Monday: noon dinner at 5H (STEAM on 5)

 

Monday we had a happy adventure, going to the "STEAM On 5 Seafood and Sunsets" topside bar, lounge, restaurant on the fifth floor roof level of the new Indigo Hotel on the marina downtown. 

We went at 11:00 a.m. just as they opened for serving. It's outside, a splendiferous setting, covered, under roof, but out of doors, with tables around the railing or you can sit at the bar. If you love an expansive Bay vista but don't live in one of the tall buildings here in Panama City, this is the only place.  

They're not taking reservations in the two restaurants, and for the moment their menu is growing, especially as the seafood specialties expand for serving in the roof restaurant, but the meal offerings are well more than attractive already. We ordered two seafood dishes, and swapped halfway through. The red snapper (skin on) was superb, a whole filet of red snapper, broiled, baked or grilled, IDK, but it was excellent. 

I'm pretty sure the menu says "skin on" because so many places here and elsewhere that offer "red snapper" on their menu serve something from the swamps of Southeast Asia and call it local caught red snapper, and you can't argue because it's not skin-on: at Indigo, you are served verifiable red snapper, the real thing, they can prove it and the diner can see it, its skin on, and it's a generous serving!

Our other fish was a whole filet of drum, the fish of the day for Monday. 

In our fish market growing up, I sold and cleaned lots of drum over the years, but never tasted it because, besides oysters and shrimp, we only took red snapper, mullet, grouper, and Spanish mackerel home. As served to us Monday, the drum filet is a bit longer than the red snapper filet, but thin like trout or Spanish mackerel instead of broad like the red snapper filet. It was scrumptious. In fact if I were asked to choose, maybe I enjoyed the drum even more than the snapper. We enjoyed swapping plates halfway through the meal.

Dinner, our noon meal, was about $74, plus tip. The only way I could have enjoyed it more would have been to start with a gin martini, dirty, to sip while we waited for our meals and watched activities on the Bay in this little spot of 5th Heaven, and a glass or two of ice cold chardonnay or other dry white wine with the meal. However, being it wasn't even 12 Noon and we had things to do, places to go, and people to see, we just had ice water (at our ages, it takes two Designated Drivers to make our way across town, one at the wheel and one in the passenger seat to keep lookout at traffic coming from the right and say when, "My way is clear."). 

The weather was absolutely perfect, the breeze, pretty well cut to "nice" by the building blocking the wind, the breeze even kept the summer noonday sun comfortable. Returning, I'd take a hat and Linda might take a scarf.

Why did we try the Indigo? Well, TJCC, which is Tass & family, are coming from Tallahassee this weekend as our observance of Linda's birthday, and they have room reservations at the Indigo. Welcoming us at the front door, the concierge gave us a little tour of the lobby floor and the Tarpon restaurant on that level, and showed us to the elevator that took us to the rooftop lounge. 

My surmise is that Panama City is in for a real treat with this new jewel of a hotel for loved ones visiting from out of town. We very much needed a nice hotel in town instead of just those way out north of town up MLK/77 and west of town out Highway 98. In my mind, the Dixie-Sherman Hotel has at last been elegantly replaced if not surpassed. That is to say, twelve or fourteen floors might have been even better!

From Steam on 5 we looked out on our condo, Harbour Village in St Andrews, and if I'd taken binoculars I could have seen 7H porch. We can see the Indigo straight down the Bay shoreline from our porch here in 7H, 

watched from 7H as it was constructed (OMG, will they never finish), it's lovely, and we are delighted that it's finally open for business. 

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The pics aren't perfect by any means, but the adventure was, and our dinners!

RSF&PTL

T