Whenever we’re along the Emerald Coast, we manage to squeeze in a dinner at the Red Bar.  That generally means getting there right after they open.  It’s a bar, plain and simple.  As you pass through the freaky door, you enter a place that is SO PACKED with tables and people that you wonder how they manage to serve dinner.

And serve dinner they do – they have a menu that is comprised of six meals and that’s it.  For the last couple of years, the basic menu hasn’t changed: eggplant stuffed with shrimp, scallops and veggies, grilled fish of the day (Mahi this night), manicotti, panne chicken and a special.  For an appetizer the night we were there last, I ordered part of the special entree as my app – a deep-fried bacon goat cheese grit cake, covered with a tomato sauce.

It was as tasty as you’d expect for something made from grits, bacon and goat cheese, and then deep-fried. For dinner, I chose the panne chicken (pan seared with a lemon buerre blanc sauce with capers, house-mashed potatoes and a salad)

and Jo had the mahi (grilled with the same mashed potatoes and salad).  Of the other couples with us, there were three fishes, two chickens and a manacotti.  The chicken won – everyone that tasted it said it was the best meal of the three that we had, collectively.  Jo said it best, “how can you go wrong when you cover something in lemon and a butter sauce”?