JB's Fish Camp

859 Pompano Ave., New Smyrna Beach, FL - (386) 427-5747

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Posted By Michael Stern on October 17, 2009 1:15 PM

The classic fish camp is a vanishing species, its unashamed rural nature out of step with 21st century life in general and with the ever denser population of waterside Florida in particular. Nowhere is the culture clash more patent than at JB's Fish Camp at the southernmost end of Turtle Mound Road (Route A1A) outside New Smyrna Beach. Other than by boat along the Intracoastal Waterway, the only way to get to JB's is to drive past miles of new high-rise housing and recently-built shopping malls. The bourgeois landscape shifts dramatically the moment you pull onto Pompano Avenue and find the white-sand parking lot that surrounds the helter-skelter restaurant, its t-shirt sales trailer (with tees that depict the mosquito as the Florida state bird), kayak rental booth, and bait shop. A bumper sticker plastered to the door announces, "Slow Down. You're Not on the Mainland," and shows a slovenly anthropomorphic catfish who appears to be drunk or hung over.

JB's menu is huge, featuring every kind of Florida seafood, including rock shrimp (when available), pompano and a wonderful "crabulous sandwich" filled with nothing but crabmeat dabbed with mayonnaise. Blue crabs are a specialty, available as peppery as you like by the dozen. Steamed, broiled, fried, blackened, stuffed, or as the basis of grand gourmet scampis and imperials: you can have just about anything that swims just about any which way.

There is indoor dining, but the choice seats are outside on a broad deck by the water where private and commercial fishing boats come and go and where the everpresent sunshine seems to muffle even the high-spirited chatter of JB's raucous clientele. Among those eating at the breezy picnic tables were some who appeared to be local anglers but also tourists and road-tripping bikers as well as a large number of people for whom Florida is a second home and who come to this outpost to enjoy what the state was like before they got here.

Overall Rating

Crabulous Sandwich

Steamed Spiced Shrimp

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