Best Restaurants in St Augustine: Six Meal Choices

A meal at Columbia Restaurant pairs paella with decorative tiled dining rooms, while the other choices here centre on an industrial setting, fried shrimp, Peruvian ceviche, waterfront seating or seasonal Southern cooking. Choose one for an unhurried sit-down meal in St Augustine, rather than treating the six restaurants as a ranking. The selection moves from the Historic District and Lincolnville to Anastasia Island.

Choose your meal

Restaurant	Area	What to order	Meal per person	Weekly closing day
Columbia Restaurant	Historic District	Paella Española	$40–$55	None
Ice Plant Bar	Lincolnville	Beef burger	$30–$45	—
O’Steen’s Restaurant	Anastasia Boulevard	Fried shrimp	$25–$35	Sunday and Monday
Llama Restaurant	Anastasia Boulevard	Ceviche Carretilla	$50–$75	—
The Conch House Restaurant	Salt Run	Minorcan conch chowder	$35–$55	None
The Floridian	Old Beach Road	Shrimp and grits, when offered	$30–$50	Tuesday

These estimated budgets cover food for a meal and a non-alcoholic drink per person, before tax and gratuity. At Llama and The Conch House, allow for additional food alongside ceviche or chowder rather than treating the named dish alone as a full meal. Extra courses and alcohol move the bill above these ranges.

Choose Columbia for its tiled rooms and substantial rice dish, Ice Plant for a cocktail-led dinner in a former industrial building, or O’Steen’s for a straightforward seafood plate. Llama puts Peruvian cooking first, The Conch House makes the water part of the meal, and The Floridian brings seasonal ingredients to Southern dishes.

Reserve a fixed-time dinner where reservations are accepted, particularly when you have another commitment afterwards. For walk-in seating, leave flexibility before and after the meal rather than squeezing it between appointments. O’Steen’s and The Conch House’s over-water huts have specific seating arrangements below.

For an anniversary or a meal for two where the occasion matters as much as the food, a romantic dinner in St Augustine calls for a more focused choice of setting.

Columbia Restaurant

Columbia Restaurant’s decorative tilework makes the dining rooms part of the reason to linger. On St George Street, it is a natural place to turn a Historic District outing into a seated lunch, with time to enjoy the room as well as the food.

Order Paella Española, the Spanish-style rice dish on the lunch menu. It combines shrimp, scallops, calamari, clams and mussels with chicken and pork, bringing seafood and meat together in one substantial dish. This is a lunch to sit down for, not a small bite before another meal.

Make lunch the break in your Historic District sightseeing, rather than an interruption to rush through. A substantial rice dish suits a seated meal, so leave time to enjoy it before returning to St George Street. Choose your lunch time before arranging the rest of your afternoon.

Ice Plant Bar

Ice Plant Bar occupies a former ice-plant building in Lincolnville, giving a seated dinner an industrial setting rather than a conventional dining-room backdrop. Choose it when the building and a drink are part of the evening’s appeal, but you still want a recognisable, substantial dinner.

The beef burger is the dinner order to build that meal around. It keeps the food choice straightforward in a restaurant with a strong cocktail identity, so you can settle in for dinner without making a tasting of drinks the purpose of the visit.

Treat Ice Plant as a dinner destination rather than only a bar stop. That leaves room to enjoy its reused industrial space over a full meal. Weekend brunch also gives it a different role if you prefer an earlier sit-down occasion to an evening centred on cocktails.

O’Steen’s Restaurant

O’Steen’s Restaurant makes fried shrimp the reason to sit down on Anastasia Boulevard. Opened in 1965, it has the long-running seafood-house identity to suit a meal built around a familiar plate rather than elaborate courses. Order the shrimp and make the homestyle sides part of your lunch or dinner.

Frying gives shrimp a crisp coating around the seafood, and the accompaniments turn the order into a straightforward meal. The appeal here is that clear focus, particularly if you want a traditional seafood stop during time on Anastasia Island. You do not need to turn it into a special-occasion dinner to enjoy its signature dish.

Plan on walk-in seating at O’Steen’s, not a reservation. You may have to wait outside, and how long you wait depends on how busy the restaurant is. Leave space in your afternoon or evening for that uncertainty, especially if everyone in your party needs to eat at a fixed time.

Llama Restaurant

Llama Restaurant’s Ceviche Carretilla gives you a food-led reason to choose dinner on Anastasia Boulevard. Ceviche is seafood cured in citrus juice, a central dish in Peruvian cooking. The citrus changes the seafood’s texture without the heat used to grill or fry it, making the dish quite different from a conventional cooked seafood plate.

Choose Llama when you want to explore Peruvian flavours over a seated dinner. Start with the ceviche, then add another dish according to your appetite. If you are sharing, agree on the rest of the order so everyone has enough for dinner.

If you avoid raw seafood, choose a heat-cooked dish instead of ceviche. Citrus curing does not make it a cooked seafood option.

The Conch House Restaurant

The Conch House Restaurant’s dining huts stand over the water beside the marina at Salt Run. This is the choice when you want the setting to be a substantial part of an unhurried seafood meal, with your seat bringing you out over the water rather than merely giving you a distant view.

Start with Minorcan conch chowder. Minorcan refers to St Augustine’s community with roots in Menorca, and the name attaches that local heritage to the dish. Conch is a marine shellfish, and chowder turns it into a hearty soup. Minorcan-style chowders are generally tomato-based and spicy, rather than creamy. Add more food if you want a full lunch or dinner.

The over-water huts are first come, first served and cannot be reserved by calling ahead. Arrive early if a hut is the main reason for your visit, and be prepared to wait at busy meal times. Keep your plans flexible enough to enjoy the seat once you have it, rather than needing to leave shortly afterwards.

Friday and Saturday food service continues until 10pm, giving a later dinner more room than on other evenings.

The Floridian

The Floridian makes seasonal Southern cooking the reason to head to Old Beach Road on Anastasia Island. Its connection to nearby farms, fishermen and other producers gives the menu a regional focus, with ingredients helping shape the dishes rather than a fixed order defining every visit.

Look for shrimp and grits when offered. Grits are ground maize cooked into a soft accompaniment, often enriched with butter or cheese in Southern cooking. They provide a substantial base for shrimp, making the dish a useful choice when you want seafood as part of a full meal.

Let the seasonal ingredients guide your final order if shrimp and grits is not offered. Nearby farms, fishermen and other producers supply the kitchen, so the appeal is a Southern meal shaped by regional ingredients rather than the same dish on every visit.

Lunch runs from 11am–3pm, and dinner begins at 4:30pm. Plan your sit-down meal on either side of that afternoon gap, rather than arriving between the two services expecting a full lunch or dinner.

Sources & fact-checking

Checks against the sources below cover: key figures, opening hours, and closures.

• Llama Restaurant — key figures
• Columbia Restaurant — key figures
• Visit St. Augustine — opening hours
• Ice Plant Bar & Bottle Shop St. Augustine — key figures
• Conch House Marina Resort — opening hours
• Conch House Marina Resort — closures
• Conch House Marina Resort — key figures