Fish and Slips Marina Raw Bar and Grill

Norfolk’s craft beer crowd has already made up its mind about Blue Moon, an exceptional rotating draft list on the waterfront that rewards the kind of person who reads the whole chalkboard before ordering.

Watching Navy ships move across the world’s largest naval base while eating striped bass off the Elizabeth River is a genuinely singular Virginia experience, and Stripers has built a whole restaurant around that view.

Norfolk’s waterfront scene has been leveling up for years, and The Torch is the kind of place that quietly justifies it: real seafood, real cocktails, none of the polish coming at the expense of substance.

The Elizabeth River sits right in your lap at Stony’s, a Norfolk dock bar with a loyal boating crowd that has kept coming back for reasons that become obvious the second you sit down.

Norfolk locals guard East Beach the way Virginia Beach visitors guard the strip, and Longboards fits the quiet, uncommercialized vibe with cold drinks and a longboard-lifestyle attitude that never feels forced.