Updated: October 2026
Mar Vista Dockside Restaurant sits on the north end of Longboat Key, just over the bridge from Anna Maria Island. Century-old buttonwood trees still shade the patio, and two rows of sea grape trees still arch over eachother. Both made it through the 2024 hurricanes. The property has weathered even more than that, including a major hurricane in 1921, years as a rooming house, and decades as a scrappy bait shop and fishermen’s bar before it became the waterfront restaurant it is today.
Built to Last
Beginning around 1912, developer Rufus Jordan used a block-making machine to build many of the early homes in the Longbeach community on the north end of Longboat Key. The historic Rufus P. Jordan House, which still stands on the Mar Vista property, was one of the rusticated concrete-block structures associated with Jordan’s early development of Longbeach. When a major hurricane hit in 1921 and destroyed the docks and most of the dwellings on the key, the Jordan House survived. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
From Rental Rooms to a Fish Camp
In 1940, the property sold to Wayne Sipes, a relative of the Jordans, and his wife. By 1942, they had turned the house into five rental apartments. Ownership changed again in 1947, when business partners Captain Don Nimmo and Ray Smith purchased the site and built the Pub Cocktail Lounge where the restaurant stands today. They ran it as a fish camp, selling bait, tackle, and cold beer, while the former Jordan House likely provided lodging for visiting fishermen. Over the years, dollar bills left by regulars covered the ceiling and walls. Every few years, once the walls filled up, staff took the bills down and donated the money to charity.
In 1950, Charlotte and Edward Sibole bought the property. They added a room to the Pub and moved the bait shop, and the place soon became one of the most popular watering holes on the key.
The Chiles Era
Ed Chiles purchased Mar Vista in 1989, a decade after he, his father, and two partners bought the Sandbar on Anna Maria Island. He kept the Old Florida feel, and the old bait shop bones stuck around for years.
I remember walking through the large wooden exterior door with its porthole window, straight into the gift shop, where I picked up more than a few beer cozies over the years. You carried your purchases up to the bar, and the bartender rang you up right there. The only other way in was a flimsy back door next to the aquarium.
Between 2016 and 2019, Mar Vista underwent a $2 million renovation that expanded the kitchen, redid the interior, added a second story for offices and storage, and created a few more seats under the trees. The buttonwood trees stayed, and so did the laid-back dockside feel. Regulars like me, who had been coming for thirty years, still recognized the place.
Mar Vista Today
In 2024, Mar Vista was sold, along with Sandbar Seafood and Spirits and Beach House Waterfront Restaurant, to Beachside Hospitality Group, a Pinellas County-based restaurant company making its first move into the Manatee County dining scene. I cover more of the ownership change, along with Sandbar’s own history, in my Sandbar Seafood & Spirits History on Anna Maria Island: My Insider Guide.
Mar Vista also earns a spot among the island’s best date night options in my Most Romantic Restaurants on Anna Maria Island: My Insider Guide, especially for anyone arriving by boat. The dock has fourteen slips along with ice and dockside service for boaters pulling in for a meal.
What to Order
My long-running order here is the Mar Vista tater tots and I was ordering them long before Brussels sprouts ever showed up on the menu. The bacon-wrapped scallops used to be a staple of mine too, though they have since been retired. The blackened grouper sandwich has earned a permanent spot in my rotation instead. If a good fish sandwich is what you’re after, my Best Fish Sandwich on Anna Maria Island: My Insider Guide covers the best spots around the island.
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Coastal Close
A building does not survive a 1921 hurricane, five decades as a rental property and fish camp, and a century of Gulf Coast weather by accident. Mar Vista’s staying power comes from the same thing that makes it worth a visit today: a genuine sense of place that no renovation has managed to erase.
— izzy