Stick & Rudder Pub

Stick & Rudder Pub sits inside the Emerald Coast Aviation hangar at Bob Sikes Airport on the north side of Crestview, which makes it one of the more unusual lunch stops along the Emerald Coast. Bob Sikes Airport, identifier KCEW, sits about three miles northeast of downtown Crestview and handles a steady mix of general aviation traffic, aerospace maintenance work, and training flights tied to nearby military installations, including Eglin Air Force Base, Duke Field, Hurlburt Field, NAS Pensacola, NAS Whiting Field, and Fort Novosel. Guests can watch aircraft taxi past the windows while they eat, and the pub draws a loyal following of pilots, aviation workers, and military families along with curious visitors who wander in off the Airport Road corridor.

The breakfast menu runs until 10:30 a.m. and includes wraps, hot cakes, a green chili scramble, a chorizo scramble, bacon breakfast tacos, and a chipotle avocado breakfast sandwich. Lunch takes over from late morning through evening with a smokehouse lineup built around pulled pork, a Cuban sandwich, and a smoked French dip, plus a burger menu that includes the Colorado, topped with green chili and a fried egg, a bacon cheeseburger, and a Hawaiian burger. Guests who want something lighter can order a blackened snapper plate, mahi tacos, a chicken sandwich, or a salad. Sides worth ordering on their own include smoked Gouda mac and cheese, sweet potato fries, and crispy Brussels sprouts.

Saturdays bring a prime rib special that regulars plan their weekend around, and the pub keeps a rotating selection of local beer on hand for anyone not flying that day. The dining room has an unmistakable aviation theme and a laid-back, hangar-adjacent feel that suits its mixed crowd of off-duty pilots, airport staff, and Crestview locals looking for something different from the usual chain breakfast spot. The pub’s own tagline invites visitors to give Stick & Rudder a try instead of flying by, which sums up the welcoming, low-key attitude of the place.

Lunch entrees generally run from about seventeen to nineteen dollars and come with a beverage and one side included, while breakfast plates land closer to eleven dollars, so the pricing stays reasonable for a sit-down meal at a working airport. Guests can call ahead to place an order, which is useful for pilots on a tight ground time, and the pub’s contact form can also be used to arrange a reservation for a larger group.

Bob Sikes Airport itself has kept growing around the pub. The field handles roughly 48,600 aircraft operations a year and is home to 49 based aircraft, and in 2022 Gulf Air Group announced a 16 million dollar expansion at the airport centered on a new aircraft hangar complex intended to serve as a maintenance hub, a project expected to bring around 55 jobs to the area. That kind of investment says a lot about how active this small-town airport has become, and it means the ramp views from the Stick & Rudder dining room rarely stay quiet for long, with everything from single-engine trainers to corporate jets and military aircraft passing through on any given day.

Stick & Rudder Pub is open Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and closed on Sunday. Because the pub operates inside a working FBO, arriving guests should follow standard airport courtesy: park in the marked lot at Emerald Coast Aviation and head straight to the pub entrance rather than wandering the ramp. For anyone road-tripping along Highway 90 or connecting through Crestview between beach stops, it is worth the short detour to eat where the airport crowd eats, watch a few takeoffs, and get a genuine taste of the aviation culture that keeps this stretch of Okaloosa County humming.