Coconut Grove has one genuinely strange fact hiding under its nicest waterfront deck: the ground you are standing on used to be where Pan American's flying boats came in to land. Bayshore Club sits at Regatta Harbour on Dinner Key, and the Sunday you can have there is good — but only inside a fairly narrow set of hours, and getting that wrong is the single most common way people ruin the plan.
The difference between a good outdoor Sunday and a wasted trip is usually closing time, not the food. Ask Karpo which waterfront rooms near you are still serving at the hour your game kicks off, and which ones shut before the late window even starts.
The hours decide everything here
Start with the constraint rather than the atmosphere. The room runs 11:30am to 9pm Monday through Thursday, 11:30am to 11pm on Friday, 10am to 11pm on Saturday and 10am to 10pm on Sunday. Read that against an American football schedule and the picture is immediate. A 1pm Sunday kickoff is comfortable. A 4:05pm or 4:25pm start is fine and finishes with time to spare. A Sunday night game that kicks at 8:20pm is a problem, because you will be asked to leave somewhere around the end of the first half.
A Monday or Thursday night game is worse — a 9pm close on a Monday means the room is shutting almost exactly when the game gets interesting. This is not a criticism of the restaurant. It is a restaurant, and restaurants close. But it is the reason to treat this as a daytime and early-evening option only, and to have a different room in mind for anything in prime time.
What you are actually sitting on
Dinner Key got its name because it was a pretty place to stop for a picnic when people moved along this coast by boat. It was an island until 1914, when it was connected to the mainland. In 1918 it became the first continental naval air station in the United States, operating until the end of the First World War. Through the 1930s and 1940s it was the base for Pan American World Airways' flying boats — the Sikorsky S-41 and S-42, the Clipper planes — which were housed in hangars that have since been restored and now form part of the complex.
The best detail is the one just to the southeast of the restaurant. The original Art Deco airline terminal, where passengers checked in for a flight that would take off from the water, is now Miami City Hall. You can see it from the deck. It is a rare case of a waterfront restaurant's historical claim being not only true but visible from your table.
Order like it is a fish restaurant, because it is
The kitchen is seafood-led and the menu rewards ordering that way. The whole fried snapper is the plate the room is built around — it is a shared dish and it takes time, which suits an afternoon that is going to last four hours anyway. Beyond it there is crab causa, grilled fish tacos, a low-country shrimp and grits, and a raw bar running crab claws and oysters. Ordering a burger here is not a mistake exactly, but it is a waste of the location.
The strategic order on a game day is the raw bar early and the snapper late. Oysters and crab claws arrive fast and hold the table through the first half without anyone committing to a full plate. The snapper lands in the third quarter, by which point the sun has come off the deck and eating a whole fish with your hands has stopped feeling like an event and started feeling like dinner.
Happy hour lands before the late window
Half-price cocktails, beers and wines run Monday to Friday from 4pm to 6pm. That window is useless for a Sunday game and extremely useful for a Thursday or Monday night one — you arrive at four, drink at half price for two hours, eat, and then you are moving on somewhere else by the time the game actually starts. Treating this as the first stop rather than the whole evening is how a weeknight fixture works here.
Getting there is the other half of the plan
Regatta Harbour is not somewhere you stumble into. It sits at the end of Pan American Drive, off South Bayshore Drive, which means every arrival is deliberate and every departure competes with everyone else's. On a Sunday afternoon in season the harbour car park fills with people who came for the marina and the retail rather than the restaurant, and it fills earlier than you would expect. Coconut Grove Metrorail station is about a fifteen-minute walk away and is comfortably the least stressful way in if you are not driving a boat.
The other thing worth planning around is wind. This is an exposed deck on open bay water, and a front coming through turns a pleasant afternoon into a loud one very quickly — umbrellas come down, the fire pits become the only warm spot, and the indoor tables get claimed within minutes. In the cooler months, from roughly November onwards, check the forecast for wind rather than temperature. Seventy-two degrees and still is a different restaurant from seventy-two degrees and blowing.
Practical notes
Bayshore Club, 3391 Pan American Drive, at Regatta Harbour on Dinner Key in Coconut Grove. Open 11:30am-9pm Monday to Thursday, 11:30am-11pm Friday, 10am-11pm Saturday, 10am-10pm Sunday. Happy hour Monday to Friday 4pm-6pm, half-price cocktails, beers and wines. Seafood-led menu with a whole fried snapper, crab causa, fish tacos, shrimp and grits, and a raw bar. Reservations are strongly advised for weekend evenings. Miami City Hall, the old Pan Am terminal, is immediately southeast of the restaurant if you want to walk over and look at it. Coconut Grove Metrorail is roughly a fifteen-minute walk. For anything kicking off after 7pm on a weeknight, pick a different room. Hours change seasonally, so confirm before you go.
Please drink responsibly. Must be of legal drinking age.
Tags: #nflbarnearme #coconutgrove #bayshoreclub #regattaharbour #miamiwaterfront #dinnerkey #miamirestaurants #gameday #nflsunday #miamibars #outdoordining #biscaynebay #miamihistory #watchparty
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Ask Karpo first
Waterfront rooms in Miami keep restaurant hours, not sports-bar hours, and the gap between the two ruins a lot of evenings. Ask Karpo what is open near you at the specific kickoff time you are working with, whether the outdoor section has screens, and where to move afterwards if the kitchen closes mid-game.
