"We need food here, we are somewhat of a food desert in Mexico Beach." Mayor Michele Miller said that to a local news crew in early 2024, and anyone who lived through the years right after Hurricane Michael knew exactly what she meant. For a long stretch, if you wanted a sit-down dinner without leaving town, you had one option: Mango Marley's, and that was it.
That sentence is no longer true, and most of the town hasn't caught up to it yet.
The Six Years When One Restaurant Was the Whole List
Before Hurricane Michael hit in October 2018, Mexico Beach had somewhere around eight sit-down restaurants, part of a run that had held at ten or eleven through the 1990s and 2000s according to longtime developer Zach Childs, who has been pushing the city to approve new restaurant space on Highway 98. The storm took nearly all of it out in one night. For roughly the next six years, Mango Marley's on Highway 98 was the only air-conditioned, sit-down place in town. Everyone else who wanted a table indoors drove to Port St. Joe or further.
That single-restaurant stretch is the baseline worth holding onto, because it's the number everything since gets measured against.
What Opened While Nobody Was Watching Toucan's
The second sit-down restaurant since the storm wasn't a rebuild of anything that existed before. It was Forgotten Coast Brewing Co., which opened its doors on the west end of town at 4101 US-98 with an official grand opening on June 28, 2024. Local coverage at the time was direct about what that meant: Mexico Beach had gone from one air-conditioned restaurant to two. The brewery runs a 50-barrel operation with a menu built around beach tacos, custom pizzas, and wings, walk-in only, no reservations, open seven days a week.
Then came a third. Beach Bear Coastal opened in 2026 at 2902 US-98, an upscale fast-casual spot built around a scratch-made menu and 30-inch sourdough pizzas, alongside wings, salads, sandwiches, and local seafood. Between the brewery and Beach Bear, Mexico Beach now has more places for a relaxed sit-down meal than it has had at any point since 2018, and that happened without the one reopening most residents have actually been tracking.
Here's the count, plainly:
| Restaurant | Status as of August 2026 | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Mango Marley's | Open | Only sit-down option in town from 2018 until 2024 |
| Forgotten Coast Brewing Co. | Open since June 2024 | Second sit-down restaurant since Hurricane Michael, 4101 US-98 |
| Beach Bear Coastal | Open in 2026 | Scratch-made menu, sourdough pizza, 2902 US-98 |
| Toucan's on the Beach | Under construction | 20,000-square-foot rebuild at 719 Highway 98, still hiring |
Three of four rows say open. That's the part of the story that hasn't made it into most conversations about Mexico Beach dining, because the fourth row is the one everyone's actually watching.
The Comeback Everyone's Waiting For Isn't the One That Already Happened
Toucan's on the Beach earned its reputation honestly. Before the storm it was the kind of place that pulled visitors in from around the region for shrimp, ribs, and a Gulf view, and its destruction in 2018 became one of the clearest symbols of what the town lost. Its return has been treated the same way, as a marker that Mexico Beach is finally, fully back.
That return has also taken longer than any of the earlier announcements suggested. Owners originally hoped to reopen in 2021, but COVID, permitting, and financing pushed that back. Construction pylons went in during 2024. A May 2026 report projected a reopening by the end of June. As of early August 2026, the new building, a storm-hardened 20,000-square-foot structure at 719 Highway 98 with a band stage and oyster bar, was still under construction and the business was actively hiring for all positions. Owner-operator Rob Hammer described the rebuild as carrying "all the new bells and whistles of 2026," which tells you the ambition is real, just not yet finished.
None of that is a criticism of the project. Rebuilding a 20,000-square-foot beachfront restaurant to withstand another Category 5 storm takes time, and doing it right matters more than doing it fast. But if you've been waiting for Toucan's to reopen before you'll believe the food scene has recovered, you've been measuring the wrong thing. The recovery already happened in the restaurants that opened without the fanfare.
The Layer That Never Actually Left
While the sit-down count was stuck at one for six years, a different tier of Mexico Beach dining kept the town fed, and it's still doing most of the daily work now. Shell Shack, the third-generation seafood market on US-98, has been selling fresh grouper, snapper, and steamed shrimp since 1965 and rebuilt after the storm to keep doing it. Around town, a rotation of food trucks and small counters fills in the rest of a week's meals:
- Bad Mamma Jamma, for Mexican street corn nachos and crab dip
- Killer Seafood, known locally for its fish tacos
- Local Beach Pizza, for pizza, calzones, and hot sandwiches off Highway 98
- Taqueria Las Brasitas, for tacos and quesabirria
- Point Break Pizza, for pies, wings, and salads
- Caribbean Coffee, for breakfast pastries and a morning pick-me-up
- Mexico Beach Sweets and Scoopalicious, for ice cream and candy
None of these show up in a headline the way a Toucan's reopening will. But if you're a resident deciding where dinner comes from tonight, this list has been doing the job for years, and it's the reason the food desert Mayor Miller described in 2024 never felt as empty on the ground as the restaurant count suggested.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
If you moved to Mexico Beach in the last year or two, the current mix probably feels normal: a brewery, a fast-casual spot, a handful of trucks, one classic sit-down restaurant, and a big rebuild finishing up on the beach. If you've been here since before 2018, the same mix probably still feels thin compared to what the town used to have, because the mental image you're checking it against is a town with eight or more sit-down places running at once.
Both readings are accurate. The honest version is that Mexico Beach has more dinner options now than it's had since the storm, the count tripled without most people noticing, and the restaurant most people are still waiting on to call the recovery complete is the one still finishing construction. Toucan's reopening will be a real moment when it happens. It just isn't the moment that already happened.
If you're weighing what a changing food scene means for property values in Mexico Beach, or you're ready to talk about buying, selling, or just understanding what's shifting in this part of Gulf County, Eli Duarte and the team have been tracking this town closely enough to know the difference between what's open and what's still "opening soon." Reach out for a local market guide or a home valuation, and get answers from someone who actually eats here.
