Timmy's Nook

My memory is not all about the food - it was the whole experience of this restaurant that made it special.

The place was Timmy's Nook on Captiva Island in Southwest Florida. It was "our place" for me and my mom in the 1970s and 1980s. We went there with others, but it was always more special when it was just the two of us - a place to escape troubles and have an adventure. My mom always called the Nook a perfect place to get "shanghaied" in. Inside was full of old beaten-up wooden tables and decorated with dusty black & white pics of people and things no longer existing, the bar always full of shifty-looking fishermen nursing their beers (making you wonder how long they had really been on that bar stool and if they were ever going to leave). The ladies room had vinyl shower curtains instead of doors (and I think it was originally a closet). The staff had always worked there - I moved away for a few years and when I came back, there they were, still spookily the same. The Nook opened in 1950 but you always had the feeling it was so much older, almost like it sat in its own little pocket of time away from the rest of the world, where pirates and buried treasure weren't just legends and you wouldn't be surprised if Old Salty sitting next to you had a hook instead of a hand and a very suspicious story to go with it.

The best place to sit and eat was on the open porch looking out at the water. Being a barrier island on the Gulf of Mexico, sometimes instead of smelling the sweet ocean, you'd get the fishy-sulfur mangrove aroma, but it just added to the experience along with the ubiquitous mosquitoes & no-see-ums. LOL After eating, we would always walk out onto the dock behind the restaurant and just enjoy the view. The boats tied up to the dock were humble things, never yachts, but ones that were obvious that people made a hard living with.

Restaurant appearances can be deceiving and I know many tourists just drove past this little "dive", dining instead at the more respectable Mucky Duck or Bubble Room. But they missed out. Timmy's Nook served up local seafood (fish & shrimp) and cheeseburgers, not fancy but delicious and affordable. The beer was always cold and the desserts (key lime pie and a fab blueberry cheesecake thingie) were always just the right amount to end a good meal.

Mom, my sister, my baby son and I ate there for what turned out to be the last time in 1993/94. If I had known it was to be sold and torn down soon after, I would have lingered longer, taken pictures, just would have tried to absorb more of it. Next time we went, all evidence of it was gone and a new restaurant was in its spot. I've heard that the "new" place has tried to "honor the memory" of the Nook, but how can it when it's made of concrete and glass and is shiny and new and clean (with no shower curtains in the ladies room), full of tourists with no sand in their shoes, and I'm sure they don't allow fishermen to live at the bar, and no chance of getting shanghaied and whisked away to exotic daydreams...