Blue Dog Bar & Grill in Matlacha - Phone Number, Reservations, Reviews

After the day I had. The service was little slow. But after getting the tnt shrimp and the burger. It was well worth the wait. Best burger I have had in long time.. What

This is our absolute favorite restaurant. It's so important to support local. Almost every monthly date night, my wife and I end up here. The service is always awesome. If there is a wait, it's always worth it. Honestly, it's comfort food. I almost always get the TNT shrimp tacos with sweet potato fries.

Great local restaurant. Staff is great. The food was cooked perfect.

I love this spot. My boyfriend’s parents retired down in fort meyers and when we went to visit last time, they took us here. We loved it, the food was absolutely stellar, local catch and locally made smoked fish dip. One of us got the soft shell crab sandwich and that was hands down the best soft shell crab I’ve ever had. Not to mention our server was so attentive and charming. I have a dairy allergy and the server was very accommodating and able to guide me knowledgeably through the menu. This was a great experience and I can’t wait to return the next time we visit.

Went to Blue Dog last night and it was the most disappointing meal we have had in a long time. We started with the Caprese and it was fabulous but it should be for $12.00. I had the fried shrimp and the wife had the yellowtail, which she has had many times, and both we terrible. The shrimp was over fried and dry and the yellow tail tasted as if it was frozen at some time. Also, the staff and the I think the owners spend a lot of time hanging out at the end of the bar and very little time making sure they are providing a good meal. Server was very attentive. Total for the meal was $90.00 with tip!! The worst and will not be going back.

Awesome place to eat. Very good seafood.

Great food and service. Outstanding restaurant, especially the softshell crab sandwich. Unbelievable. Highly recommended.

Great food, service and atmosphere. We had the mullet & grits and the shrimp roll plus a cup of clam chowder. All excellent. Chloe was our server. A+

Always amazing! Try the coconut crusted mahi!

I thoroughly enjoy dining at seafood establishments close to the ocean, and this one really nails it! Whether you're in the mood for an upscale dining experience or a laid-back lunch, this place has got you covered. I was in search of a pleasant restaurant to take my wife out to and felt confident this place was an excellent choice. From the attentive service to the inviting ambiance, it's a fantastic spot. It was clear this place was popular, with the parking being limited and nearly all spots taken during their busiest dinner hours. Opting for an outdoor table was a smart move, as the inside dining could get quite noisy during peak times. The Mahi portion on my tacos was truly remarkable. This is typical for a large sandwich or main course at most seafood eateries. My wife's coconut shrimp were enormous, likely the largest I've ever seen. The presentation of the food and the table settings were impressive, featuring nice large white plates and a white tablecloth that enhances the dining experience, which is rare in most local seafood eateries, yet still offers a relaxed outdoor setting to enjoy the scenery. In summary, this place ranks high on my list and I'm looking forward to returning and would definitely recommend it to anyone.

Delightful always a great experience their shrimp tacos are the best!

I love their tacos and the seafood pot pie. Also, their coleslaw is the best I've ever had.

The place is amazing. You just don't get great service like this anymore. Plus the food was delicious. It's hard to go a whole week without the She Crab Soup! (Served only Tuesday's)

Meal taken after a long drive from Tampa. Good service, very good meal. Easy parking nearby

Great place. Service was awesome and food was really good. I think thier AC was struggling the day we were there and that was the only downside.

This was the best food we’ve had in Florida in a long time! The gator bites were to die for and loved the margaritas. Lisa was amazing!

This was the best food we’ve had in Florida in a long time! The gator bites were to die for and loved the margaritas. Lisa was amazing!

Wow fantastic experience. Food was amazing. Phyllis was a fantastic server with great suggestions. Food was unbelievably tasty and big portions….. left completely full. Will def come back.

Wonderful local seafood. I had the ahi nachos and they were divine. Our waitress Kelcy was so sweet and my six year old daughter who is super shy was enamored with her. Great little restaurant.

