Where to Eat on Singer Island and in Riviera Beach

01How the island likes to eat

Singer Island does not dress up its food, and that is the first thing to understand about eating here. It is a barrier island wrapped in marinas, inlet water and open beach, and the cooking follows the geography without much argument — fresh fish off the local boats, a raw bar, something cold to drink, and a table close enough to the water that you can watch it change color while you eat. You can eat well all week without ever putting on shoes that were not made for sand, and on the nights you want something more polished, Palm Beach and West Palm Beach are a short bridge away.

The island has two shores, and its food splits neatly between them. The ocean side, facing the Atlantic, is the beach-bar side: sand, surf, sunscreen, and fish eaten in a swimsuit. The other side faces the Intracoastal Waterway and the Palm Beach Inlet, where the marinas sit and the sport-fishing boats run in and out — that is the sunset side, where dinner comes with a working waterfront for a view. Knowing which water you are facing tells you most of what a place will be like before you ever open the menu.

This guide keeps close to home before it wanders. It starts with the beachfront and marina places you can reach in a few minutes from the residence, then the resort's own restaurant one floor below, then the handful of tables worth a short drive for a night that matters. It also makes the case, more than once, for simply staying in — because the residence kitchen is a real one, and some of the best meals of a Singer Island week happen on the balcony with a piece of fish you cooked yourself and the Atlantic doing its thing twelve floors down.

How to think about it

It helps to sort the island's tables by occasion rather than by cuisine, because that is how you will use them across a week.

• For a first night, keep the logistics near zero: casual seafood a few minutes away, or the resort restaurant one elevator ride down.
• For a sunset, aim for the marina and the inlet, where the light on the water and the boats coming through do half the work for the kitchen.
• For a real occasion, save the drive and cross the bridge — the county's serious dining lives over there, and it has its own Palm Beach dining guide.
• For a quiet night, shop in the afternoon and cook; the kitchen upstairs beats most reservations for view alone.

One honest note on timing runs through everything below. The Palm Beaches are busiest from late fall through spring, and the best waterfront seats go early in that stretch. Reserve where you can, treat a Friday or Saturday sunset table as something to plan rather than assume, and keep the beach-bar lunches spontaneous, since those rarely need a booking any time of year. Do that and the island feeds you generously from the first afternoon to the last.

A last word before the tables themselves. Do not try to eat your way through every place on this list in a single trip; the island rewards a slower hand than that. A good week here has a shape to it — a couple of long beach lunches, one sunset that everyone remembers, a nicer night for whatever you are celebrating, and several unhurried dinners cooked at home. Pace it that way and each meal gets to be its own thing rather than one more box checked, which is exactly how a place this easygoing wants to be eaten.

02Toes-in-the-sand casual

The most Singer Island meal there is happens with sand underfoot and a grilled or fried piece of fish in front of you, no reservation and no plan. The anchor of that scene sits on the ocean side at the island's Municipal Beach, in the cluster locals call the Ocean Mall.

Johnny Longboats

Johnny Longboats is the beachfront institution here — right on the sand at the Municipal Beach, with indoor and outdoor seating, a busy central bar, and exactly the menu you want a few steps from the ocean. Order the raw oysters, a mahi sandwich, a basket of something fried, and a cold drink, and settle in. On the right afternoon there is live music spilling out over the beach, and the room runs loud in the best way. It is family-friendly and easygoing by day, and it turns into a genuine scene as the sun drops and the after-beach crowd arrives. If you land on the island with no plan and a hungry group, this is the first stop that reminds everyone they are on vacation.

The rest of the casual cluster

• The Ocean Mall stretch around Johnny Longboats carries additional casual bites, ice cream and beach-bar energy, so you can graze without committing to a sit-down meal.
• Because it sits on the public Municipal Beach, parking gets tight on weekends and in high season. From the residence it is a short enough hop that a rideshare or a bike beats circling for a space.
• Bring a little cash for the beach, keep the sunscreen on, and do not expect a hushed, quiet room — this is the loud, happy end of the island's dining, and that is the whole point of it.
• Go with the day's catch when you can. A beach kitchen this close to the water does its best work on whatever fish came in that morning, and the fried baskets and sandwiches are honest without pretending to be more.

