Camille’s Restaurant

Camille’s has spent more than two decades building a reputation around breakfast, a specialty serious enough that the restaurant was once voted best breakfast in the United States by AOL, a recognition that still gets mentioned by regulars and repeat visitors who plan their morning around a stop here well before they think about lunch or dinner anywhere else on the island.

The signature crab cake benedict captures the restaurant’s overall approach well, familiar breakfast formats elevated with quality local seafood rather than reinvented from scratch, a strategy that has let Camille’s build a loyal following without needing to chase every passing food trend that comes through a tourist town like Key West.

The restaurant describes itself as a Soho cafe aesthetic paired with a genuinely welcoming neighborhood atmosphere, distinguished by a flamingo pink awning that makes it easy to spot from the street, and the overall feel leans toward funky and casual rather than polished, the kind of place where a regular customer might genuinely be greeted by name.

Camille’s markets itself with the phrase inexpensive gourmet, a fair description of a restaurant that treats its food seriously without pricing itself into fine dining territory, making it accessible to families and casual diners in a way that some of Key West’s more elevated breakfast and brunch spots are not.

The restaurant also accommodates larger events, weddings and banquets among them, suggesting a kitchen and staff capable of scaling up beyond a typical breakfast or lunch service when the occasion calls for it, a flexibility that has helped it build relationships with repeat customers planning celebrations during a Key West visit.

Being located on Simonton Street places Camille’s within a comfortable walk of both Duval Street and the quieter residential blocks of Old Town, giving it a customer base that mixes tourists specifically seeking out its breakfast reputation with locals who have simply adopted it as their neighborhood spot.

For a breakfast or brunch that has earned genuine national recognition rather than just local acclaim, Camille’s remains one of the more reliably excellent morning stops in Key West, proof that a casual, unpretentious restaurant can still turn out food good enough to draw attention well beyond the island itself.

Visitors who make it a priority to try the crab cake benedict at least once during a Key West trip rarely come away disappointed, and the restaurant’s decades long consistency has made it one of the safer bets in a town where breakfast options can otherwise vary considerably in quality from block to block.