Chanticleer Eatery

Chanticleer Eatery opened in the summer of 2012 on Clayton Lane, in the heart of Grayton Beach’s small arts and dining cluster. It started life alongside an adjoining bakery run by the parents of current owner Emily Wever, and when Emily and her husband Sandro took over the business, they eventually closed the bakery side and used the extra space to add dinner service, which let them run a completely different menu at night than the one served at lunch.

The restaurant’s name and its rooster motif come from The Canterbury Tales, where Chanticleer is the proud rooster of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, and Emily’s own hand-painted rooster artwork carries that theme through the dining room. The result is a casual, first-come-first-served spot that leans into American comfort food with Cajun-inspired flavors, backed by a kitchen that bakes its own bread from scratch every day rather than bringing it in.

Lunch centers on sandwiches built for a beach appetite: the Chanticleer Grilled Cheese, made on rosemary sage bread with three cheeses and preservative-free bacon, and Sandro’s Chicken Salad Sandwich on honey oatmeal bread, are two of the standing favorites. A Southern Summer Salad with seasonal fruit, Gorgonzola, and candied pecans rounds out the lighter side of the menu. When dinner service is running, the kitchen shifts toward heartier plates, shrimp and grits, jambalaya, and hand-cut steaks and pork chops, including a grilled ribeye that regulars single out by name.

Cypress Cattle Company supplies much of the beef, part of the kitchen’s broader habit of sourcing locally wherever it can, and both sandwiches and heavier entrees come from the same from-scratch approach that defines the bread program. Seafood shows up throughout the menu as well, from lighter lunch options to more substantial dinner plates, giving visitors a reason to come back for a second meal in the same week.

Chanticleer sits within the small cluster of galleries, shops, and restaurants that makes up Grayton Beach’s compact center, close enough to The Red Bar and Chiringo that a visitor could walk between all three without moving the car. The dining room can also be reserved as a full buyout for private parties, which comes up often during wedding season on 30A given how many couples book venues within walking distance of the beach. Casual as the setting is, the restaurant has built a loyal local following over more than a decade, the kind of place residents recommend to visitors ahead of flashier options nearby, precisely because the food and the welcome have not changed much since Emily and Sandro took it over.

Chanticleer Eatery is open every day of the week from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., with outdoor seating available for anyone who wants to eat under the trees rather than inside, and a full bar to go with either meal. The restaurant is first-come, first-served, so there is no need to book ahead, though the address at 55 Clayton Lane in Santa Rosa Beach fills up during peak dinner hours in season. To-go orders carry an automatic 18 percent gratuity, a detail worth knowing before ordering takeout for the beach. Locally loved and largely unchanged in spirit since its 2012 opening, it remains one of the more low-key, reliable stops in a town that does not have many chain alternatives to fall back on.