Making a day of it

The trick with a toes-in-the-sand lunch is to not treat it as just lunch. Come mid-morning while the beach is still easy, claim a table with a view, and let the meal anchor a slow afternoon of swimming and sitting. Kids can run between the sand and the table; the adults can hold a spot at the bar. Because nothing here needs booking, you can stretch it as long as the day wants to go, and the kitchen keeps sending out cold drinks and fried shrimp the whole time.

What makes this category work is the total lack of ceremony. You do not need a reservation for a beach lunch, you do not need to change out of a swimsuit, and the food is exactly as good as it needs to be with the ocean that close. Order the local fish, take a seat where you can see the water, and let a long lunch drift into a longer afternoon. For the beaches themselves — and which stretch of sand pairs best with which lunch — the Singer Island beaches guide lays out the options, and the raw-bar side of all this gets its own treatment in the waterfront seafood guide.

03Sunset on the marina and the inlet

Cross to the other side of the island and the mood shifts. Here the land faces the Intracoastal and the Palm Beach Inlet, and this is where Singer Island does its best sunsets. The water is busy with boats running in and out of the inlet, the light turns gold and then pink across the marina, and the seafood arrives more or less straight off the dock. This is the side to aim for when dinner is the event and the view is the reason.

Sailfish Marina Resort

Sailfish Marina is the classic of the category. It sits on the inlet with tables looking out over a working sport-fishing marina, the boats tied up in rows and the water passing just beyond. You come here to watch the fleet come in, to eat simply prepared local fish, and to catch a sunset that regulars will argue is among the best in the county. There is a low-key, old-Florida feeling to the place that the newer spots cannot manufacture — weathered dock boards, pelicans working the pilings, a captain hosing down a boat while you eat. On weekends it fills for exactly that reason, so plan your arrival around the light and expect company at the rail.

Rafiki-Tiki and the marina scene

• Rafiki-Tiki brings the fun, tiki-bar side of marina dining — fresh seafood and easy local flavors with a view of the boats and a drink built for warm weather. It is the more casual, feet-up counterpart to Sailfish, good for a relaxed evening that does not need a reservation to work.
• The wider marina district around Riviera Beach carries a cluster of waterfront options within a short distance of each other, which makes it easy to wander and choose by mood rather than lock in a single plan before you leave.

Reading the inlet

Part of the pleasure of eating on this side is that the inlet is never still. Sport-fishing boats head out before dawn and come back in the late afternoon, often right around dinner, which is why an early-evening table doubles as a show. You will see the day's catch coming off the boats, charter crews cleaning fish at the dock, and now and then a dolphin or a manatee working the calmer water. Bring a light layer even in summer, because the breeze off the inlet picks up as the sun drops and the temperature falls with it.

The move here is to build the evening around the sun: find out roughly when it sets, aim to be seated forty minutes ahead, and let dinner run long as the light goes. These places are casual in the way the whole island is casual, so there is no dress code to speak of — resort-casual, a cover-up over a swimsuit, sandals, all fine. What they ask of you is timing, not formality. If the water pulls at you beyond dinner, the same marinas are where you push off for a charter, a sunset cruise, or the short hop out to Peanut Island — the boating and fishing guide covers all of that, and the waterfront seafood guide goes deeper on the fish.

04Dining without leaving the building

Some nights you do not want to go anywhere at all, and on Singer Island you do not have to. The resort directly below the residence keeps its own dining, which means a good meal can be an elevator ride instead of a drive — no car, no parking, no plan beyond deciding to go down.

TULA Oceanfront

The one to know is TULA Oceanfront, the resort's own restaurant, which leans plant-forward — a vegetarian and vegan kitchen that fits the wellness spirit of the place. Even committed carnivores tend to find it a good change of pace: bright, produce-driven cooking, an oceanfront room, and a menu that pairs naturally with a day spent in the spa or by the pool. If you have just come up from an afternoon in the hydrothermal circuit, a light, plant-forward dinner a few steps away is close to the ideal ending — you keep the calm you built downstairs instead of trading it for a car ride and a wait for a table.

