The Brass Monkey, St. Petersburg Beach, Florida

This is the last post highlighting some of the foods we enjoyed on our recent vacation to our new vacation home.  Despite being a vacation we were able to enjoy both eating out and testing out our vacation home kitchen.  I hope you enjoyed reading about some of the great food we enjoyed while on vacation.  I will be duplicating some of these foods at home so please check back for those great home cooked recipes.

Most of the posts on this blog are food related so unlike my personal blog you don't get to see a lot of the beautiful scenery we enjoy while scouting out restaurants during our many travels.  I thought I would share a picture of the gorgeous area we visited where we discovered this restaurant.  It was a hot, humid day so we decided to head to the Gulf coast of Florida with no particular plans or pre-determined destination other than the beach.  We ended up in St. Petersburg Beach, a barrier island community located just off the Pinellas County mainland which is often called simply St. Pete Beach to lessen confusion with St. Petersburg located on the mainland to the east.

The Brass Monkey is located at 709 Gulf Way, St. Petersburg Beach, Florida.  The restaurant is named after the indented brass plates used to stack cannonballs on the deck of sailing ships.  Brass was used for the plates to prevent the cannonballs from rusting to the plate as they would if iron were used.  Of interest if the brass plate got too cold it would contract faster than the iron spilling the cannonballs over the deck hence it was literally "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey".  The Brass Monkey is on the second floor of the building.  It has a lovely dining area and outdoor patio.  We chose the outdoor patio.

We ordered the pizza skins (top right) as an appetizer along with drinks.  I ordered the Caesar salad (bottom left) and my husband ordered grouper sandwich (bottom right).  I was impressed with the pizza skins ($8.00) that were were potato skins loaded with pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese and sausage.  They were quite good!  This would be one easy appetizer to duplicate at home.  I wasn't impressed with the Caesar salad ($6.00) that lacked both lemon wedges and crumbled bacon.  My husband did enjoy his grouper sandwich ($13.00) but it really was nothing special and could easily be duplicated at home.  Our total bill with drinks came to $44.30 plus tip.  The food itself was nothing spectacular but the view and atmosphere was.  Sitting on the upper floor patio overlooking the beach was quite lovely so we would stop there again.