This iconic Coast restaurant has popular breakfast, lunch and dinner. Here’s my review.
When I think of Harbor View Cafe, my mind is transported to my sophomore year of high school.
I had just gotten my driver’s license and my mom had fixed up her 1997 Ford Taurus, which I named Grandma, to have as my first car. It was 2004, and my friends and I would look for any excuse to ride the beach from Bay St. Louis to Ocean Springs and back.
A lot of times, we wouldn’t make it past Edgewater Mall. But I always remembered the Harbor View Cafe on the beach. It had a green awning, if I remember correctly, and the quaint front porch was always full of people. Domino’s Pizza was in the same building.
Hurricane Katrina took the original Harbor View location. The new restaurant on Jeff Davis Avenue welcomes people to downtown Long Beach.
The building is sprawling and has a wraparound porch for al fresco dining, which is perfect for the fall in South Mississippi. There’s also lots of indoor seating and a bar inside.
The menu is large and unique. There are Coast classics like po-boys and platters, but there are unique menu items and sandwiches too, like the surf and turf Philly cheesesteak that comes with grilled, fried or blackened shrimp. The key lime salad is topped with grapes, pineapples, raisins and tortilla strips.
Weekend breakfast is also wildly popular at Harbor View, and they offer build your own omelets plus a variety of other staple dishes perfect for early mornings or Sunday brunch.
I had lunch inside Thursday and tried their Gouda mac and cheese bites and the Malibu sandwich that layers grilled chicken, smoked ham, Swiss and pineapple on a sweet bun.
The mac and cheese bites were creamy and smoky, and the house-made ranch cooled them down. The sandwich was the perfect combination of sweet and salty. I like pineapple on my pizza, so I knew having it on a chicken sandwich would be amazing, too.
The server recommended I get my side of fries cajun style. The crispy potatoes came tossed in a seasoning blend that hit all the right notes. I had never had cajun fries like this before, and I would get them again.
The best part of the Harbor View experience was watching how the front-of-the-house staff worked together. By 11:30, almost every table was full and my server was slammed. Other workers helped her and kept my drink full and took my credit card when it was time to pay.. I love to see that kind of camaraderie at a restaurant.
If you go to Harbor View Cafe
Address: 504 Jeff Davis Ave.
Phone: 228-867-8949
Hours: Monday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday to Friday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
This story was originally published October 21, 2022 at 7:30 AM.