Why on-property earns its place

• Zero logistics. No car, no rideshare, no parking search — useful on an arrival night, or after a long beach day with children who are running low.
• It fits the rhythm. A resort built around wellness has food that supports it, which is a welcome counterweight to a week of fried fish and marina cocktails. A night of vegetables and clean cooking resets the palate.
• Weather-proof. When a summer storm rolls through in the late afternoon, as it does here, downstairs is a very civilized place to wait it out.
• Easy on mixed groups. Vegetarians and vegans, who can struggle at the seafood houses, eat first-class here for once, which makes it a fair choice when the group's diets do not line up.

Folding it into a wellness day

TULA makes the most sense as the last stop in a slow, restorative day rather than a destination you drive to. A natural version runs like this: a morning on the private beach, a couple of hours moving through the spa's hot and cold stations in the early afternoon, a quiet hour on the terrace, and then dinner downstairs as the light goes. You never touch a car, you never leave the property, and the whole day keeps a single unhurried tempo from the first coffee to the last plate.

It also solves the arrival-night problem better than almost anything. After a flight and the drive in from the airport, the last thing most people want is to reorganize into a night out. Dropping bags, taking the elevator down, and eating a light dinner with the ocean in the window is a gentle way to start a stay — and it leaves the marina sunsets and the drive across the bridge for the nights you have the energy to enjoy them properly. None of this is meant to keep you in the building; it is just good to know the fallback is a real restaurant with a point of view, closer than any other table on this list. On a longer stay, one plant-forward dinner downstairs, dropped in between the bigger nights out, tends to feel less like a compromise and more like a relief.

The island keeps its food honest. A grouper sandwich with your feet in the sand and the surf a few yards off is not trying to impress you; it just tastes like where you are.

On eating around Singer Island

05A nicer night out on the island

When you want to mark an occasion without crossing the bridge, Singer Island still has a card to play. The island's larger beach resorts carry restaurants that aim higher than the beach-bar category, with contemporary coastal cooking and rooms designed for a proper dinner rather than a post-swim snack.

ONA Coastal Cuisine

ONA Coastal Cuisine, at the Palm Beach Marriott Singer Island, is the standout in this bracket — contemporary coastal food built on fresh, local ingredients with subtle Mediterranean touches. It is the kind of place that works for an anniversary dinner, a night you want a tablecloth and a real wine list, or simply a change from paper napkins and a plastic cup. The setting keeps the ocean close, so you get the view without giving up the polish, and the cooking has more ambition than the fried-fish standard while staying true to the coast it sits on. Reserve ahead in the busy months; a room like this fills on weekend nights, and it is not the sort of place you want to gamble on a walk-in.

Reading the island's range

• Casual by day, elevated by night is the island's general pattern. The same stretch of sand that hosts a beach-bar lunch often has a dressier option a short walk away inside a resort.
• Resort dining rooms are where the island keeps most of its ambition — the freestanding fine-dining scene is thinner here than across the bridge, so the nicer hotels carry that load.
• For a big-name chef or a true special-occasion room, the depth is in Palm Beach and West Palm Beach, twenty minutes south, which is its own guide.

Getting it right

A nicer night on the island still runs relaxed by big-city standards. Resort-casual is almost always enough — a collared shirt, a sundress, closed shoes if you like, but nobody is turning away a well-put-together look that skips the jacket. What matters more than dress is timing and booking. In the winter high season the good tables at the resort restaurants go early, and a Saturday without a reservation is a gamble. In summer and the shoulder months it loosens up considerably, and you can often get a fine table on short notice.

The honest framing is worth keeping in mind so you plan the right nights in the right places. Singer Island is a casual, seafood-forward island, and its best trick is a beautiful, unfussy meal by the water. When you want white-tablecloth ambition and a long tasting menu, plan to drive a little. When you want the ocean, a good glass of wine and an excellent piece of fish without the fuss, a place like ONA has you covered, and you are home in ten minutes. Think of the island's one or two elevated rooms as the place to celebrate something local — the last night of a trip, a birthday that falls mid-stay — and save the longer, dressier expeditions for Palm Beach when you have both the occasion and the appetite for the trip. Between the two, most weeks have room for one of each, and keeping them a few nights apart stops either from feeling like an obligation rather than a treat.