Excellent seafood restaurant. Best shrimp and conch I've ever had A+A+

Fun hole in the wall restaurant on Pine Island. It took a while to get there because of traffic on the road in but it was worth it. We ate inside but there’s a nice patio out back on the creek. They serve beer but no liquor (we were hoping for a Rum Runner). The food was very good and the server was nice. We had cracked conch (deep fried and breaded) as an appetizer. It came with “Pine Island Sauce” which was amazing. We would have bought a bottle if they would have sold them. Reviews were mixed on the conch but I thought they were great. Two people got blackened hog snapper and both of us loved it. It came with a side of fries and mango sauce. Another person got coconut shrimp and that was a big plate and very tasty. Aside from the mixed reviews on the conch, everyone was really happy with the meals.

cheyenne was the best!! great service, great food, and great atmosphere!!

Get the she crab soup!!! I've tried to soup at a lot of places and this restaurant has beat them all. It's loaded with flavor and they don't go light on the crab meat. The staff are super friendly, helpful, and on top of it! The restaurant was clean along with the bathrooms. All the food was really good! Of you're near this place, you should probably stop to fill up!

Island life at its best food 😋 staff Mullet platter is worth a try

If I could give them 6 stars I would. Great atmosphere, Food is always amazing, fresh and great flavors.

Did not have a great experience at all. Staff was very rude to us. Won't be coming back

Never had a bad meal here! Everyone in the family is happy when we go to the Blue Dog for a meal!

Best tacos ever, and the margaritas were 🔥 too!! Definitely would recommend you come try this place, everything I saw coming out looked delicious 😋

Killer food, the waiter made us feel like we lived right down the road! Definitely recommended!

We have been to this restaurant twice already and we absolutely love it!!! The food is delicious and the service was great. We will definitely be returning. I recommend this place to anyone who has not visited it yet. We can’t wait to go back!!!!

This was a stop on our 2nd FL vacation (since 2023). We are from Ohio and visit family in FL - this restaurant has become a tradition on our last night in FL. The seafood is greatly liked by our family, while the kids and I like the chicken dishes and burgers. Excellent and friendly service, nice portions, food presented quite well. My son loves having a “B” put into his burger bun. The lime pie!! Cool atmosphere. Thanks again!

Lovely place with nice staff and great food!

Great food - Kelci was a great server!

I highly recommend the Hippie Burger and Key Lime Pie. We sat at the bar, and Jade was an excellent server. This is definitely a place that values friendliness and good food, just like their story says. They have a knack for combining flavors, like the goat cheese and jalapenos on the burger. I look forward to going back.

As is my luck, we found this place on our last day of vacation. I wish that I found it the first day of vacation because I wouldn’t have eaten anywhere else! Our server Tina was very sweet and provided us with excellent service despite us being a needy bunch. The drinks we ordered from the bar were delivered so promptly and they were strong. Highly recommend the Matlacha Vice, the TNT shrimp, and I had some kind of caramel pecan cheesecake that I went on to dream about for the next two days. I can’t wait to go back to this place!

Love all of the Fresh fish, specials and large portions

this place is great! susannah’s chicken is fantastic as well. you can’t go wrong with anything on the menu, it’s my new favorite food

Best restaurant in the state. Highly recommend TNT shrimp tacos.

While the look of the place is nothing spectacular, the food is exceptional. My family has gone many times and I have never had a bad meal. One of my favorites are the TNT tacos although I have them prepare it a little different with the sauces. They have huge portions of fish and are one of the few places that knows how to blacken fish. This is our go to seafood place.

Happy that this restaurant has come back. FANTASTIC food. Our server was wonderful.

The coconut shrimp was perfect. Their local dipping sauce was spot on. The beer was cold and refreshing on a hot Florida day. Our server Phyllis checked on us multiple times and she always had a smile. We finished with their Key Lime Pie. Choosing Blue Dog was an excellent choice. Looking forward to a return visit the next time we're in town.

Our favorite place to eat in Matlacha.

