What’s Your Favorite Beach Bar?

It is the first question, every time. Someone finds out about this site and before they ask how many bars are on it, or why the guy running it doesn’t use his own name, they ask what the favorite is.

Fair question. Impossible question.

The problem is that the bar is set pretty low around here.

Can I get a cold beer, and can I look at water.

That is the entire test. Almost everything clears it. The distance between the best beach bar I have ever sat at and the worst one is a lot shorter than you would expect, and most of what separates them is what kind of day I was having when I walked in.

I review. I don’t rate.

Worth being clear about this, because it explains why there is no score next to any bar on this site.

A rating is a claim about a bar. A review is a report on a visit. One of those I can do honestly. The other pretends I sat at more than twelve hundred bars under comparable conditions and ranked them, and I did not. Nobody did. Anyone telling you otherwise is running an ad.

So the rating is your job. That is not me dodging, it is the actual division of labor.

What I can offer is the list of bars I go back to. Not the best ones. The ones that earn a second trip, which is a fact about my calendar rather than an opinion about them. Some carry the Certified badge because I did the work and wrote them up. Some do not, because I was there before this site existed, or because I was there after and just had a beer like a normal person. The badge is a promise about effort. It was never a promise about how much I liked the place.

The bar I measure everything else against

Tony’s Hut, Negril, Jamaica
One hundred percent in the sand. No floor, no concrete, no decking, no compromise. Bamboo posts, a thatch roof hung with years of other people’s T-shirts, a support column sheathed in license plates, and the Caribbean about twenty feet from the stool. Cold Red Stripe, Jenga on the bar, and a hand-painted sign in the rafters announcing an intention to apply for a spirit licence at the next session at Sav-la-Mar.

I was there in February 2021 with Chad, Kyle and Raimo, three good friends who have never once turned down a bar. Every bar I have walked into since has been quietly graded against that afternoon, and most of them lose.

Here is the idiot part. Until this week it was not in this directory at all. Twelve hundred and sixty-odd bars catalogued, and the one I actually think about was missing. That is roughly how this whole site got built.

The ones I go back to

The Beach Bar, St. John, USVI
Certified. Steps off the Cruz Bay ferry dock, picnic tables sitting in the sand, and I could not find a single thing wrong with it. Irritating, for a man whose whole job is finding things wrong with places.

Lemon Bar, Neptune Beach, Florida
Certified. Four or five visits now, which makes it the most-returned-to bar on this page. There is no clever reason for it. It is simply correct.

Square Grouper, Jupiter, Florida
Certified. Sand, cold beer, good bartenders, and enough Buffett credentials that arguing about whether it counts as a beach bar wastes a perfectly good afternoon. Went back.

7 Devils Waterfront Alehouse, Coos Bay, Oregon
Certified. Named for the ravines that made this stretch of coast hell to cross. Every table faces the estuary and nobody is pretending it is the tropics. Cold water, cold beer, zero apology. Went back.

Flynn’s, Fire Island, New York
Certified. Ferry-only and family-run since 1937, with free docking if you arrive by boat. Order the Rocket Fuel, wait for it to land, stay until the DJ takes over.

Flora-Bama, Perdido Key
Straddling the Alabama and Florida line since 1964. Five stages, the Mullet Toss, and a wall carrying decades of handwritten names. Less a bar than a jurisdiction.

Soggy Dollar Bar, Jost Van Dyke, BVI
Invented the Painkiller and never built a dock, which is the correct order of priorities. Swim ashore and pay with wet money.

Palapa Bar & Grill, Belize
Built out over the water with the barrier reef offshore and cold Belikin on the bar. One of Jerry Jeff Walker’s hangouts, and the man had good instincts about where to sit.

Any beach bar on Orient Beach, St. Martin
I have tried to pick one and I cannot, so take all four. Aloha, which The Seasoned Traveler verified for us, plus Bikini, Kakao and Kontiki. One bay, four bars, a full day, no wrong answers.

And two that are not even in here

No link on these, because there is nothing yet to link to. A directory of more than twelve hundred beach bars, assembled by a man who has apparently not gotten around to entering his own.

La Palapa at Esperanza, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
Mexico can be a mixed bag. Bars there tend to sort into two piles: cheapest beer and tequila available, or white tablecloths and murmuring guests. La Palapa lands in the gap between them, with creative cocktails, an easygoing room, and Sea of Cortez views running for miles. Sipping a craft margarita while a whale breaches offshore is difficult to argue with. It sits on Punta Ballena, which translates to Whale Point, so the whales are not a coincidence.

Conca del Sogno, Massa Lubrense, Italy
More restaurant than beach bar, and the site of the best meal of a ten-day European frolic. One of those places you walk into in total awe of the scenery and walk out of three hours later with exactly the same amount of awe, which does not happen often. The vibe contradicts the surroundings. The setting screams hoity-toity Italian best behavior and the staff and the crowd project pure I-am-on-vacation. We came by boat, which made it a little tough to get to. It is much harder to leave.

Consider this the public version of my to-do list. Once I make it back to both, I’ll have the full report.

Now your turn

The rating was always yours to do. So do it.

Been somewhere that clears the bar? Suggest a beach bar and I will look into it. Actually sat there and want to say so in your own words? Write it up and it may go on the site with your name on it.

And if you think I am wrong about Tony’s Hut, I would like to know which bar you would put above it. That is the whole point of asking.