06Seafood, raw bars and the local catch

This is a fishing coast, and the menus never let you forget it. Half the pleasure of eating around here is knowing what to order and when, so that you are eating what came off the local boats rather than what could have come from anywhere.

What to order

• Local fish: mahi-mahi, grouper, snapper and swordfish turn up fresh and are hard to beat simply grilled or blackened. When a place lists a local catch of the day, that is usually the smart order.
• Stone crab: a true Florida specialty with a defined season, running roughly from mid-October to early May. When it is in, order the claws — sweet, served cold with mustard sauce, and a genuine regional treat you cannot get most of the year.
• Raw bar: oysters, peel-and-eat shrimp and ceviche are everywhere and rarely a mistake on a hot afternoon. A dozen oysters and a cold drink is a whole light lunch on its own.
• The classic fish sandwich: grouper or mahi, grilled or fried, is the standard order at nearly every casual spot here for a reason. It travels well from beach bar to marina and rarely disappoints.

Where to find it

Beyond the anchors already covered, the wider Singer Island and Riviera Beach area carries a cluster of dependable seafood and waterfront spots. A few names come up again and again with locals: The Catch Seafood and Sushi, which pairs a seafood menu with a sushi bar; Frigate's Waterfront, a long-running waterfront fish house; and the Buccaneer, another local seafood standby. Menus and hours shift with the season, so a quick check before you set out is worth the minute, but the through-line holds: fresh fish, water views, and an unpretentious welcome.

Fish you catch yourself

If eating the catch makes you want to catch it, the marinas run charters for exactly that, and several waterfront kitchens will happily cook what a captain helps you land — a hook-it-and-we-cook-it arrangement that turns a morning offshore into that night's dinner. It is one of the more satisfying loops a stay here offers: out through the inlet at dawn, back with a cooler of mahi, and a table that afternoon that sears what you caught.

Eating with the season

The single most useful thing to know about seafood here is that it runs on a calendar. Stone crab has that firm mid-October to early-May window, and the difference between a claw pulled in season and one sitting frozen out of it is night and day — if you are here in the cooler months, do not miss it. Other local fish run more year-round but still have their better and worse stretches, so trusting the catch of the day over a fixed menu favorite usually rewards you. It also pays to ask a simple question: is the fish local? The honest kitchens will tell you straight, and the good ones are proud to. Florida takes its fisheries seriously, with seasons and limits meant to keep the stocks healthy, and ordering what is in season is both the better meal and the better citizen's choice. The waterfront seafood guide goes deeper on the catch and the seasons, and the boating and fishing guide covers getting out there yourself.

07When to cross the bridge

Singer Island handles the casual end beautifully, but the Palm Beaches proper — a twenty-minute drive south — are where the county keeps its serious dining, its nightlife and its real variety. It is worth knowing when the crossing earns the trip and when the island already has what you want.

The three destinations

• Worth Avenue, Palm Beach: refined, old-money lunches and a handful of storied institutions, best paired with a morning of window-shopping the vias — the little courtyard alleys of small shops off the main avenue.
• Clematis Street, West Palm Beach: the walkable social spine, with bars, cafes, live music and boutiques packed into a few blocks. It is the place to go when you want a night with some energy and the option to wander from dinner to a drink to music without moving the car.
• Rosemary Square, West Palm Beach: an open-air district of restaurants and shops, easy and central, good for a group that cannot agree on a single cuisine and would rather decide once they are standing in front of the options.

Getting there and back

The drive is short and the roads are simple, so a car makes this easy; if you would rather not drive after a glass of wine, rideshare covers the round trip comfortably and is widely available on both sides of the bridge. Parking is straightforward at Rosemary Square and along Clematis, a little more of a hunt on Worth Avenue in season. Crossing the bridge also pairs naturally with a cultural evening — a show at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, or an Art After Dark Friday at the Norton Museum — so dinner becomes half of a bigger night rather than the whole of it.

When it is worth it

A simple rule keeps the decision easy. Cross the bridge when the meal is the main event — a milestone dinner, a night out with friends who want a scene, a craving for a cuisine the island does not really do. Stay on the island when the water is the main event and you just want to eat well beside it. Most weeks have room for a couple of crossings and plenty of nights that never leave Singer Island, and the mix is what keeps a stay from tipping into either too much driving or too much of the same three beach bars.