Our favorite restaurant. Always a great meal here.

Always a great time at Blue Dog year after year. One of our spots when we are down in this area. Best food and service around!

Great restaurant delicious food and fresh great service our waitress was Michelle she was awesome

Great! The service was excellent, everyone was very nice and helpful ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. The food was AMAZING 👏 👏 👏 we ordered the crab cakes, seafood shepherds pie, peel & eat shrimp, fried conch, the iconic patty melt and a key lime pie so we could taste a few different things. EVERY BITE was deliocious. The combination of hot, fresh, and well prepared meals, mixed with great staff and an island vibey atmosphere, made our 1st (and definitely not our last) trip to Blue Dog Bar & Grill an experience! Can't wait to go back!!

Typical local place,parking can be chaotic

Excellent food with big portions!

My brother in law treated us here tonight. Food is great.

We had lunch at Blue Dog yesterday April 24 and OMG it was amazing. Having lived here 7 years in Florida we’ve been to Blue Dog many times but never ate outside on their patio. Our server Karen Bacalla was certainly in her wheelhouse. Karen was serving multiple tables and personalizing everyone on the patio made it like a party atmosphere and nobody knew each other when we sat down. We felt like VIP’s 🥰 Our hats off to the chef, the peel & eat shrimp appetizer was huge and the old bay seasoning never disappointed. My coconut rum butter sauced mahi mahi with pina colada rice was absolutely the best very delicious. My husband had grouper bites to die for, Karen recommended that as well as the She crab soup and it’s a MUST have dish. Thank you Karen and Blue Dog for serving such wonderful dishes and having an amazing atmosphere 👍 we’ll be back for sure 👍🥰🌺.

Coconut shrimp wrap was chefs kiss

We finally got to have dinner here after never getting past Micheli’s. 😁 We were quickly seated on a busy Saturday. Our server was great, the atmosphere was great, and our food was delicious. Fried shrimp, mullet sandwich and key lime pie. We really enjoyed our visit and will definitely be back.

Great beer selection and excellent food. Sat outside and enjoyed the birds by the canel. Update, still awesome food and service. Daily specials are really good also.

Wonderful place. Ice cold pitchers of beer, with a cooler in it to keep beer cold. Delicious fresh grouper sandwiches and outstanding Conch Chowder. Friendly staff.

Always nice to see familiar faces when I go there... Everyone there also was enjoying there meal... Love it...

Great food choices. Pleasant staff.

Great spot in Matlacha! Fish sandwich is excellent.

Very nice little diner. Everything we tried had good flavor. First time trying mullet, which is locally caught according to their menu. Reasonably priced

A good place to have lunch in Matlacha. It can be a little hit or miss with the quality varying between good and very good. If the weather is nice it's fantastic to eat on their outside deck. There's a decent amount of parking at the restaurant but on a busy day it can be a challenge to find a place to park. Update 5 years later (original review 2018): Still an excellent choice for lunch or dinner if you're visiting Matlacha or Pine Island (or just want to drive over from Cape Coral or Ft. Myer). If you've never had mullet before, try their Mullet Sampler Platter. You'll be amazed. It's listed as a "Starter" on the menu but it's enough to be an entree, and every bite of it is delicious: smoked mullet dip, blackened mullet (incredible), and fried mullet.

I was really excited to try this place, as I’ve heard many good comments about their food. My husband and I were sat, and multiple people kept walking by looking at us without even greeting us or simply asking us what we wanted to drink, so we left after several minutes. Really disappointed as I had my eye on a few things I wanted to try and wanted to support a local business.

My burger was great, my fries were over cooked and like sticks, clam chowder was too thick with flour base. Didn't find any clams in the chowder. Wouldn't recommend that. Service was good. Atmosphere was fine.

Food was sub par. I ordered triple tail tacos. They were totally bland. The most boring taco ever!

Loved the local atmosphere. The Ahi nachos was a great twist to the norm. (Didn't last long.) The ultimate wedge salad was fresh, crisp and plenty of blue cheese dressing. The key lime pie for dessert had just enough tartness.

