by The Great Foodini

I have a tradition in my family. On anyone’s birthday, the birthday boy or girl goes out to eat at a local restaurant. Anyplace nearby is game. My wife wanted to try the new place on restaurant row in Biloxi on the beach called Lucy’s retired surfer bar and restaurant.

I have to say, I was surprised by her choice because typically she would have picked Mexican, but since we just came back from the Caribbean, I think she was trying to hold on to that Island feel.

First of all, this open-air restaurant definitely had a Caribbean vibe to it and when I looked up the other locations, I found that there are two other restaurants in this franchise located in Key West and Aruba.

The menu was fun and playful with exciting items like chipotle pork sliders with a tropical twist and their rip curl calamari, which is tossed in a thai sweet chili sauce that is made in house.

Six different type of fresh tacos like the blackened fish tacos, the pao pao shrimp, pork carnitas, dragon tuna taco, a marinated flank steak taco that has a bit of a kick to it and then your classic taco. This tropical diner has multiple burgers and chicken burgers done different ways, several tasty salad options with huge marinated shrimp on them. Now, I am glossing over all of this because a.) I either didn’t try them and count vouch for their quality or b.) I just didn’t have room after the huge surfin’ shrimp salad that I had, but I was in a central location in the restaurant and the look and smell of most of these dishes give me enough faith in them to recommend this place.

Now I said all of that to get to this. Go try it out, if anything the food is good, the place is fun, they have live music and beautiful sunsets, yada yada.

Their drink menu is …as the kids used to say…. Off the chain. They take liberty with multiple rum-based and Margaritaville-based tropical concoctions that would even make Mr. Buffet want to make this a regular stop.

What I saw on the menu stopped me in my tracks. It was new and fresh. It was something I had never seen before and never would have even thought of it. It was a tequila-soaked scorpion at the bottom of a tequila shot. Folks, I have never seen a scorpion and had the inclinations to eat it, but on this fateful day. I ordered one…you know…for the article. Since birthday girl was sitting next to me, I decided to force her to do a tequila worm shot. Nearly the entire table did after I made a big deal about it.

I had a phobia of it coming alive and crawling back up my throat so I crunched mine up to everyone’s dismay. If you decided to be brave enough, you get a free t-shirt if you do the “adventure” shots and you get bragging rights. For me, more importantly, I have something fun to write about.