The Best Seafood in Galveston

This is the shortest supply chain on the island and the reason it takes the top spot. Buddy Guindon spent years as a commercial fisherman before he, his wife Katie and his brother Kenny opened Katie's Seafood Market on Pier 19 in 1998. The market now runs the largest retail seafood display on Galveston Island and supplies HEB, Central Market and restaurants across Texas. In September 2019 Buddy opened this restaurant immediately next door to it, fed by the same counter.

What that buys you is red snapper, grouper, golden tilefish, flounder, oysters, shrimp and blue crab that came off local boats rather than a distributor's truck. Guindon is a founding member of the Shareholder Alliance and has testified to Congress on fishery management, and the family's work was the subject of the National Geographic series Big Fish Texas in 2015. Nobody else in Galveston can make the same claim about where the fish came from.

S. G. Gaido opened this in 1911 and the family has run it ever since, which makes it older than most of the buildings around it and older than air conditioning, a fact the restaurant likes to point out because the two arrived the same year. It is the formal end of Galveston seafood, white linen, a proper wine list, Gulf views from the dining room, and the kind of place islanders book for an anniversary.

Order the fish and the pecan pie. The pie is covered top to bottom in hill country pecans and is the single most requested thing on the menu. This is the most expensive restaurant on this list and the one where the bill can surprise you, so look at the menu before you sit down. Reservations run through OpenTable and are worth making for a summer weekend.

The best cooking on Seawall Boulevard that is not a century old. BLVD opened as the contemporary alternative to the fried platter houses and has stayed there, running lunch, dinner, brunch and happy hour menus that change rather than a laminated card that does not. It bottles its own wines under the BLVD label, a Chardonnay and a Sauvignon Blanc, and runs seasonal oyster features.

It belongs to Mike Dean's Yaga's Entertainment group, which also runs Yaga's Cafe on the Strand, Float and Beerfoot Brewery, so it is locally owned rather than part of a national chain. The practical advantage over most of this list is that it keeps the same hours seven days a week, which on an island where half the kitchens close on Monday or Tuesday matters more than it should.

Dinner only, downtown rather than on the seawall, and the room islanders name when they want a proper restaurant meal without driving to the Gulf front. It has traded on Postoffice Street since 1999, a block off the Strand, which makes it the obvious end to a day spent on the tall ship and in the historic district rather than on the sand.

The menu leans on what is landing rather than a fixed list, and there are steaks for anyone at the table who does not want fish. Wednesday is the prime rib night, hand cut and served with au jus and half price on selected bottles of wine. It does not open until 4 p.m., so it is no use to you for lunch.

The most polished of the harbour restaurants and the one to pick when half the party wants fish and half wants a steak. It sits on Pier 21 with windows onto the working harbour, so you watch supply boats and the occasional cruise ship go past while you eat, and it is a two minute walk from the tall ship ELISSA and the Ocean Star rig museum.

Be clear what you are buying. This is a Landry's restaurant, the Houston based group, and it opened here in 1993, so it is a corporate dining room rather than a family kitchen. It earns its place on execution and location rather than on provenance, and the happy hour from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday is genuinely good value for a room with this view.

The casual harbour option, a notch down in price from Willie G's and with the better outlook, because its deck sits directly alongside the 1877 tall ship ELISSA. The house dish is the Shrimp Kisses, shrimp wrapped in bacon with jalapeno jack cheese, which is the thing regulars order before they look at anything else. There is usually a Maine lobster special running alongside the Gulf menu.

Its own site traces the legacy back to the 1940s, and like Willie G's it is now part of Landry's rather than independent. We have ranked it here because for a family coming off the harbour attractions at lunchtime it is the practical answer, open through the afternoon when several better kitchens are closed between services.

The value pick and a Galveston institution since 1976. Fried shrimp, catfish, stuffed shrimp, oyster po-boys, homemade gumbo, platters, tacos and key lime pie, at prices that bear no relation to the seawall dining rooms. This is where islanders eat on a Tuesday and where a family of four can eat seafood without a three figure bill.

There are three kitchens now. The original is at 3901 Avenue O, a few blocks back from the seawall. Shrimp 'N Stuff Downtown is at 2506 Ball Street, (409) 974-4609, and keeps slightly earlier hours. A food truck runs the west end at 16603 San Luis Pass Road, (409) 539-2459, daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Some directories still publish a defunct Avenue H address, so use the ones here.

The Louisiana end of Galveston seafood and the best boiled and barbecued crab on the island. Benno's runs a casual counter on the seawall doing grilled, fried and boiled seafood alongside proper Cajun plates, gumbo, red beans and rice, crawfish etouffee and jambalaya. The signatures are the Cajun barbecue blue crabs, cooked in a house seasoning and served with garlic bread, and the soft shell crabs.

It is sandy floors and paper plates rather than a dining room, which is the point when you have come off the beach. The same family runs a large catering business from 112 28th Street, which is why the kitchen can turn out boiled seafood in quantity. Crawfish is seasonal, so ring before you drive out for it.

The one place on this list that solves breakfast. Miller's opens at 8 a.m. and serves breakfast all day beside a full seafood menu, which no other seafood house on the seawall does, and that single fact makes it the most useful address here for anyone staying on the Gulf front. It is a plain, busy, locally run room with a Gulf outlook.

Expect fried platters, gumbo and shrimp done straightforwardly rather than a chef's menu, and expect a wait at weekend brunch time. It takes no reservations, which its own site states plainly, so the only strategy is to go early or go late. It also closes at 8 p.m., earlier than everything else on the seawall, so it is not a dinner plan.

The oyster specialist, and the answer to a problem the rest of this list has. Gulf oysters are a cold weather proposition and Texas harvest seasons have been tightly managed in recent years, so a summer visitor often cannot get a local raw oyster at all. Shuck's runs East Coast oysters year round and brings in Prestige Gulf oysters for a limited run in winter, which means the raw bar works in July.

Beyond the oysters there are soups, salads, po-boys, seafood, chicken and the Walt Burgers, and happy hour runs Tuesday to Friday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. It is a tavern rather than a restaurant, small and loud, with outdoor seating and no delivery. Closed Monday, which catches people out.