boondocks restaurant

my mother's day wish list.... we went toboondockslast year during one of my company's event with great folks....we had the best time n food...i liked it so much i added it to my mother's day wish list...the food was great n well priced...this is a must go hole in the wall;)

go! often!. loved this place. walked in last night for the first time (we're vacationing from the midwest) and felt immediately at home. fun, unpretenious. 12 huge oysters on the half-shell for under $10. ridiculously good. perhaps some of the best new england clam chowder i've ever had: broth was flavorful and appropriately creamy but not goopily thick, lots of clams, and they were tender and sweet, not rubbery. score! seafood paella had a wonderful sauce and lots of seafood, and the fish reuben was so simple and completely addictive. there's something to be said for simple food perfectly executed and served with a smile and a laugh. and, just to complete the picture, a white egret named mitchell stood adorably 2 feet away from our table supervising the proceedings. not kidding. loved him. loved the place. pay no attention to the fools who quibble about this or that:boondocksis a family business with family recipes, generous portions, friendly staff, reasonable prices, and killer key lime pie. go. now.

first time, but not the last.. my dining partner and i were intrigued by the mention of paella on the website for this restaurant. we looked at the rest of the menu. and decided we had to try boondocks.

the premises are unassuming and pleasant in a sit-down-have-a-drink-and-an-order-of-oysters kinda way; the perfect place for our first dinner in daytona beach. the warm welcome and amazing service by our server, as well as the relaxed atmosphere quickly made us realize what a gemboondocksis. and seriously, ask for an iced tea and you get the pitcher? i liked this place immediately.

the oysters on the half shell were incredible, according to my dining partner, who grew up on oysters right out of the atlantic (his stepfather still farms them so he gets freshly shucked oysters on every visit home). he said that they were possibly some of the best, certainly the largest, he's eaten in a long time. my spicy peel-n-eat steamed shrimp were good, but not very spicy.

after conferring conspiratorially with our server (who turned out to be the daughter of the original owners and is now the owner herself), running through the options on the menu, we settled on the paella and the grouper reuben (for which i uploaded a photo). the paella comes with clams, mussels, shrimp, scallops, and a smattering of slightly-spicy and pleasantly smokey chorizo, in a pleasing tomato-based sauce served over saffron-yellow rice. it was not very spicy, but had pleasing spice to it, and the smokiness of the chorizo enhanced the flavor of the shrimp and scallops.

the reuben, like other reubens i have had, is messy and ooey-gooey. and it's delicious. a piping hot couple of filets, flash cooked and topped with thousand island, coleslaw, melted provolone, and nestled between slices of grilled rye. the fish was so hot i could barely take a bite, but it was worth the scorched tongue...

the "creamsicle cake" (orange cake with vanilla cream cheese frosting) was moist and the portion was huge. my partner's key lime pie was trance-inducing, he said (he's the key lime connoisseur, not i).

boondock's looks like what it is: a restaurant on a dock. from the open-air sides, covered with heavy plastic when it rains, to the picnic tables and the disposable serviceware, it makes no pretensions about what you're going to get. occasionally, someone in the dining area will light a cigarette, and if you're downwind (read: sitting dock-side) you'll get smoke wafting over your meal. that's the only downside to boondocks, and it's one i'm more than willing to work around for the large portions, the excellent service, and the ridiculously reasonable prices (a dozen huge oysters on the half-shell for $10?!).

we're only in town for four days, and we're already planning our next meal at boondocks.

our 1st visit to theboondocksand this open air, marina fri t restaurant is very good. service is excellent as the whole staff serves the table. the menu is quite large and quite varied so this is suitable for almost everyone. today we ordered the hot dog with fries and cole slaw, the tuna melt which is a grilled tuna steak, tuna salad, grilled shrimp caesar salad, and appetizers- onion rings and a stuffed seafood portobello mushroom with melted cheese.
everything was very fresh and tasty. the only thing i didn't like was the bun for the hot dog. i think it's the typical bun you may find on a lobster roll. i thought it was tasteless so i ate the hot dog bun-less which was just fine.
all of the servers; whitnee, chuck and pat were great, friendly and provided comfortable service.
one fun thing to do here is buy fish food and feed the fish just off the dock. huge schools of catfish surfaced to feast.
love this place and will return for sure.

we went there over other restaurants in the area (hidden treasure, inlet harbor) because it had a better approval percentage, but we weren't very impressed.

the calamari was very chewy and the breading wasn't crispy like it should have been. the side 'salad' that came with the meal had browned lettuce leaves in it and it looked like it had been put together a few days before and had been sitting in the fridge since then.

the fried seafood platter was a large portion, which was nice for the price, and everything was fried perfectly except for the fried oysters.

i suppose i would go back toboondocksin the future, but it wouldn't be my first choice for dinner.

blech !!!!. we just wasted $20 out of $30 on a small dinner at boondocks.

i ordered a dozen steamed oysters. 3 of them were the size of kidney beans. the other 9 were fine. they were great tasting. they weren't even warm though.

my wife ordered a shrimp scampi appetizer. she got a bowl of some yellow sauce, very thick, that was 99% lemon juice flavored and they tossed 6 cocktail shrimp on top of it and called it scampi. we love shrimp. she didn't eat it, i ate two of her shrimp and quit....

i ordered a bossa sandwich, grilled. bossa is a local whitefish. pretty good too, however, we are atboondocksand what they gave me was a sorry, soggy, flavorless sandwich. i ate the pickle and a few of the fries. the waitress asked if we wanted a to go box and we declined. she said, "was everything ok?" and i neglected to answer.
i would have said that i was completely disgusted by the garbage they served me outside the 9 normal oysters. i didn't want to be a jerk either.

bottom line, i love seafood, i can't recommend this place to a starving man..... 1 out of 10.

awesome place. we have visited this place many times and have enjoyed it on every visit. the grouper florentine is awesome! the wait staff is always friendly and fun and our kids love feeding the fish. we go to the daytona area a week every two years or so and eat atboondockstwo to three times each visit.

dockside seafood.boondocksis literally an open-air shack next to a dockyard on the halifax river. no indoor dining, air-conditioning, or heat. food is decent 7/10.