is closer than you think.
The best restaurants in Longboat Key, FL—without the endless search.
Wayfind turns “best restaurants in Longboat Key” into a small, confident shortlist. Ranked by rating weighted by review volume, then proximity — no ads, no paid placement, updated daily.
Free to start. Your taste stays yours and is never sold.
Your Longboat Key shortlist.
Wayfind weighs rating quality, review depth, proximity, and local context—then tells you why each choice belongs.
Longboat Key, decoded: Refined waterfront dining — polished seafood, resort restaurants, and slow, view-first meals. Upscale and understated.
The one thing to know: Where Sarasota's beach crowd goes to disappear — luxury measured in quiet.
The ranked list
The Porch Restaurant Anna Maria
Dinner in a historic island cottage on Gulf Drive — heart-pine floors and a restored century-old fireplace.
Joshua and Brianna Foster opened this in 2021 inside one of Anna Maria's historic cottages, and the building does half the work: heart pine underfoot, a hundred-year-old shell-and-stone fireplace. The kitchen does the rest — everything made in-house, po'boys at lunch giving way to prime ribeye and daily catch at night. Nine hundred reviewers agree at a rate the island rarely sees.
🗝️ Insider: Sit on the covered porch and save room for the Basque cheesecake.
9707 Gulf Dr, Anna Maria, FL 34216, USA
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Dry Dock Waterfront Grill
Second-story dining over Sarasota Bay at Longboat's south end, with citrus grouper as the house calling card.
The bay does the advertising here: an upstairs dining room with a panoramic view over the water and a dockside patio below it. The kitchen holds up its end with local grouper and red snapper — the citrus grouper is the plate regulars point to. Five thousand Google reviews in and the score hasn't slipped.
🗝️ Insider: Ask for the second-story dining room — that's where the panoramic bay view lives.
412 Gulf of Mexico Dr, Longboat Key, FL 34228, USA
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Shore Longboat Key
Shrimp-and-scallop lemon risotto, with terraces on Sarasota Bay
Shore Longboat Key plates shrimp and scallops on lemon risotto at terrace and tiered tables that jut over Sarasota Bay. This is Tom Leonard's second room — sit the water or the 300-foot dock south of Longboat Pass, not St. Armands.
🗝️ Insider: Book the Longboat room on Resy — not St. Armands Circle. Boat in at ICW#39, west of Jewfish Key, south of Longboat Pass. Confirm the door clock; official is daily 11–9 against SM’s weekday 4 p.m. open. Keep lemon risotto; leave 2020 mussels and the homepage “Key West” wording off the rail. This pin sits next to Mar Vista at 760 Broadway, not on St. Armands.
800 Broadway St, Longboat Key, FL 34228, USA
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Lo’ Key Island Grille
5620 Gulf of Mexico Dr Bldg 2, Longboat Key, FL 34228, USA
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Lazy Lobster
Boothbay Harbor live lobster, with a seasonal Garden Terrace
The Lazy Lobster of Longboat Key plates live Maine lobster supplied daily from Boothbay Harbor, with a Garden Terrace open from October through May. Sit the terrace in season; this Longboat room is now the only Lazy Lobster after Lockwood Ridge became Kacey's.
🗝️ Insider: In August 2026 the Garden Terrace is posted closed (October through May). Do not flatten official summer dinner-only with SM or the 2009/2010 Observer lunch clock. Navigate to 5350, not the 2010 listing’s 5370. The 15% summer line is a dated deal, not the plate. This is the only Lazy Lobster; Kacey’s on Lockwood Ridge is a different pin.
5350 Gulf of Mexico Dr, Longboat Key, FL 34228, USA
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Maison Blanche
2605 Gulf of Mexico Dr, Longboat Key, FL 34228, USA
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Mar Vista Dockside Restaurant & Pub
A century-old Florida beach house where you can tie up your boat, eat raw oysters that actually taste fresh, and pretend you belong to island money.
Mar Vista trades the tourist-trap seafood shack aesthetic for genuine Old Florida charm—locally-sourced, southern-inspired cooking in a place that's been here long enough to have buttonwood trees older than most of your relatives. The dock access means you can arrive by water. The patio with string lights and the fact that staff actually know what they're talking about (they'll tell you the restaurant's history) separates this from the usual waterfront noise.
🗝️ Insider: Order the fried avocado and the tater tots (reviewers call them divine). Ask your server about the restaurant's history—staff here actually enjoy telling it.
760 Broadway St, Longboat Key, FL 34228, USA
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Harry's Continental Kitchens (Restaurant)
525 St Judes Dr, Longboat Key, FL 34228, USA
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Beach House Waterfront Restaurant
A beachfront AMI restaurant where the star is eating with your chair almost in the sand · 4.5 mi from the town center.
200 Gulf Dr N, Bradenton Beach, FL 34217, USA
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The Old Salty Dog
A British pub on Sarasota Bay that takes its hot dogs seriously and means it about the live music.
The Old Salty Dog trades on a specific thing—beer-battered hot dogs and fish and chips—and doesn't pretend to be anything else. You're here for straightforward bar food with water views, the kind of place that works equally well for a casual lunch or an evening when there's a band. It's the sort of spot locals actually return to, not just tourists passing through.
🗝️ Insider: Sit outside on the bay-facing patio if weather allows—the water view is half the point, and it's where the breeze cuts through the heat.
1601 Ken Thompson Pkwy, Sarasota, FL 34236, USA
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Ventura's Italian Kitchen & Wine Bar
6814 Gulf of Mexico Dr, Longboat Key, FL 34228, USA
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Guppy's
5610 Gulf of Mexico Dr STE 5, Longboat Key, FL 34228, USA
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Euphemia Haye Restaurant & The Haye Loft
5540 Gulf of Mexico Dr, Longboat Key, FL 34228, USA
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Chart House
You're paying for the Gulf view and the competence—a chain steakhouse that executes the basics without pretense, right on the water.
Chart House trades on its 1961 pedigree and Longboat Key location: you get seafood and prime rib in a classy room with terrace seating overlooking Sarasota Bay. It's not reinventing anything, but the execution is solid and the setting does the heavy lifting. Go if you want a reliable special-occasion dinner without the indie-restaurant gamble.
🗝️ Insider: Hit Happy Hour at the bar for the cocktail specials before committing to a full dinner reservation.
201 Gulf of Mexico Dr, Longboat Key, FL 34228, USA
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