There is also a seasonal wrinkle worth noting. Palm Beach's social season peaks in winter, and the best-known rooms over there book up further ahead than anything on the island does. If a specific Palm Beach restaurant is on your list for a winter trip, treat it like a ticket and reserve early — sometimes weeks out for a weekend. The island's casual spots forgive a last-minute plan; the bridge's marquee tables, in February, do not. Cross for the occasion, eat somewhere the island cannot match, and let Singer Island stay the quiet place you come home to afterward. The bridge is short enough that even a spur-of-the-moment crossing for dinner is no great expedition, so keep it in your pocket for the night nothing on the island quite fits the mood. The full run-down of tables over there, by cuisine and by occasion, lives in the Palm Beach dining guide.

08The best table might be your own

It would be a mistake to write a dining guide for this residence and skip the kitchen, because it is one of the best places to eat on the whole island — and it comes with a twelfth-floor ocean view that no restaurant on this list can match.

A kitchen worth cooking in

The residence carries a full Miele appliance suite and an island with room for eight, which turns cooking in from a chore into the evening's event. A simple plan works beautifully here: pick up a piece of local fish in the afternoon, a few vegetables, a good loaf, something cold to drink, and cook it as the sun goes down with the balcony sliders open. On the nights the sea breeze is right, dinner out on the balcony beats any reservation you could have made — the same fish you would order at the marina, at your own pace, with the whole Atlantic in front of you and nobody rushing the table.

Provisioning made easy

• Groceries: Publix and Whole Foods are both a short drive away, and grocery delivery reaches the residence if you would rather skip the store altogether and have it all waiting.
• The catch: a good seafood counter or fish market means you can cook exactly what you would have ordered out — ask what came in that morning and build the meal around it.
• Mornings: stock coffee and breakfast basics on day one and the whole week runs smoother; there is nothing worse than a first morning with no coffee in the house.
• The island for eight: the kitchen is built for a group, so a family or a couple of couples can cook together instead of squeezing around a restaurant table.

Easy meals that suit the place

You do not need to be ambitious to eat well up here; the setting does the heavy lifting. A few meals suit a beach kitchen almost perfectly:

• A grilled-fish night: local mahi or snapper, a simple salad, some good bread, and whatever is in season on the side. Fifteen minutes of actual cooking, and the balcony does the rest.
• A raw-bar night in: a dozen oysters or a pound of peel-and-eat shrimp from the counter, a bowl of ceviche, and a cold drink, spread across the island while everyone picks.
• A stone-crab night in the cooler months: claws are sold cooked and cold, so the cooking is really just cracking and a bowl of mustard sauce — the easiest special meal there is.
• A slow breakfast: coffee going, eggs on, the doors open to the ocean before the beach fills. It is the meal the balcony was made for.

There is a full provisioning and breakfast guide for the details — where to shop, what to have delivered, and how to set the kitchen up for an easy week. Think of dining in not as the fallback for a tired night but as one of the genuine highlights of the stay: your table, your timing, your music, and the best view in the building. Most people who cook one dinner up here end up cooking a few more.

09Reservations, timing and the seasons

A little planning goes a long way in the Palm Beaches, where demand swings hard with the calendar and the best waterfront seats are a limited resource. A few practical notes keep the good tables from slipping away.

The season sets the rules

• Winter, roughly November through April, is the social high season. Restaurants are busy, the best waterfront tables book up, and a walk-in at a popular spot on a Saturday sunset is optimistic. Reserve ahead, and the further ahead the better for the marquee places.
• Summer and the shoulder months are far easier, with more room at the bar and shorter waits. It is one of the quiet upsides of visiting off-peak, and September is about as calm as the island gets.

Timing and dress

• Chase the sunset. For the marina and inlet spots, the seat you want faces west about forty minutes before sundown. Plan around the light, not the clock, and check what time the sun sets that day — it shifts a lot between winter and summer.
• Dress is easy on the island. Resort-casual covers almost everything, and a swimsuit with a cover-up is fine for the beach bars. Palm Beach proper runs a touch dressier, so when in doubt across the bridge, lean up a notch.
• Storms pass. Summer afternoons bring quick, heavy downpours that clear fast; a covered table or a flexible plan beats a cancelled one, and the light after a storm is often the best of the day.

