The Shack — Restaurant in Fort Walton Beach

Overlooking the sound on the south side of Miracle Strip Parkway you’ll find The Shack. My wife and I along with another couple visited this business on May 15,2025 at approximately 730pm. The business was very packed and required us to park across the street at Fort Walton Beach City Hall. If you ever wanted to play frogger before dinner because there isn’t enough parking at The Shack this is the place to be. Once we’re done running across HWY US 98 you get to the front of the business where a host is waiting with a tablet. I gave the young lady my name and phone number and said it would be about 20 minutes. After 40 minutes I was wondering why we weren’t getting called (mind you were standing literally in front of the desk near her the whole 40 minutes). Once asked about why everyone was being seated before us she asked for our name AGAIN and says a text message was send out. It would have been great to get that text message but she wrote the wrong phone number down. She told us to go inside and someone will seat us. For a second time everyone just looked at us and was confused as to why we weren’t getting called inside and had to tell another hostess why we weren’t getting inside like we were told to do. We then got told to follow a 3rd hostess which she stopped told us to wait and could not find a table which there was plenty of clean open tables for us to sit. She finally sat us down at a table and this is where the next ordeal occurred. We waited roughly 10 minutes for our waiter/waitress who didn’t even know we were seated at one of her tables and locked shocked to see someone in here. We’re locals to the area and are very big on supporting local businesses and just from the get go this was an absolute horrible start to try and get dinner. It’s so unorganized and the crew (outside of our waitress) was clueless as to what they were doing, standing around, or not paying attention to what they were supposed to do to be doing.

Finally seated we were greeted by our waitress we got our drinks and ordered our appetizers and food. Starting off was the buffalo crawfish bites. Very well seasoned and was delicious.

I don’t particularly like seafood but everyone else who I was with does. But I ordered the burger, I would give it a 2/5 but it is a seafood place and it was okay wasn’t anything to write home about. The French fries were cold and soggy, the burger was luke warm and felt like it had been sitting out for 10 minutes.

My wife ordered the Cajun fish dinner. It was blacked fish served with hush puppies and broccoli. I did however take some bites of the hushpuppies and the fish both were very good. The hushpuppies were eaten with a side of the strawberry butter jam which was good.

My buddies wife sits in the same boat as I do about seafood so she ate chicken tenders and French fries.

And last but not least my buddy ordered the first mate platter which had mussels, clams, snow crab legs, dungeness crab legs, potato’s, and corn. He allowed me to try some of his food because I have never eaten most of it before. The snow crab was probably the best thing on the plate. The mussels with a close second. I did not care for the Dungeness crab or the clams. Overall it was $57 and did not appear to be a lot of food. He said if he had to rate it, it would get 3 stars. The reason being is there is plenty of seafood restaurants in the area that has way better flavor, quantity and quality in the area that he would rather go to but this was a good place to try for the first time. He said the food itself was tasty and was not bad by any means but it could have definitely done better.

The waitress was very nice compared to the rest of our visit. For me and my wife we spent roughly $60 which is about average for eating out and wasn’t a bad price. For me this was a one and done, I would recommend you at least try it and form your own opinion but hey at least we tried...

This place looked so promising in all the reviews-beautiful location and great atmosphere. We arrived and were told the wait would be 45 minutes for a table. For a Saturday night, we figured that was to be expected and the small park next door was a pleasant place to wait. We waited for almost a full hour but again-figured it would be worth the wait. We were seated outside and a waitress came to take our drink orders. My daughter asked for the special kid's drink and she told us they were out of nerds. While I was trying to help her figure out something else, she took our son's drink order and left...guess we're just getting the kid's drink sans nerds. She came back and took my husband's drink order and my own, dropping off the kids' drinks. Our daughter spilled her drink and was in tears. My husband went to get a rag and clean up the spill and NO ONE offered to actually help. The waitress came by for our food order and I told her we were dealing with a spill so we hadn't picked yet. My husband came back with ANOTHER rag and she just went, "wonderful." and left. Again-didn't offer to help. Didn't offer to get us another drink for her (at our cost). When she returned, she took our food orders and the food was decent. We had the crab dip, which was by far the favorite. We got the pick three seafood plate with crawfish tails, clams, and the crab cake. The crab cake was super flat, thin, and burnt on the outside. The rest of the food we got was decent.

While the food was fine, the service continued to be terrible. We had to flag her down for everything. She wouldn't even slow down when she walked by to check on how the food came out. Finally, we were done and asked for the check. My husband was still eating the crab dip and stopped to get out his credit card for her and she whisked the plate away right out from under him! She walked off so fast that he wasn't able to catch up with her. At that point, we'd had it and he went to find a manager. While he was looking for a manager, she came back with the receipt and my son asked if we could get the dip back. She said, "nope, it's gone," which I expected but he's a kid and meant well. I explained he was asking because we were still eating it when she took it away. Her response was a flat, "sorry," and she walked away.

This was our last night of vacation and absolutely the most disappointing service we received in the Destin area. Maybe if you got another waitress, your experience will be better but our family will never return to this location nor will we recommend it to our family that frequents the area.

*Edit to add: Evidently the manager on duty did give us a percentage off that covered the cost of the dip. This is appreciated as we really didn't expect any sort of...

Judging by the reviews, I think we (and the other people on the waitlist around us who left either complaining or before their names were even called) may have had an unusual experience, but it’s still worth considering if you’re planning a visit.

We arrived at 8 and were quoted an hour wait. There was no music being piped into the waiting area, which was odd. At 9 they shut the lights off on the several parties still waiting outside on their patio, and started spraying air freshener in their incredibly compact indoor waiting area (where several parties were still packed together, waiting.) In general, front of house was blasé, unprofessional, and rude. Several of them stood around not really doing much of anything, and the people waiting were getting antsy.

An hour and a half later our names were called (after the app said we were “first in line” for an absurd amount of time.) The place was still pretty busy when we were seated but not nearly as full as it had been (which made sense, as they’d closed a half hour before and I doubt they were supposed to add people to the waitlist for as late as they did.) We walked into the restaurant past rumors murmured by the people still waiting - the most prevalent being that they’d let a lot of the staff go home early, so now everyone else (except, apparently, the three or four in front of house doing absolutely nothing) had to pick up the slack - and complaints grumbled by patrons leaving - mostly how long it took to get their food after ordering.

Once we were seated it was a whole different ballgame. Our server was fantastic - the entire waitstaff was, actually. You’d never think they were pushing 45 minutes past their closed time with a still mostly-packed house. They were sweet, friendly, and incredibly efficient. The kitchen must’ve caught up while we were waiting, because the food didn’t take long to come out and everything we had was delicious.

Mostly, we just felt bad for the staff that had to cover for the shortcomings of what we can only assume would be management. Genuinely if it weren’t for the truly horrendous initial experience, we would’ve given this place 5/5 stars, but there was no excusing the unprofessionalism of the people working up front, and for the poor way that the waitlist & waiting area...