Banana Boat Restaurant & Lounge

Banana Boat sits directly on the Intracoastal Waterway at 739 East Ocean Avenue, in the small cluster of independent restaurants that make up Boynton Beach’s downtown marina district. The restaurant opened in 1971 and has been run as a family-owned business since, which makes it one of the longer-running independent dining rooms on this stretch of the Intracoastal. By the restaurant’s own account, it became an anchor of the local dining and nightlife scene by the late 1970s, and it has kept that role through decades of change along East Ocean Avenue.

The menu is built around what the restaurant calls an island-influenced approach to seafood, with fresh lobster and grilled salmon alongside a broader lineup of sandwiches, salads and raw bar items. Sunday brunch runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and includes French toast and other morning plates for guests who want a slower, later start on the water. The kitchen keeps the format casual rather than formal, which fits the marina setting better than a white-tablecloth approach would.

What separates Banana Boat from a typical seafood house is how much of the property is built around actually being on the water rather than just overlooking it. Boaters can dock and walk straight in, and the property has both an indoor bar and a separate outdoor bar, with enough covered and open-air seating to support live music most nights without crowding the dining room. Happy hour runs Monday through Saturday from 3 to 7 p.m. at the bar, drawing a mix of regulars, boaters, and visitors staying nearby.

Dining room hours run from 11 a.m. to 9:45 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 10:45 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, while the bar stays open later, until 11 p.m. on weeknights and midnight on weekends. That combination of a full dinner service and a later bar scene, all under one roof on the Intracoastal, is not something every restaurant in Boynton Beach can offer, and it is part of why Banana Boat still draws a crowd on weekend nights.

Because the restaurant has stayed in the same family for more than fifty years, it carries a kind of institutional memory that newer waterfront concepts along the Boynton Beach Intracoastal have not had time to build. Longtime residents tend to mention it in the same breath as the handful of other independent restaurants clustered near the marina, and its age gives it a different feel than the newer, more polished seafood spots that have opened elsewhere along the waterfront in recent years.

For visitors exploring Boynton Beach’s Food & Drink scene along East Ocean Avenue, Banana Boat works well as a starting point. It sits within walking distance of Hurricane Alley and the rest of the small downtown restaurant row near the marina, which makes it easy to compare several of the city’s independent, family-owned waterfront restaurants in a single outing.