Great authentic Old Florida place to get fish. Efficient and friendly wait staff. Loved our server Lisa! Good food and good prices. Very creative menu.

Delicious food. 4 of us received excellent food and service. We will return.

The food is luxurious in this place, while we were waiting for the food, everything that happened looked very good. We didn't wait at all to get a table even though it was quite busy. We ordered wings to share and a fish with coconut sauce that was incredible. The beers are very original and very good. The site is highly recommended.

We had coconut shrimp, crab cake, TNT shrimp, cole slaw and fries. The coconut shrimp were served with a very good Pine Island sauce. The crab cakes were simply delicious. The TNT shrimp were large and juicy. We sat outside next to the water and mangroves. This is our favorite Pine Island area restaurant.

Nice waterfront restaurant with great food. The black bean soup was excellent.

There was a 5 to 15 min wait for a table. The food was excellent! They had fresh brewed tea.

We just ate lunch here upon recommendation of friends who are local. The hostess was so nice and welcoming on the phone and in person. And-Wow! Such a varied menu involving mostly seafood/fish. Our waitress was Tania and she was so efficient and friendly. She took time to talk about our mutual love for dogs (we had ours with us). The seafood shepherd’s pie was delicious and my husband had the Megan salad with grilled chicken, also tasty. I highly recommend this restaurant based on our experience.

We stopped here based on a recommendation. The menu offered a wide selection of fish dishes. Our food was really well prepared and extremely tasty. The service was nice and attentive. Our Pina Colada was really good too. This restaurant is definitely worth recommending.

Very delicious restaurant! My husband and I decided to try out the restaurant due to my husband driving by everyday for work. We enjoyed the TNT shrimp, and chicken tenders for an appetizer. Our 2 sons enjoyed baskets of fried shrimps with fries. My husband had a fried hogfish and I have scallops on a bed of buttered fettuccine. Everything was delicious and our server Tina was such a sweetheart. Definitely will be back!

We had the best server there! Thomas. He was awesome! He shared funny short stories about his life that went collaborated with our conversations together. He met all of our "expectations" Ha! My daughter got a classic burger and fries and said, "This is the best burger I've ever had!!" She's 11. I had the coconut 🥥 🍚 rice with the 🥥 coconut chicken 🐔. It was very coconutty but very, very delicious. My wife has the mahi mahi burger and was stuffed afterwards. She was flabbergasted at how good it was! Gramma got a bleu cheese burger and in her own words, "It was very good! I would give it a 10/10!!!" It was her first time there and you can see what she thought of the food. The whole place was just a fun community restaurant that was very busy. Probably because so many were there for the delicious 😋 🤤 food! They even had a paper at the tables for you to read about how their business came to be and about their goals as a business. You can tell that this place works hard for their business to be successful. Something that all 4 thought was really fun at the restaurant was their table cloths. You may 🤔 think it's weird, but we have a good reason; The table cloths were paper. So, we whipped out our pens and drew on the table while we waited for our food to get to us. My daughter even wrote on the table that she was going to leave a review on Google and a good one. She also left a very kind note to our server, Thomas, who was amazing! I would 1,000,000,000% recommend!!!

The Blue dog came highly recommended. I was told to expect a wait for a table and expect a beach atmosphere. The staff were friendly the food I tasted was top-notch. I didn't even have the long wait I was told to expect only about 10 min. I will be eating here again!

The stone crab claws were great ..maybe a tad overpriced but I don't know what wholesale vs retail are for them. My seafood Shepards pie was just ok. It had a lot of seafood but really not much taste. Maybe if it came with a side of bread or something. The service was great. The atmosphere is great. Maybe I'll try something different next time...if there's a next time.

This is one of the best places in the area to get fresh Gulf seafood. They have a great selection of local beer on tap and salty atmosphere. I usually get the cracked conch, which is delicious. However, I tried something new this time, seafood shepard pie. It changed my life! Before I left half the bar was eating it.

