SEBASTIAN — The pleasures of dinner at Mulligan’s Beach House in Sebastian are about equally divided between the fresh, well-prepared food and the picturesque dockside setting. Prompt, friendly service is another big plus.
“That is a fantastic location, isn’t it?” asked owner George Hart when he heard my wife and I had dined at the restaurant recently. “Did you see any dolphins playing in the river?”
I told him we had, in fact, seen a dolphin, same as most other times we have eaten there.
“It is unbelievable,” Hart said. “When I bought the place I didn’t have any idea we would have dolphins jumping by the dock. If I knew what time they were coming each day, I would advertise it [to attract business]!”
We arrived for dinner early on a Sunday evening and were offered a choice of indoor seating at a large comfortable booth or outdoors on the screened wrap-around deck. We chose inside and were seated in a booth with a view of the water nearly as good as if we were outside.
The Indian River Lagoon is several miles wide along the historic Sebastian waterfront where the restaurant is located, next to the Sebastian Yacht Club, so the view is expansive and exhilarating, with a steady stream of boats passing by out in the Intracoastal Waterway, plus gliding pelicans, occasional manatees and the aforementioned playful dolphins.
The interior of the restaurant is as colorful and nautical as one would expect in the location, with a rectangular bar in the middle of the room and tables and booths along the walls.
Our server Lauren appeared quickly to take drink and appetizer orders. We each ordered a beer and split a very tasty Calypso Crab Cake appetizer, which came with Key Lime Hollandaise sauce, a scoop of pineapple salsa, and a mix of greens that amounted to a small salad. The $9.95 dish was substantial enough to serve as an entrée if one was not too hungry.
Mulligan’s offers a wide selection of fresh fish and other seafood, with 12 fresh items the evening we were there.
My wife chose the grilled Atlantic salmon, which came with green beans and rice. I had the Florida Grouper, also grilled, with the same sides.
Both pieces of fish were large and succulent with a nice grilled flavor. The green beans were cooked exactly right for my taste, hot but still slightly crisp, and the rice was flavorful. The grouper was served with the same pineapple salsa as the crab cake, a refreshing mix of fruit, red and green peppers, and cilantro that is made fresh at the restaurant each day.
Entrees come with a light house salad that is just the right size. My wife chose a Caesar salad for a dollar upcharge.
Dessert was a piece of carrot cake for me and a rich peanut butter chocolate cake for my wife, which Lauren said was the best thing on the dessert menu. Lauren was friendly and attentive throughout the meal, but not intrusive, the gold standard for servers in my opinion.
Altogether, it was a very pleasant dining experience with none of the little glitches or annoyances all too common even in nice restaurants. Dinner for two with drinks, appetizer and dessert was a modest $71 before tax and tip.
The quality of food and service here is due mainly to the dedication of owner George Hart, who has built a chain of six popular Mulligan’s Beach House restaurants over the past 16 years, starting in Lauderdale by the Sea in 1997.
Hart prides himself on great food, great service and clean restaurants, and works seven days a week to make sure those elements are in place from south Florida to Sebastian, the northernmost restaurant in the group.
“You don’t succeed in this business by going on vacation,” he says.
All six restaurants are in beautiful waterside locations: three on the ocean, two on the Indian River Lagoon, and one on the St. Lucie River, near the ocean.
“The key to my success was putting the restaurants in pretty locations,” Hart says.
He started his restaurant career as a short order cook in a Chinese place and then worked his way up and learned the business cooking at a number of popular chain restaurants, including Applebee’s, TGI Fridays, Garcia Mexican and Hooters.
His first solo venture was not seafood but Italian.
“I bought a little pizza shop on the beach in Lauderdale by the Sea,” Hart says. “There was a T-shirt shop next to me that had been there for 45 years. I kept going in every day and asking if I could buy it. It was an older couple in their 70s and when they were ready to retire, they finally said yes.
“I punched a hole in the wall between the two places and made the pizza restaurant the kitchen for the first Mulligan’s.”
When that venture proved successful, Hart expanded the concept, opening Mulligan’s, in this order, in Jensen Beach, Vero Beach, Stuart, Sebastian and, most recently, Lake Worth.
Besides providing a built-in clientele of swimmers, surfers, boaters, tourists and other water lovers, Hart’s beach locations also serve to keep the big chains at bay.
“I spent years at working at franchises and I knew couldn’t compete with them and their buying and advertising power. The question then was, ‘Where can I go that they are not?’ The answer was the beach.”
Hart says big franchise restaurants don’t like beach locations because there is too much seasonal and weather-related fluctuation in business, which makes it much harder to manage employee hours and order the right amounts of food.
“You really have to manage restaurants at the beach,” he says, and he obviously has the knack.
“People have accepted and embraced Mulligan’s in the communities where we are located,” he says. “We have had tremendous success. In March alone we served somewhere between 150,000 and 175,000 meals in the six restaurants.”
At the same time, each restaurant retains a unique, neighborhood ambiance and meals are carefully prepared to order one by one.
“We love the communities we are in,” says Hart, whose business supports scores of charities along the Treasure Coast.
