Shells Of Melbourne

One of best places in Melbourne for seafood...one anomaly. That if you order Oyster on half shell. The waitress has to do the shucking taking her away from her normal waitress duty.. shucking oysters is hard and should not have to perform that duty....I find that unacceptable on Managements part..just saying

My husband and I were in Orlando for an event and decided to drive back to West Palm by going through Melbourne JUST so we could have dinner at Shells. Shells was my favorite seafood restaurant when they had locations in West Palm Beach and Delray Beach. It had been at least 20-25 years since I’d last dined at Shells and my husband had never been there, I was so excited. We arrived and upon exiting the car - we realized that at some point during our trip our tire had been sliced and it was slowly tearing apart. Sitting in the parking lot / we called for roadside help and removed the spare from underneath the car. While waiting we walked into the restaurant, quickly explained our situation and asked the hostess if it was possible to use their bathroom to wash our hands while we waited for our assistance to arrive. She replied with an understanding, “Of course!” And even handed us take out waters to take outside with us. Thirty minutes later, we returned for dinner. We were seated promptly and placed our order: Buffalo shrimp appetizer (which was good just not as good as I remembered), a bowl of gumbo (which was yummy and had a good amount of seafood) and two The Big Easy entrees (which I used to order all the time) and it did not disappoint - it was exactly like I remembered it and I was in heaven. The complimentary bread was also perfectly buttered and toasted. As we were leaving we thanked the ladies up front and mentioned our two hour trip home on a spare tire. They told us to have a safe trip and to just drive slowly and offered us two cups of water to go. They were the sweetest and in a time of personal frustration they offered kindness. We had a really great experience - with the exception of the man that raised himself off his bar stool and loudly passed gas in our direction (we were seated at a booth adjacent from the bar). That had nothing to do with the restaurant, the food or the service but it made me decide to never sit behind someone at a bar ever again. Lol. Thanks for everything Shells staff. :)

Normally the chowder is really good. On this visit, it was overwhelmingly smoky. Must have been a different cook. Server not a good as we are used to. She may have been new. Crab cakes were very good. Fried shrimp were tasty as usual. Since we are used to having good experiences and very good chowder, we will try it again.

We came to visit friends and they brought us here yesterday, we enjoyed our visit. The food was very good and the margaritas on the rocks were very very delicious, it's a must try! The service was good too, all of us enjoyed our food. I will definitely visit again when I come back to West Melbourne.