Had the Vice soup...1/2 conch chowder & 1/2 clam chowder...was absolutely fabulous. Would go back for this dish alone!

Had a delicious dinner here with fantastic service. Worth the drive and wait to dine here. Mullet sampler and the custom pasta with shrimp was fresh and flavorful (loved the smoked dip).

This place is great. Good food friendly service nice Atmosphere.

11/10 recommend. Great food and great service.

Great place to stop by for a great meal. I had the smoked ruben on special and it was one of the best sandwiches ive had. Homemade coleslaw is really delicious. But i tried a burger and it was like biting into my first burger ive had it was tooo amazing i wish i lived closer to the blue dog because if your looking for an amazing place as a go to look no further this is the place 10/10

The Blue Dog is our favorite place to eat. They have the best food and service. The TNT Shrimp and Tuna Nachos are amazing. The bartenders are awesome.

Terry Brooks would always ask the waitress after a great experience and meal, "do you know what was better than the food? The service. "

Tina was our waitress. She was cheerful and efficient. As a table we ordered the Blackened Mahi sandwich and Cole slaw, Fried Shrimp and Fries, Coconut Shrimp and Veggies with a salad, And peel and eat Shrimp. The Shrimp were large and tender and the Mahi was very tasty also. Thanks for the experience Blue Dog

The chicken wings were very good

Great prices for fresh seafood and big portions.

My favorite restaurant in all of Lee and Charlotte counties. I make it a point to visit every time I visit Florida. The food and key lime pie is to die for!

My favorite dish, Grouper-Matlacha

Had an amazing lunch here today. Great food, funky vibe, and glad to be able to support a local place rebuilding after the hurricane. Faves were the grouper sandwich, crab cakes, shrimp and grits, and especially the key lime pie.

This hands down is the best place in South West Florida! Tania our waitress was outstanding! We had a little wait but well worth it! The tnt shrimp was so fresh and tasty. The homemade key lime pie....well best I have had in a long time! Worth the trip!

If you are visiting Pine Island, the Blue Dog is a must!

Love this place! Always excellent food, good service and quaint island decor/feel. The crab cakes and wedge salad are always my go-tos. Wonder if they’ve changed the recipe or purchaser for the blue cheese dressing, however.

Great stop on the way to pine Island last bar to survive Hurricane Ian.

Great food, friendly service. I highly recommend.

Our server Courtney was amazing very informative. She knew all about the fish we were eating. We will definitely be coming back.

Perfect food every time , going through the menu each time we go doesn’t matter what I get it is awesome food

Fantastic atmosphere even better food and staff

Loved (D) the Blue Dog until I was unfortunately, served by the "owner" (go figure?!) ...been dragging my husband for the ride out to Blue Dog for the Hippie Chick sandwich and Blue Hawaiian draft beer ...for like ever ...and never realized it was grilled! Was ALWAYS asked by the server how I wanted my chicken and always requested fried ---like any good chicken tender should be ....or maybe too much Island Life?! .... but was served my chicken tenders grilled, and they were overdone and dry. .. .. I requested the lunch to be as I'm accustomed to ... "awesome!" ... and I guess the owner had a real problem with my request, and could not at least hide his aggravation! So sad 😞 but I guess I can stay now in St. James City and Froggys where everyone is treated with respect!! Maybe it's time to hire a FUN and Loving manager! Been in the business my whole life and I would NEVER disrespect the owners I worked for like the treatment I just experienced... bummer 😢

My mother and I stopped here when we went over to Pine Island for a late lunch. I am so glad we decided to have lunch here. The food was amazing! We had their special that day of Seafood Shepherd's Pie and their freshly made Key Lime pie. The entree was enough for us to share between us. Both were delicious!!! If you have an opportunity to stop here for a meal do, you won't be disappointed

It's the Dog. We just love it. Best menu, best food, best service. I would eat there everyday but they are closed 2.