphere which rely on them, rather than on preparing great food? This is NOT one of them. The atmosphere is incredible- and so is the FOOD. From morning till night, this place cranks out some of the best food on the island - right on the beach! A truly rare find.

We start many mornings with iced coffee and breakfast watching the dolphins swim up and down the coast. The Crabby Benedict is just delicious, with a crab cake subbing in for ham, consistently perfect poached eggs, and a sauce that dances between a hollandaise and a bearnaise. But Nova lox and bagels, pancakes, waffles, French toast, huevos rancheros- not one was disappointing. If you want an early libation, their Bloody Marys and mimosas are tasty and inexpensive, OR we loved the iced cold Irish coffee - yowza.

For lunch or supper you similarly can't go wrong. With appetizers you MUST try the gator bites. We had never had gator before and it is just delicious, served lightly fried with fried cherry pepper slices which are a great surprise and have a beautiful tang and a bit of a kick. They serve it with a dipping sauce, but I enjoyed them even more with nothing but a little squeeze of lemon on top. The conch fritters are light and sweet.

Local seafood dishes with grouper and shrimp are terrific, and the ahi tuna sandwich seared rare with a light wasabi sauce is amazing.

It gets pretty boisterous on weekends, which can be fun, but our favorite times are the slightly quieter weekday mornings or lunch hours, sitting beneath an umbrella and enjoying the gulf breeze. Parking is available in two lots...

If i could give negative stars, that doesn’t even begin to explain my experience at the Salty Crab. We had a party of 14, told us it was a 40 minute wait which was great! We waited and it was exactly 40 minutes and got sat down right away. Once we got to the table, we had no menus, silverware, or drinks. Our waiter after a while finally greeted us and gave us water, then proceeded to ask what we wanted to eat and realized we didn’t have menus. After a while he came back and asked for what we wanted to eat and when i was asking him questions about the menu, he told me sorry that he had to go help another table. We finally got to order, after 30 minutes we got our drinks. We waited even longer after to get our cold appetizers and still didn’t have silverware, asked him for some, and then he told us he already gave us 2 baskets of silverware but he guessed he would go get us some more. So we wait another hour for our food , wait at least 30 minutes for the checks, another 30 for our cards back, and all in all our group was there for 4 hours. also he messed up the checks multiple times before we could pay. another table behind us even got up and left because of the time it took to get their food. I just can’t explain how horrible the service was and this is the last place i would ever recommend you get food. We did have a big group about 10 people, but unless you want to be at this place for hours, don’t go. also , the worst smelling bathrooms in the whole world. I left the salty crab feeling...