Four Kitchens, One Mile: The Dinner Rotation at Bayridge's Doorstep

If you moved into Bayridge more than a few years ago, your mental map of dinner options along this stretch of Plantation Key is probably out of date. Not because anything moved. Because almost everything on this half-mile of Overseas Highway got rebuilt, sold, or reopened since you formed that first impression, and nobody sent a memo.

Here's the claim worth testing against your own habits: within about a mile and a half of the Bayridge gate, on the same side of the highway, sit four restaurants that between them cover every register of eating a household actually needs. A historic bayfront institution for the night you want cloth napkins and a sunset. A strip-mall taproom that keeps landing on national burger lists. A family-run seafood counter that just changed hands and got its act together. A pizza place for the night nobody wants to cook. That combination, that close together, is not something every Keys neighborhood can say. It's worth knowing exactly what changed and when, because "changed" is the operative word for three of the four.

The Comeback at Mile Marker 88

Marker 88 has been serving people on Plantation Key since 1967, which makes it older than most of the houses around it. What's easy to forget is that the version standing there now is not the version that was there a decade ago. The restaurant closed for a multi-year renovation and reopened on June 1, 2023, with a rebuilt 2.5-acre property: two tiki bars pouring 18 craft beers on draft, 10,000 square feet of beachfront and oceanfront dining, two boat docks for anyone arriving by water, and 14,000 square feet of event space that can handle a wedding for up to 450 guests. Chef Zack Sklar reworked the menu in collaboration with the Cotton family, who own the property, pulling in West Indies, Polynesian, and French Caribbean influences alongside the Key lime pie you'd expect from a Keys institution.

There's a historical footnote that tells you something about how long Marker 88 has mattered here: it was a favorite of former President George H.W. Bush. That's not a current-day amenity, obviously, but it's a reminder that this address has been a fixture for the kind of occasion dinner people remember for decades, not just a photogenic backdrop.

If the last time you set foot in Marker 88 was before 2023, you haven't seen the current version. That's a three-year-old fact hiding in plain sight for anyone who stopped going during the renovation years and never went back.

The Burger Place Hiding in a Strip Mall

A few doors down, at 88005 Overseas Highway, sits M.E.A.T. Eatery and Taproom, which has the unusual distinction of being both a national food-media darling and a place most first-time visitors dismiss on sight because it's tucked into a strip mall. Chef George Patti, a Johnson & Wales graduate, and sommelier Thomas Smith built something closer to a craft smokehouse than a burger stand: everything is smoked in-house, the burger blends are ground on site, the sausages are made from scratch, and even the condiments are house-made, including the ketchup.

The restaurant landed a spot on Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, where Guy Fieri singled out the house-made sausages and the wings. It's also been ranked among the top five burger restaurants in the country by outside food rankings, and by its own account has picked up more than three dozen awards over five years, enough recognition that it has since expanded to a second location in Boca Raton. None of that changes the fact that it still looks, from the parking lot, like a place you'd drive past. Locals who know to walk in anyway are the ones eating duck fat fries on a Tuesday.

The Restart at 87745 Overseas Highway

This is the one with the most concrete "before and after." Twisted Shrimp, at 87745 Overseas Highway, spent years under previous ownership with what locals politely called an unpredictable schedule. You could drive over craving crab bisque and find the doors locked with no warning, which is exactly the kind of friction that trains a household to stop trying a place at all.

That changed when Clara Correa bought the restaurant along with her two sons, Mateo and Santiago. According to a Keys Weekly account of the sale, the new owners' first order of business was establishing a schedule people could actually count on, and the restaurant now runs seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. The writer covering the ownership change admitted walking in "beyond nervous, hoping they would be able to replicate the preceding owner's confidential recipes," and came away convinced the shrimp was, if anything, better than before.

The current menu leans into what a family-run seafood shack should be: crab bisque, shrimp po'boys, tacos, a rotating catch under the Hook n' Cook banner, and a dedicated gluten-free fryer that's earned it a loyal following among diners who usually have to skip fried seafood entirely. If your last visit predates the ownership change, you were judging the restaurant on a version of it that no longer exists.

What's Actually Sitting on This Stretch

Laid out by mile marker, this is what you're working with without leaving the immediate area:

• Mile Marker 87.7 — Twisted Shrimp, family-owned seafood and comfort food, open daily 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., dedicated gluten-free fryer
• Mile Marker 88 — M.E.A.T. Eatery and Taproom, craft smokehouse burgers and barbecue in a strip mall, nationally ranked
• Mile Marker 88 — Marker 88, bayfront tiki bars and beachfront dining since 1967, rebuilt and reopened in 2023
• Mile Marker 89 — Enrico's Pizza, the neighborhood's straightforward pizza stop, just up the road at U.S. 1

Four kitchens, four completely different nights, all inside a mile and a third of highway.

Why the Compression Matters

Most stretches of the Overseas Highway make you choose a lane. You get the fine-dining cluster in one place and the roadside seafood shacks somewhere else entirely, often a bridge or two apart. What's unusual about this particular mile is that Bayridge sits close enough to all four registers that the choice isn't where to drive, it's what mood you're in.

That matters more than it sounds like it should for a neighborhood built around the water. Bayridge residents already have a private bayfront pool, a boat ramp, and an assigned slip in a protected marina basin through the Bayridge Corporation, which means a lot of the day already happens without getting in the car. Having a real dinner rotation that close by means the same is true after the sun goes down. You can spend the afternoon on the water and still be sitting down for jerk chicken fajitas at Marker 88, or a shrimp basket at Twisted Shrimp, inside a few minutes.

It also means the version of this corridor worth knowing isn't the one from five years ago. Marker 88 spent part of that window closed for renovation. Twisted Shrimp spent part of it unreliable enough that regulars gave up. The current version, with a rebuilt bayfront institution, a family that fixed the one thing that used to keep people away, and a burger counter that keeps landing on national lists, is better than whatever you remember, and it's been sitting at the doorstep the whole time.

If you're already living the Bayridge routine and want more of this kind of on-the-ground read on what's actually happening around Islamorada, Alina Davis has spent decades tracking the Upper Keys block by block. Let's Connect if you'd ever like to talk through what else is changing in the neighborhood.