5 Pensacola restaurants we wish would have made USA Today's Restaurants of the Year list
Dining reporters have been scouring the country for the best restaurants to be included in the USA TODAY 2024 Restaurants of the Year list and Florida’s first city was not overlooked. And no, we don’t mean St. Augustine. Included in the national list is Pensacola's Brother Fox, an old-world, wood-fired, Spanish-inspired restaurant that is part of Pensacola’s Lily Hall boutique lodging house.
The restoration project of the Old Mount Olive Baptist Church built in 1928 was a massive undertaking, earning the developers a CivicCon award for the feat. The space is now serving the community in a multitude of ways: as a lodging house, restaurant led by Chopped champion Darian Hernandez, and a playful secret speakeasy serving one-of-a-kind handcrafted cocktails.
While Brother Fox was among the coveted few who made the USA TODAY Restaurants of the Year list in 2024, there were many others here in Pensacola that we felt are deserving of their own recognition. Here are five others we would have included.
Restaurant IRON
22 N. Palafox St.
At Restaurant IRON, executive chef Alex McPhail sets the tone for excellence. He delivers a dinner service that contains the comforts of Southern dining but reimagined with modern elegance. IRON is a restaurant leader, not a follower, and serves plates you’ll likely never taste anywhere else. When it opened as a brick-and-mortar in the heart of downtown Pensacola in 2014, it set a precedent with plates that pushed the envelope on traditional flavors. Pensacola wasn’t the only one who noticed, as Forbes recognized it as one of the 50 Best Southern Restaurants in America in 2018. McPhail is a chef with an impressive resume, bringing experience from places of prestige like Commander’s Palace in New Orleans. But he’s Pensacola-raised and poured his talent back into Pensacola when he created IRON.
The quality of his ingredients are his priority and inspiration for the food he makes, as a handful of his main courses change with the seasons. Out of that come one-of-a-kind dishes like the Anise Spiced Duck Breast, served with parsnip puree, blackberry chili compote, crispy Brussel sprouts and basil oil, or the Lamb 4 Ways, with rack chop, neck roulade, crispy belly, au jus, roasted garlic risotto, lady apple compote and brioche toast. While the kitchen staff indulge their creative side, they also can take traditional Southern staples and make them extraordinary, like their take on a chicken and dumplings but with a house made gnocchi elevated with rosemary velouté and carrot puree. The dining room is perfectly intimate, the kitchen works together in symphony as “Team IRON” and the restaurant continues, a decade later, to be a point of pride for Pensacola’s fine-dining footprint.
How many have you been to? Check out USA TODAY's 2024 Restaurants of the Year.
Union Public House
36 E. Garden St.
Union Public House is deceptive. The refrigerator of their sparkling new restaurant is covered in spray paint. The gin martini comes with a pork rind as a snack. The staff laugh together, sometimes at the expense of owner and executive chef Blake Rushing, as they all dressed up like him for Halloween, fake mustache taped on and White Claw in hand. It’s silly, eclectic, outrageous and fun. But the secret that Rushing holds close is how much attention to detail and culinary technique is required to make the food and atmosphere appear so effortless and enticing to every demographic.
Inspired by “public houses” around the globe, the menu is filled with casual foods, elevated by some sort of unexpected twist. Only at Union can you order a black garlic hanger steak or roasted red snapper in the same dinner service as a sloppy joe or bologna sandwich. Not to underestimate the sloppy joe, as it’s made with wild boar, pickled peppers, crispy onions and fried sage. Places like Union are the lifeblood of Pensacola ? unassuming, come-as-you-are, make a friend at the bar over a Bramble or treat yourself to a diver scallop BLT solo. There’s no right or wrong way to do Union, and it’s a place where you can simply be, while also possibly having one of the best meals of your life.
Agapi Bistro + Garden
555 Scenic Highway
Owned and operated by Pensacola local legend chef Gus Silivos, Agapi is a restaurant of big-city caliber nestled in the neighborhood of East Pensacola Heights. Despite its strikingly royal blue exterior, the inside is intimate and attentive in addition to a quaint outdoor courtyard. A meal at Agapi means being slowly and subtly impressed by the attention to detail throughout your meal, only to realize at the end you’ve been entirely blown away. It’s also one of the few places where the Saturday brunch menu can hold its own against the typically more elaborate lunch and dinner menus.
The Greek word for Agapi embodies sharing love, which is why the menu is divided into sharable items and individual composed plates. The crispy oyster sliders on the brunch menu are reason enough to go back time and time again, made with a Mediterranean gouda and brie, jalapeno sauce and fig spread atop buttermilk biscuits. For dinner, your best bet is anything featured on the smaller, seasonally inspired monthly specials menu. There are always a handful of items you will be compelled to try strictly out of curiosity. For February, you’ll find everything from a Chilean Sea Bass Spatzle, with shitake, paprikash and Swiss chard, to a braised lamb arepa with pickled onion, radish, tzatziki, feta and tabouleh salsa. It’s also the only restaurant in town that will allow the chef to design a coursed meal specifically for you through the Chef’s Blind Tasting Menu. While the restaurant’s menu is heavily influenced by flavors of the Mediterranean, its heart is regional ingredients that inspire innovation.
George Bistro
6205 N. Ninth Ave.
George and Luba Lazi have made it difficult to choose between their two restaurants. For the sake of this article, we will go with their original restaurant George Bistro, but note that their brand-new restaurant Pearl & Horn is spectacular for many of the same reasons. When the Lazis would reminisce on family dinners in George's home country of Georgia, there would be lively conversation over wine with music and dancing that would span hours. Naturally, the two created a restaurant that warmly welcomed Pensacola into their own dining room and felt like a family celebration.
The menu's food has “South-meets-South” inspiration, ranging from the South of France to the Southern region of the United States in the Florida Panhandle. The combination of their backgrounds and travels mended with local ingredients and Gulf influences makes for multiple enticing menus ? brunch, lunch and dinner ? that are each significant in their own right. There truly is something for everyone, whether you would rather indulge in a tender 72-hour braised short rib with a wild mushroom ravioli or a light seared local grouper atop a brown butter roasted spaghetti squash with honey lavender glazed tricolor carrots. The house coffees and cocktails are also can’t miss menu items.
Our criteria for USA TODAY's Restaurants of the Year for 2024: How the list of best restaurants was decided
McGuire’s Irish Pub
600 E. Gregory St.
While this list isn’t a popularity contest, McGuire’s is easily one of Pensacola’s most loved restaurants. It’s the place you bring your out-of-town visitors to see the dark lighting and dollar bills plastering the ceiling. If you were to count them, it is estimated to be in the millions, beginning with the owners’ first dollar bill back in 1977. The tradition holds true to what makes the restaurant so beloved: it makes Pensacola locals part of the story. Everyone has a memory with McGuire’s, and the restaurant owners know how to bring the community together. The McGuire’s 5K race shuts the streets down in March, with runners packed together like sardines. If the sardines were wearing green t-shirts and downing Irish wakes, that is.
The thing about the Irish pub is that it’s more than just bar burgers (although theirs are a whopping three-quarter pound of Angus steak.) It’s Reuben eggrolls, shepherd’s pie, fish and chips and Irish cockles and mussels. The food is hearty and flavorful, the drinks are strong and you may even get to hear a round of bagpipes during your dinner. While innovation is a great thing, there are some local landmarks you hope never change. For Pensacola, McGuire’s is certainly one of them, from the dollar bills down to the 18-cent bean soup.
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This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola restaurants near me: 5 places we wish made USA Today's list
