Dewey Destin’s Seafood Restaurant in Destin will be featured in a FOX Weather segment airing Wednesday, May 6, as part of a live special broadcast from the Florida panhandle.

• FOX Weather correspondent Brandy Campbell visited the bayside restaurant to interview owner Dewey Destin and Will McGee, a manager and line cook who walked her through how the kitchen makes one of its fried shrimp dishes.

The segment will focus on the impact of hurricanes on the restaurant and how the business has continued to rebuild while serving the local community.

The segment is part of a live FOX Weather Beach House special airing from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. CT on Wednesday from Seacrest Beach. Meteorologists Bob Van Dillen and Bayne Froney will host the broadcast, which will include a summer travel forecast and features on Scenic Highway 30A and the Gulf Coast.

Deep roots

Campbell said the family’s ties to Destin stood out to her during the visit.

“I was amazed at how deeply rooted the family’s ties are to the City of Destin,” Campbell said. “From the city being named after Leonard Destin to how long they’ve operated in the area’s fishing industry, sticking around and adjusting despite weather impacts or laws that have impacted operations.”

Campbell said one detail from her conversation with Dewey Destin caught her off guard.

• “I was very surprised to hear how the East Pass was accidentally widened/relocated after a storm about 100 years ago,” she said. “That story had an unexpected turn.”

She also said McGee’s preparation of the fried shrimp dish stuck with her.

“Will mentioned it was one of their most popular dishes and it shows the way he prepares it,” Campbell said. “It felt like he could make it in his sleep, he was so quick and concise. I love how he gave credit to how tasty the dish was to the quality of the shrimp.”

Campbell said she hopes viewers come away with a sense of what Dewey Destin called “old Destin.”

“Dewey shared that this restaurant gives people a glimpse of what ‘old Destin’ was like,” she said. “I hope they can get a sense of it through our story on FOX Weather.”

Campbell, who has covered weather stories across the country, said the Gulf Coast’s relationship with hurricanes felt distinct.

• “When speaking to residents like Dewey and his family, you learn that hurricanes are part of their family’s history,” she said. “I can sense the love for where they live and desire to remain there despite devastation over the years. They’ve also found ways to prepare for storms that will come and go, allowing them to remain resilient.”

In addition to the restaurant visit, Campbell said the FOX Weather crew took a ride with Destin Fire Rescue aboard the Marine 19 rescue boat, which she said will also be featured in the Beach House special.

The bayside docks

The bayside docks have been a Destin family fishing site since the 1830s. Parker Destin, Dewey’s son, said storm surge has repeatedly tested the property over the generations.

• “With every hurricane, storm surge would come in and just wipe out the dock facilities,” Parker Destin said. “A lot of times in the prelude to the storm, you’d take the boats and hide them in Joe’s Bayou or Indian Bayou to keep them protected from the wind, but the storm surge would usually tear up your docks.”

Parker said the family learned to pop up every other deck board on the docks ahead of storms so that wave energy could pass through rather than lift the pilings out of the sand. When the family expanded into the restaurant business around 2000, they applied a similar approach to the building itself.

“Two-thirds of your value of any restaurant operation is in the equipment you use to cook,” he said. “If we had all of that in a kitchen on wheels, whenever the storm surge was going to come and show up, we could disconnect everything and drag the kitchen – the majority of the restaurant – up towards Calhoun Avenue, where the elevation was more like 17 to 20 feet above sea level and where it would be protected.”

He said the preparations came from generations of experience.

• “I would love to tell you that it was us being smart, but we’ve lost plenty of docks by not preparing for previous storms throughout being in Destin over the last 150 years,” he said. “But at least we can learn our lessons.”

Hurricane Sally in 2020 was the most recent major storm to hit the bayside restaurant. Parker said the storm sat on the area for roughly three days and produced a storm surge well beyond what its category would suggest.

“It was only maybe a Category 1 storm, but because it sat on us for three days with basically a northwest wind, it piled a Category 3 or 4 level storm surge into Choctawhatchee Bay,” he said. “It just took a lot of water and slammed it into the restaurant.”

Parker said the family’s Harbor location, which sits on a bluff about 21 feet above sea level, does not face the same storm surge risk as the bayside property, though it has dealt with wind damage. 

Destin said being featured nationally for hurricane resilience was a novel experience.

• “It’s a bit exhausting and it’s a bit worrisome every single time we run into hurricane season,” he said. “But it is neat that FOX Weather wanted to ask some questions about it because it’s the part of having to make a living this close to the water that you just don’t think about, but you just have to prepare for.”

He said hurricanes, while damaging, are survivable.

“Hurricane Ivan, Hurricane Opal were terrible catastrophes, but we always knew that we could dig ourselves out, we could rebuild,” Parker Destin said. “Hurricanes are an ingrained part of this area of the country, this part of the world, but it’s a part of nature, and as bad as it can be, you can rebuild, the trees will grow back, things can recover.”

The FOX Weather Beach House special will air Wednesday, May 6, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. CT on FoxWeather.com and the FOX Weather app, as well as on a range of streaming and cable platforms.