One of Sarasota’s oldest bars and most popular nightspots now serves food, offering a more complete dining experience than it has in decades.
Walk into the iconic 77-year-old Beach Club in Siesta Key Village — just a short stroll from world-famous Siesta Beach — and where you were once greeted by a pool table, you’ll now find high-top tables adorned with food menus. These sit under the watchful gaze of the massive shark overlooking what is now both a dancefloor and dining area.
There are also new tables for dining customers outside. Fear not, though, party people — The Beach Club will still live up to its name at night, featuring DJs, dancing, and plenty of potent beverages.
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Beach Club Siesta Key now serving food like never before
The Beach Club in Siesta Key Village is now serving food, including numerous seafood dishes as well as items like chicken wings and burger sliders.
Originally opened on a dirt road in 1947, the Beach Club has been recognized as one of Sarasota County’s trendiest nightclubs for decades, something I’ve observed firsthand since frequenting the establishment at 5151 Ocean Blvd., beginning in the early 2000s.
Over the years, the Beach Club has undergone renovations and stayed relevant with various events and electronic music that attract night crowds of twentysomethings, while also serving as a laid-back destination for us more, ahem, seasoned day drinkers.
Aside from a food truck and vending machines, this marks the first time — at least in the past 30-40 years — that the landmark bar and nightclub, known for everything from spring break bikini contests to concerts like the upcoming Feb. 14 show with Mini Kiss, has offered a true restaurant experience. And never before has the club offered anything quite like what you’ll now find.
The Beach Club’s food menu features a large selection of seafood, including raw oysters, steamed oysters, ceviche scallops, lobster bisque, middle neck clams steamed with white wine and garlic butter, steamed black mussels with white wine and garlic butter, peel-and-eat shrimp, and snow crab legs steamed with white wine and garlic butter.
For those craving something other than seafood — perhaps to help soak up all those shots — the Beach Club also serves a Cuban sandwich, chicken wings, chicken fingers, sausage-loaded fries, and White Castle burger sliders.
Beach Club Manager Todd Carter explained, “We have a steamer bar now set up behind the bar along with a high-speed oven.”
Currently, food is served from noon until about 8 or 9 p.m., “depending on volume, and then we run a late-night menu after that without the seafood, consisting of the White Castle sliders, wings, tenders, (and) Cuban,” Carter said via email.
Speaking by phone, Carter described The Beach Club’s history with serving food.
“If you go back 30-40 years, there was an actual kitchen, and then, as recently as about 10 years ago, we had a food truck,” he said. “But now we have 10 high-tops with beach-style chairs and menus, plus a chef, and there’s definitely more of a restaurant/bar vibe during the day than there has been in decades.”
Beach Club Siesta Key, open since 1947, was an ‘old honky-tonk kind of thing’
The Beach Club in Siesta Key Village, pictured here in 2019 and originally opened in 1947, is now serving food.
Christopher Brown and Mike Granthon, who also own other Siesta Village establishments such as The Hub Baja Grill, The Cottage, Summer House Steak & Seafood, My Village Pub (MVP), and Siesta Poke, have run the Beach Club for nearly 20 years — though they were visiting the club at least a decade before buying it.
“Twenty-five years ago, when I got here and Mike got here, this was the place to come,” Brown told my colleague Jimmy Geurts in 2017. “It’s truly an institution.”
Brown recalled that the Beach Club was “a beer and a shot joint.” He added, “It was half the size of this; it was small, with low ceilings. From the pictures when I look back, that’s what I see — just an old honky-tonk kind of thing. It wasn’t glamorous by any stretch of the imagination.”
Today, the Beach Club is among the hippest spots in the region, a nightclub now doubling as a restaurant, serving everything from raw oysters to burger sliders to accompany an evening of drinking and dancing — or perhaps watching a Kiss tribute band featuring little people.
If you go
The Beach Club is located at 5151 Ocean Blvd., Sarasota. For more information, call 941-349-6311 or visit beachclubsiestakey.com. For more information and ticket prices for the Mini Kiss concert on Feb. 14, visit eventbrite.com.
Wade Tatangelo is Ticket Editor for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and Florida Regional Dining and Entertainment Editor for the USA TODAY Network. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram and X. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: 77-year-old iconic Sarasota beach bar now serves food
