Where Y’at Seafood Market & Restaurant

Where Y’at Seafood Market & Restaurant occupies a dual role on Highway 87 in Navarre: half seafood market, half sit down restaurant, both built around Gulf seafood and Louisiana cooking. Owner Paul Ruiz runs the business as a family operation, with his son Courtney Lumpkin overseeing the kitchen and another son, Will Lumpkin, managing the seafood market side of the operation. That family structure shows up in how the business runs. The market sells retail to walk in customers and wholesale to other restaurants and markets, while the restaurant serves plates built from the same inventory sitting in the market case a few steps away.

The seafood case stays stocked with Pensacola Bay oysters, Gulf oysters, Gulf shrimp, and Royal Red shrimp, along with blue crab, snow crab, and Dungeness crab. Frog legs, soft shell crab, alligator, and turtle round out the more adventurous end of the case, and the market has built a reputation as a major supplier of live and cooked crawfish when the season allows for it. Where Y’at partners directly with local fishermen, so seafood on a given day’s menu can include fish caught that same day, a detail that matters to anyone who wants to know exactly where their dinner came from.

On the restaurant side, the kitchen leans hard into Louisiana and Cajun cooking. Crawfish boils and gumbo anchor the menu, and hush puppies, blackened seasonings, and Cajun egg rolls fill out the appetizer and side list. Dessert runs to Louisiana comfort food too, with a caramel pecan bread pudding that regulars single out by name. For anyone who reels in their own catch off Navarre Beach or the Sound, the restaurant offers a Cook Your Catch service. Bring in what you caught and the kitchen will prepare it for a per person fee, with sides available a la carte.

Where Y’at also caters, handling everything from small family dinners to full wedding receptions and corporate events, with menus built around seafood boils, jambalaya, and other Cajun staples scaled up for a crowd. The restaurant takes online orders through DoorDash and Grubhub for anyone who wants the food without the drive, and it carries Better Business Bureau accreditation, a detail that reflects its standing in the local business community.

The restaurant sits at 4233 HWY 87 in Navarre, along the corridor that connects Navarre Pkwy to the communities north of the Sound, and it keeps a schedule built around a midweek break. It is open Sunday and Monday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., closed Tuesday, open again Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and stretches its Friday and Saturday hours to 8 p.m. Visitors can reach the restaurant at 850-660-3592 to ask about market inventory, catering, or same day availability for a specific catch. For anyone touring the Emerald Coast who wants Cajun cooking built on genuinely local seafood rather than a menu borrowed wholesale from New Orleans, Where Y’at offers an unusual combination: a working seafood market and a full Louisiana kitchen operating out of the same Navarre address, an arrangement that lets a single stop cover both a fresh catch to take home and a full sit down meal for a family that would rather not cook after a day at the beach.