A few more practical notes

Some smaller things smooth out a week of eating here:

• Big groups: the casual beach and marina spots seat large tables more easily than the nicer rooms, and even they appreciate a call ahead for six or more in high season.
• With kids: the beach bars are the easy win — loud, forgiving, quick, and full of things a child will eat. The dressier rooms are better saved for a night with a sitter or an early booking.
• Dietary needs: the seafood houses can be tricky for vegetarians and vegans, which is exactly where the resort's plant-forward restaurant downstairs earns its keep. Call ahead anywhere for a serious allergy.
• Paying and tipping: the usual American norms apply — cards everywhere, a tip of around twenty percent for good service, and a little cash handy for the beach bars.
• Getting there: valet parking at the residence and rideshare on the island make it easy to leave the car behind for a night with drinks. For the marina and beach spots, a short hop by bike or on foot often beats hunting for a space in high season.

Put simply: book the special places, keep the beach spots spontaneous, and let the sunset set your dinner time. The island rewards a light touch — a couple of reservations for the nights that matter, a loose hand for the rest, and a willingness to eat late on the balcony when the day has already given you enough. Read the season, follow the light, and there is always the kitchen upstairs when you would rather not go anywhere at all.

10Two sample food days

Menus and moods change, so rather than a rigid plan, here are two sample food days that show how the island's tables fit together across a real day — one built around the beach and the water, one built around a quieter, stay-close rhythm. Treat them as templates to bend, not scripts to follow.

A beach-and-water day

• Morning: coffee and eggs on the balcony with the doors open, made from what you stocked on day one. The beach is easy early, so this is the time to be lazy about it.
• Lunch: down to the Municipal Beach for a toes-in-the-sand lunch at Johnny Longboats — oysters, a mahi sandwich, a cold drink, and a long, unhurried stretch of sand afterward.
• Late afternoon: rinse off and cross to the inlet side as the light starts to turn. Claim a table at Sailfish Marina or pull up a stool at Rafiki-Tiki and watch the fishing fleet come in.
• Sunset: dinner over the water as the sun drops, simply grilled local fish and a drink built for the weather. Time the seat for about forty minutes before sundown.

A stay-close day

• Morning: a slow breakfast in, then down the elevator to the spa for a few hours in the hydrothermal circuit — no car, no rush.
• Lunch: something light on the property or on the balcony, keeping the calm going rather than trading it for a drive.
• Afternoon: a grocery and fish-market run for the evening — pick up whatever came in fresh, plus vegetables and a good loaf. The provisioning guide has the where and how.
• Evening: cook in. Grill the fish with the sliders open, eat on the balcony as the sky changes, and let the best view in the building be your dinner room. On a wellness-minded night, dinner downstairs at TULA Oceanfront is the no-cook alternative.

A day for a group

With a full house, the kitchen and the beach bars do the heavy lifting, since both handle a crowd better than the dressier rooms do.

• Morning: a big breakfast cooked on the island for eight, coffee going and the doors open, so nobody has to organize a group outing before anyone has eaten.
• Midday: a long, loud lunch at the Ocean Mall around Johnny Longboats, where a large table and split orders are no trouble and the kids can drift between the sand and the food.
• Evening: a raw-bar spread cooked and cracked at home — oysters, shrimp, and stone crab in season — laid across the island so everyone grazes at their own pace. It is the easiest way to feed a group well without wrangling a restaurant reservation for eight.

Building your own week

Across a full stay, the trick is to space the big nights out. One sunset dinner on the marina, one nicer night at ONA Coastal Cuisine or across the bridge, a couple of easy beach lunches, and two or three nights cooking in tends to be the right balance — enough variety to keep it interesting, enough downtime to keep it restful. A stone-crab dinner in season, whether you order it out or crack the claws yourself on the island counter, is worth working into any cool-month week. The waterfront seafood guide, the Palm Beach dining guide and the provisioning guide fill in the details for each piece. Let the weather, the tides and the sunset do most of the scheduling, and the island will feed you very well indeed.