South Padre Island is a well-known destination for spring-break party-goers. From crazy adventures like dolphin cruises and paddleboarding to restaurants offering mouth-watering delicacies, it has everything to offer. A lot of things make it a superb place to relax on weekends, like the gentle south winds, quiet oceans, and an astonishing 300 days of sunlight. You can do pretty much anything you want, such as kite surfing, water surfing, stand-up paddleboarding, swimming, plunging, jumping, parasailing, stream skiing, and remote ocean fishing.
The island owes its name to José Nicolás Ballí, the Catholic minister and colonizer. One of the island’s tourist spots is the amazing Cristo de Los Pescadores or Christ of the Fishermen, a commemoration devoted to fishers who stayed away forever.
The best thing about this place is, you can camp under the stars and wake up to the waves, take a surf, practice water sports, partake in the night with unrecorded music. You can also enjoy incredible food, and drinks, the island of San Padre offers anything and everything.
Talking about the food here, let’s get to know the most famous restaurants and what they offer best.
Here are the top 20 restaurants near South Padre Island, Texas.
1. Blackbeard Restaurant
The Blackbeard Restaurant has a changed menu which is quite alluring. Blackbeard’s astounding canapés incorporate crab cakes, stuffed shrimp, and Blackbeard’s Mexican fish mixed drink, with a sweet and fiery mixed drink sauce. Fish dishes on the menu incorporate an incredible fish cook salad, plaice, shrimp po’boys, barbecued plaice, and darkened catfish. Also, you can’t beat Blackbeard’s lime or newly singed fruity dessert for a bit of Americana to wrap up.
2. Chillitto Pikin
Chillitto Pikin is one of the island’s most adorable Mexican eateries. A little privately-run company serves valid and scrumptious Mexican food ranging from fish dishes and fantastic pork fajitas to darkened shrimp tacos. Local people love salsa and guacamole. Make a point to end the feast with one of Chillitto’s seared bananas.
3. Wharf 19
Wharf 19 is situated on the dock of South Padre’s Laguna Madre and has practical experience in new fish from the Gulf of Mexico. You could also bring in your own “fish” to get it cooked by the culinary specialists at Pier 19. Dock 19 serves conventional breakfast dishes, vegan choices, burgers, and soups. Do not forget to try the po’boy Mahi with mahi-mahi enclosed by squashed potato chips and presented with chipotle crab mayonnaise.
Other scrumptious dishes incorporate Baja tacos, fish enchiladas, fish burritos, Cajuns, and fish paste.
4. Kranzler Cafe
At end of the week, the Kranzler Café menu is truly outstanding on the island. It offers quite a lot of varieties, for example, frittatas, specialty fried eggs (like Big Apple, diced apples, apple-smoked bacon, and caramelized onions), flapjacks, and a grouping of omelets and dishes along with eggs.
The Kranzler Café serves customized sandwiches, pasta dishes, mixed greens, and flavorful dishes consistently for lunch and supper. Also, saffron shrimp with mussels, chicken with lemon and spices, rack of sheep, and its fish dishes are a must-try.
5. Windjammer’s Beachfront Cafe
Windjammer’s Beachfront Café in Isla Grand has been serving Islanders since 1959. It is open for breakfast, lunch, and supper. With a staggering view of the Gulf and the Isla Grand Beach Resort from the café deck, you can savor its new omelets, waffles, and toast for breakfast and soups, sandwiches, burgers, and Mexican dishes for lunch and supper. Do try the ‘Tres Tacos’ (chicken, meat, shrimp, or fish) or the renowned Windjammer stuffed eggs, tempered off with caramelized bacon.
6. Liam’s Steak House and Oyster Bar
For high-end food on the island, Liam’s Steak House and Oyster Bar is a decent decision. Begin with the fish ceviche or artichoke plunge with artichokes and crab. Other dishes incorporate shellfish, ‘surf and turf,’ and delicacies like bluefin fish pasta or darkened shrimp marinara. “Exceptional” dishes like Rockefeller red snapper (spinach, bacon, shrimp, and three cream sauce), bacon-wrapped shrimp, and whiskey-coated salmon are truly remarkable art of culinary by its chefs.
7. Ocean Ranch Restaurant and Bar
Ocean Ranch Restaurant and Bar center serves scrumptious and fresh fish caught from the wild in the Gulf. Open every day for supper, the Restaurant’s Sea Ranch Seafood Sampler or “South Padre Poke,” which is a fish delicacy marinated in sesame oil and soy sauce is an absolute favorite among its regular visitors. If you’re not in the temperament for fish, Sea Ranch likewise serves minced sirloin steak, rib steak, filet mignon, pasta, and incredible plates of mixed greens.
8. Grimy Al’s
Grimy Al’s professes to have “the best-seared shrimp on the planet,” and is open for lunch and supper all week long on the island. Opened in 1986, this family-run café is a top choice among island benefactors given its imaginative and delicious cooking ways of fresh fish obtained from the waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico. Other famous delights include shrimp stuffed jalapenos, bubbled New Orleans shrimp, taco plates of mixed greens and shrimp, clams, fish, and delicate chicken tacos.
9. Gabriella’s Italian Grill and Pizzeria
Gabriella’s Italian Grill and Pizzeria offers a portion of the state’s just wood-terminated pizzas and a rich menu of Italian claims to fame. Antipasti at Gabriella incorporate Italian nachos (finished off with dark olives, Roma tomatoes, Tuscan relish, and mozzarella), zucchini wastes, and toasted ravioli. Other scrumptious dishes incorporate “La Sicilienne” and “La Tour de la Tour de Cheeza” pizzas and the newly added dish to the menu- hand-crafted pasta.
