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Easter

St. Joe eateries offering Easter brunch dine-in or to go

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April 1, 2023
Special to 30A Food & Wine

SOUTH WALTON – A trio of local eateries are welcoming guests for special Easter brunch Sunday, April 9, while WaterColor is offering holiday meals to-go or delivered.

Havana Beach Bar & Grill

9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Enjoy buffet fare featuring brunch specialties, a prime rib carving station, chilled seafood bar, kids’ selections, desserts and more. The price is $85 for adults, $45 for children 12 & under. Call 850-588-2882 to make your reservations and inquire about the full menu.

Havana Beach Bar & Grill is located at 63 Main Street, Rosemary Beach.

Fish Out of Water

7 a.m. to 5 p.m. The culinary team is opening the restaurant early and offering a chef selection of springtime favorites, along with a Mimosa Bar and Dessert Bar. Reservations are not accepted; walk-ins welcome.

Fish Out of Water restaurant is at 34 Goldenrod Circle, WaterColor.

WaterColor LakeHouse

10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Enjoy an egg-travagant Easter Brunch at the WaterColor Lakehouse, including an extensive breakfast menu, omelet station, salad garden, seafood bar, carving station, hot selections and kids’ cuisine. Email WCISocialEvents@stjoe.com for reservations; cost is $85 per adult, $42.50 per child ages 6 to 12, and complimentary for children 5 and under.

Easter Brunch To-Go or home delivery within WaterColor

The WaterColor team is offering a family-style Easter Brunch for four to-go, and delivering within the WaterColor neighborhood. 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. delivery or pick up; place your order by emailing WCISocialEvents@stjoe.com by noon on Friday, April 7. Price is $275. Pickup location is Gather Kitchen + Bar, at 34 Goldenrod Circle in WaterColor.

The meal starts with coastal greens salad, chicken and vegetable soup. Mains and sides include blackened shrimp with yellow grits and tomato gravy, roasted prime rib with horseradish cream and red wine jus, loaded mashed potatoes, honey roasted carrots and rolls. For dessert: carrot cake with spiced cream cheese frosting, French silk pie with Nilla wafer crust. Kids can enjoy carrots and celery with ranch dip, chicken tenders with BBQ sauce, Easter cupcakes and mixed fruit salad.

HB_Food on Veranda-web

Havana Beach Bar & Grill: Pride and passion make great food

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By Lauren Sage Reinlie
March 21, 2021

ROSEMARY BEACH – Todd Rogers, executive chef of Havana Beach Bar & Grill, had worked in five-star resorts and restaurants all across the country when he packed up his family and moved to South Walton over six years ago.

It wasn’t hard for him to leave behind the bustle of big cities.

“I always say you should work where you love to live,” the 60-year-old Rogers said recently. “The 30A area is just such a beautiful place, it’s so unique. All the beaches and quaint little towns. I have lived in big cities like Atlanta and Houston, but really I prefer this.”

The attraction of a place with a small-town feel likely comes from Rogers’ formative years, growing up on a small farm in West Virginia, farming and gardening and above all cooking alongside his grandmother. They gathered fruits and vegetables for jams and jellies. They baked biscuits and gravy, collected eggs from the chicken coop.

“It took all day, but you didn’t have phones and televisions and everything that took all your time,” Rogers recalled. “You made food, you lived to eat.”

When he was 16 a chef at a nearby country club took him under his wing. He went to college and studied business at his dad’s request, but shortly after he was accepted to the Culinary Institute of America in New York City. He was the first of his family to move away from home — to one of the biggest cities in the country, no less.

“It was a little bit of a culture shock,” Rogers recalled.

His cooking journey has taken him all across the U.S., but the passion his grandmother helped stoke at such a young age has never waned.

Havana Beach Bar & Grill
A delivery truck from New Orleans stops at small family-run farms in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, collecting fresh ingredients.

He brought it to Havana Beach where they cook, as he says, the “old-fashioned” way. Everything is made by hand.

Sauces begin with roasting bones and caramelizing vegetables.

“People say, ‘Why would you spend three days making demi-glace?’ Because it’s how you should do it.”
– Todd Rogers, executive chef

“There are just so many things you can buy this day and age so people say, ‘Why would you spend three days making demi-glace?’ Because it’s how you should do it,” Rogers said. “It’s not just a TV show where you make four courses in 30 minutes. It takes a lot of care and pride and passion to create great food.”

It also takes consistency, a strive for perfection and a tight-knit staff who share the same the values.

Rogers and his staff practice and perfect all their recipes from the shrimp and grits or Delmonico filet mignon to their expertly crafted avocado BLT.

Rogers enjoys teaching new cooks, sharing classical cooking techniques and tips he’s learned along the way.

“A lot of the older chefs kind of hold their recipes and techniques close to their chests,” Rogers said. “I believe in the other way: teaching everyone around you what you know and helping the young people who want to move up and learn something new.”

Gulf Shrimp Fritters
The Gulf Shrimp Fritters are loaded with Gulf shrimp, corn, black beans, jalapeño, pepperjack cheese, and served with avocado-lime aioli.

