Pair of Sarasota waterfront institutions plan to rebuild, reopen

They are beloved restaurant institutions — the New Pass Grill & Bait Shop and the Old Salty Dog on City Island.

They take you back to Florida’s bygone era — laid back, where you hang out in your trunks, cover-ups and flip-flops and enjoy the casual cuisine and unpretentious friendliness of the staffs.

And you do all that while breathing in the sea air and looking out at Sarasota Bay almost lapping at your feet.

Take your pick. They’re almost a stone’s throw from each other on New Pass.

But how they fared after Hurricanes Helene and Milton are remarkably different.

Photo by Staff photo

Both restaurants sit 10 feet above sea level, but with the Old Salty Dog situated farther east from the New Pass Bridge, it was more exposed to the open waters and crashing waves.

The New Pass Grill & Bait Shop, meanwhile, is almost tucked in a corner near the bridge. And that made a difference.

Location, location, location.

“Helene was nothing,” says Ashley Gauthier, the Grill and Bait Shop’s grill manager, on Friday as she and six others picked up debris and stacked scattered dock boards into piles. “We made out like a champ. We didn’t lose anything inside.”

Photo by Staff photo

The outside was another story. A deck atop a concrete slab on the water’s edge was uprooted and tossed. A roof covering for the deck now sits on the ground next to the shop. Looking at the place from the water or from the road Saturday morning, it took on the appearance of a salvage yard you’d see on a county road in Apopka.

Despite Helene and Milton being the ninth and 10th hurricanes to batter the 42-year-old Grill and Bait Shop, Gauthier says the owners plan to rebuild and keep going.

“Absolutely we are reopening and rebuilding,” Gauthier says Saturday. “Ten times better!”

For the Old Salty Dog, Helene and Milton appeared to be more brutal — on the inside and outside.

Photo by Staff photo

Friday afternoon, Amy Blair, general manager of the Salty Dog for the past 32 years, sat on the restaurant’s concrete foundation with fellow manager, Josh Shear, and her daughter, Emma Blair, taking in the latest sights of the damage.

“It’s not totaled,” Blair says. “The building and the roof are OK.”

But that’s about it.

Helene flooded the 40-year-old restaurant with four feet of water and destroyed all of the kitchen equipment. Over the next 10 days, the restaurant had new wiring, a new computer system and all new restaurant equipment installed. And just when it was about to reopen, Milton showed up on the radar screen.

On Oct. 8 and 9, Blair and her team disconnected all of the new kitchen equipment and hauled it to safety.

They battened the shutters around all of the restaurant’s open-air views to Sarasota Bay and hoped for the best. They didn’t get it.

The force of Milton’s winds and the waves bashed through the shutters. The water from the crashing waves was so high, the restaurant’s water bowls for dogs, on a shelf about 10 feet high, were full of water Thursday after the storm.

Photo by Staff photo

The restaurants outdoor, plastic chairs, stacked up against the kitchen wall before the storm, were scattered in a bramble of mangroves 100 and 150 yards to the south across Ken Thompson Parkway.

Blair walked along the mangroves Saturday morning, pulling orange plastic chairs out of the muck.

Photo by Staff photo

Half of the Old Salty Dog’s famous bar — an old wooden racing boat given to the restaurant by Gene Whipp, MarineMax’s original owner next door, was blown to the Mote Marine Education Center to the southwest.

As Blair surveyed the devastation inside the restaurant Friday, an air of exhaustion hovering over her, she noted, “It’s heartbreaking — all the memories we have here.”

But like the New Pass Grill and Bait Shop, Blair says the Old Salty Dog isn’t giving up.