Cotton candy cocktails, bourbon burgers and Gulf seafood on the menu at Beach House Social

Navarre’s Beach House Social has become the restaurant to watch for its cotton-candy cocktails, bourbon burgers, beer towers, seared grouper, shishitos and Gulf of Mexico sunsets.

What was formerly the Beach House Bar and Grill at 8375 Gulf Blvd., connected to Springhill Suites Resort, has been transformed into an elevated dining destination. Executive Chef Kara Mardell was brought on board for a two-year long transformation. No longer would it be the hotel beach bar it had been known as, but a community gathering place for an elevated dining experience with culinary excellence.

The classy coastal decor greets diners with wicker chairs, brown leather high tops and sea glass-green water glasses. Plus, you don’t have to sit on the patio to see the sun setting from your table thanks to the dining room’s abundance of windows. When the sun does go down, the dim dining room lights kick in, and the shell-shaped lanterns light the dining room aglow.

“The way we want to come across to our community is approachable. With this new program, we want to bring elevated and approachable together,” said Carissa Jones, the Beach House Social director of food and beverage.

This will come down to prioritizing ingredients, which will leave the restaurant without a frozen fish or margarita mix in sight.

“It has gravitated toward a more local profiling using ingredients that are found and more familiar to this area. I try to keep it as close to home as I possibly can,” Mardell said. “Other than that, refocusing our efforts in our butchering program…being able to tell our guests, ‘This is what’s in this.’ We don’t want to mask anything, we want it to be really highlighted.”

While developing the new menu, Mardell has drawn influences from all over, some being the Gulf that serves as the restaurant’s backyard, but also her childhood in New Mexico. The pork belly appetizer especially, which comes with a plate of crispy pork belly with adobo bourbon glaze, hominy, poblano and charred corn.

“There are flavors that are really close to home, because that one is a dish of flavors that I grew up on as a child,” she said.

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Her worlds collide through dishes like the half chicken with Mezcal achiote glaze or the chili spiked mayo on the tuna tempura.

“You will see it in those darker, smokier flavors but then also highlighting the seafood we have here,” she said.

Every sauce is expertly crafted with complex flavors that make you want to get every last drop, like the homemade bacon beer broth that bathes the mussels, or the creamy chili lime aioli paired with melt-in-your-mouth fried shishito peppers.

Although her menu is full of exciting flavor surprises, there are still a handful of simply prepared prime steaks served with potatoes, asparagus and sauce for all the “meat and potatoes” people out there, she assured.

But it will be a place you can find something new if you are seeking it.

“I would honestly say it’s a modern elevated cuisine… I don’t like putting myself in a box,” she said. “It allows me to change. I don’t like to be bored, my team doesn’t like to be bored. So being able to play with the flavors that we’re interested in, the flavors that we want to explore more.”

The cocktails were created to complement the dynamic flavors of Mardell’s menu, whether it be the sultry smoked chili bitters in the Twist on An Old Fashioned or the bright and tangy blend of the yuzu, lime, agave blend in the Silent Smoke.

“We teamwork with our kitchen to make sure we have cocktails that match our food that’s going out,” Jones said. “You can’t get much more fresh than what we have.”

More updates and information can be found on the Beach House Social website and social media pages.

For any tips on restaurant news in Escambia or Santa Rosa County, send an email to Brittany Misencik at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Beach House Social opens in Navarre for elevated dining