Barracuda’s Bar & Grille Part Of The Old New Smyrna Beach
I used to live in New Smyrna Beach beachside in the early 2000s up till about 2015. So much has changed. I raised my younger daughter there. She attended the only elementary school on the island, Coronado Beach Elementary School. She used to love the pulled pork sandwich from a local place. It was Barracuda’s Bar & Grille part of the old New Smyrna Beach.
It opened in 2011 and closed in 2016. The original building was torn down and replaced with the two story Crow’s Nest, which is now today it’s Crabby’s Bar & Grill.
I remember Barracuda’s as it used to have outdoor events sponsored by some of the beer companies. One year when Stella Artois Lager sponsored an event and they gave away those signature glasses. It was a lot of fun basically on the ocean near the end of Flagler Avenue. The food was cheap and great. What also made it special was, the locals. I remember seeing that Stella logo for days from the broken glasses that were scattered for blocks.
Just about across the street is the Salty Mermaid Oceanfront Hotel (originally Ward’s Ocean View Motel), another part of the history and of course Toni & Joe’s Patio. We’ll be talking about both of those iconic places in future posts.
Back then Flagler Ave was a quaint old simple place. So much has changed as so many of those locals are now all gone. Higher real estate prices and lots of tourists changed all of it. You never heard much about New Smyrna Beach on the Orlando local TV stations but that changed and the people came.
The house we lived in just 5 houses away from the beach sold for less than 100,000 back then, now that same house is just about $650,000.
These were the days when the Wine Walk only occurred a couple times a year, now its monthly. The locals used to call it the “Wine Crawl” as it seemed a lot of people couldn’t walk by the time the event ended. It was $25 back then and the average person couldn’t handle the amount to wine tastes you received.