10. Ted’s Restaurant
In case you are searching for the ideal island breakfast, Ted’s Restaurant is the most loved eatery, serving astounding buttermilk hotcakes with walnuts and impressive tacos with hand-crafted salsa. Ted’s café has perhaps the best determination for Mexican-affected morning meals, like Migas and huevos rancheros, to exemplary dishes like waffles and French toast.
11. Bistro on the Beach
Bistro on the Beach offers an unhampered serene view of the gazebo-like covered deck. It is a perfect place for a morning meal menu, worth getting up ahead of schedule, as it offers early morning breakfast. Its specialty includes a fish-centered American menu. Among the morning delicacies are the gooey Monte Cristo, a Migas plate with chorizo, and thick buttermilk flapjacks. In the early evening, the cafe offers Gulf Coast crab fingers, fish bisque, and red snapper Veracruz.
12. Padre Island Brewing Co.
Padre Island Brewing Company is a privately claimed treasure, and the island’s favored stop for a super cold, privately blended specialty lager. Third-age brewmaster and proprietor Mark Haggenmiller has five house brews that serve authentic Italian cuisine whose popular dishes include calamari, pizza, and burgers. Party time, which runs non-weekend days from 2 to 6 p.m., is a hit for things like 75-penny Gulf clams, crabcakes, and Wisconsin cheddar curds.
13. Painted Marlin Grille
With a splendid view of the Laguna Madre and an energetic indoor-outdoor vibe, the Painted Marlin (named for its particular piece of style) is a particularly captivating spot for watching the dusk while savoring on dishes like darkened Mahi, shrimp po’ young men, fried fish, and French fries. The most popular barbecued drink of the cafe is strong-wagered, similar to the solid margaritas made with new lime juice.
14. Cap’n Roy’s
Fish taxidermy enhances the dividers at the nautical-themed Cap’n Roy’s, the place where proprietor Lee Roy Summerlin – a veteran sanction boat commander on the Laguna Madre has been serving fresh fish for over twenty years. The eatery is popular for its “Reel Meals” menu of everything from new Gulf clams to stuffed jalapenos, enchilada platters, and Veracruz-style fish arrangements, yet the star dish is the camaronitas diablitos – bacon-wrapped shrimp with pineapple cream cheddar and jalapenos in a smoky-sweet grill coat.
15. Ceviche
Best known for both shrimp and fish, with one of five house styles (the exemplary elements tomato, red onion, cilantro, and avocado), and an assortment of additional items Ceviche serves some of the most mouth-watering delicacies. For the special experience by the staff, which is the hand-hack wherein they blend your custom creation, Ceviche is a must-visit cafe. With several tables, this is more loved for casual noon dinings over formal dinner.
16. Gabriella’s
At Gabriella’s, tables are hung in red-and-white check; there is this solid fragrance of garlic that welcomes coffee shops as they stroll through the entryway and a cozy feeling of familiarity. This warm, family-run foundation is the island’s go for high-quality pasta, block stove pizza, and Italian-American works of art like chicken alfredo, singed mozzarella, and shrimp scampi. Here the night ends with an injection of house-made limoncello.
17. Yummies Bistro
A large number of the whipped cream-crafted drinks here are various milkshakes more than espresso. However, that is what sets the allure and mood of the place. Yummies is known for its super-size breakfast and lunch food. Their specialties include, goliath Belgian waffles encompassed by ruby-red organic product, an Instagrammable eggs Benedict, hyper-new lox and salmon, and super-sized customized club sandwiches. The staff here are highly esteemed and value workmanship. One can request the staff for an unexpected chocolate configuration showered in their coffee froth.
18. Ocean Ranch Restaurant and Bar
With a superb marina-front area, ocean view, and white decorative liner administration, Sea Ranch has been doing Gulf-style high-end food for over thirty years. The menu features wild, privately got fish along with steaks and pasta, and top choices incorporate clams Rockefeller, coconut shrimp, lobster shrimp and steak, and entire seared snapper. For the best nightfall roost, demand a table by the window on the subsequent floor.
19. F&B SPI
F&B SPI is a tasty top-of-the-line eating experience opened in 2018 by leader culinary specialist Walter Greenwood and restaurateur Brandi Hackett, offering raised Gulf Coast view at the bar and public table seating.
The eatery includes a continually altering menu given occasional accessibility, offering indoor and open-air seating over time. Plenty of new Gulf fish are served for lunch and supper, including top choices like lobster or braised duck tagliatelle, seaside shrimp overflows with Andouille hotdog, and entire salt-crusted fish of the day served with ginger, citrus, and coconut.
Popular choices include steakhouse passage, from Tomahawk veal hacks to 45-day dry-matured ribeye steaks with broiled fennel and maitake mushrooms.
20. Marcello’s Ocean Grille and Spirits
Marcello’s Ocean Grille and Spirits are housed inside South Padre Island’s previous Lighthouse Grocery store and meat market building, known as one of Port Isabel’s most notable milestones since the mid-twentieth century.
The space was changed over into a café in 1984 by Manuela Stevenson and is directed today by chief culinary specialist Bettina Tolin. As of late, it is rebranded as a rich steak and fish restaurant. Excellent Gulf Coast food is created with privately obtained fixings, including everyday fish and seafood.
Top choices in fishes incorporate gigantic knot crab cakes with citrus cream sauce, shrimp carbonara tagliatelle with new pasta, and smoked bacon and singed jumper scallops meuniere with lemon margarine sauce. Other favorites range from Italian food like chicken marsala and parmigiana to pot-cooked pasta created with spinach and child legacy tomatoes.