The farm-to-table food Rogers grew up with is also present at Havana Beach.

Almost everything Rogers serves comes from along the Gulf Coast: oysters, shrimp, grouper, snapper and flounder from Apalachicola Bay and the Gulf of Mexico; organic chickens from Bonifay, Florida; peppery, farm-fresh arugula, micro-radishes, micro-sorrel and other micro greens from a hydroponic farm about an hour north of the restaurant.

A truck from New Orleans stops at small family-run farms in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida along the way.

“It’s kind of like a market on a truck coming right to your back door,” he said.

Havana Beach Bar & Grill features a main dining area, a veranda with outdoor seating, a roof deck patio with views of the Gulf and a large, hand-carved mahogany bar with one of the largest bottle collections in South Walton.

Rogers says he doesn’t plan to stop working anytime soon.

“I always like to say I’m self-employed. I just find someone to pay me to do what I love.”

Havana Beach Bar & Grill is located at The Pearl Hotel, 63 Main Street in Rosemary Beach. The restaurant is open daily from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. for breakfast and lunch, and 5 to 9 p.m. for dinner. The bar is open from 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Call 850-588-2882 for more information.

Havana Beach fish

Havana Beach Bar and Grill: Passport to Havana

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April 4, 2020
By Liesel Schmidt

ROSEMARY BEACH – When it comes to creating a successful restaurant, it takes more than just a great concept or an interesting hook. It takes an understanding of the market, a keen sense of business, and – of course – a master to lead and direct the kitchen.

The Pearl Hotel’s Havana Beach Bar and Grill could not have assembled a more fitting team when they chose Executive Chef Todd Rogers to take on that role, pairing him with The Pearl’s Food & Beverage Director Kevin Dixon to bring the flavors of Cuba to the plate. After all, for a restaurant whose concept centers around the cuisine of such a passionate culture, it requires the skill of someone with an equally matched passion for cooking. The menu of food and drinks offer enough complexity and flavor to make every bite and sip an experience to remember.

Havana Beach fritters
Havana Beach Bar & Grill is a AAA 4-Diamond Restaurant and Florida Trend Golden Spoon Award winner.

Havana Beach’s menu is, in fact, a little taste of the Old Town Havana so beloved by Ernest Hemingway, blended with the local flavors of the Emerald Coast. Food is prepared with the precision and dedication of the most skilled cigar roller, plated and presented with pride and passion. Fittingly enough, the dining room has the look and feel of a cigar room, blended with an airiness that could only come from being so very close to the sea. Here, you’ll find the perfect place to relax in the warm glow of its intimate spaces, a place where food and drink are savored like a slow sunset as a cigar burns down to the stub. To merely say that this is a restaurant would be to discredit it, to disrespect all that is offered when a dish is prepared by the hands of a chef as impassioned as Chef Rogers.

“We want our dining experience to entice all of the senses, from the very first moment our guests are greeted and have that carry through in each and every course they enjoy.”

– Executive Chef Todd Rogers

“We want our dining experience to entice all of the senses, from the very first moment our guests are greeted and have that carry through in each and every course they enjoy,” said Rogers, whose 30 years as a chef have allowed him to explore the world through its food. And at Havana Beach, the diner has the very great honor of being his guest on a trip to Cuba, without ever having to leave their table.

Not surprisingly, favorites include Coastal Seafood Fritters and Local Caught Grouper as well as some of their newest Latin-inspired creations such as the Three Little Pigs pork sampler and Hemingway’s Mariscos – a mouth-watering array of local fish and seafood served with spicy chorizo and zucchini. Perfect for anyone looking for something on the lighter side is the Havana Beach Salad, though Rogers insists that their decadent desserts are not to be missed.

Havana Beach s'mores
Havana Beach s’mores

“Our pastry chef is fabulous, so we have been able to extend our pastry and fresh bread offerings,” he said.

“We’re passionate about what we do and want to create an experience that exceeds everyone’s expectations,” Rogers continued. “To do that, we make the majority of all our menu items in-house or work closely with local and regional purveyors to ensure that we get the freshest, most locally sourced ingredients possible, and that shines through in the quality and flavor of the dishes we present. It’s a special experience to have a Gulf-front restaurant that’s truly serving a taste of place beyond just seafood, and we’re very proud of that.”

So, too, are they proud of their beverage program, offering creative, seasonally inspired, handcrafted cocktails that engage all of the senses in addition to a curated wine and beer selection that pairs perfectly with the cuisine.

In as much as each spice and sauce flavors the food at Havana Beach Bar & Grill, so does it reveal talent and pride and quality, taking the diner on an adventure and leaving them looking forward to their next trip back.

Havana Beach Bar and Grill is located in The Pearl Hotel, 63 Main Street, Rosemary Beach. Open daily for breakfast from 8 to 11 a.m.; lunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Open daily for dinner 5 to 10 p.m. Bar hours run 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. with a daily happy hour from 3 to 6 p.m. Reservations not accepted. For more information, visit www.thepearlrb.com or call 850-588-2882.