Indialantic's New Beer and Wine Spot Solves a Problem Bunky's Never Tried To

On a Tuesday night at Bunky's Raw Bar & Grill, the game is on all fifteen screens, someone is celebrating a birthday two tables over, and finding a quiet corner to talk is not really the point. That has been the deal since 1981, when Bunky's opened as a raw bar built around clams and a New England accent nobody asked to explain. It has earned its noise. What it never offered was the other kind of evening: the one where you want a decent glass of wine, a dog at your feet, and nobody yelling at a referee.

That gap just closed two blocks up A1A.

Same Beach, Different Kind of Loud

The Local Beer & Wine Collective, paired with Steve's Caribbean Cuisine, is now open inside Seaside Centre on North Highway A1A, and it was built specifically not to compete with what Indialantic already had. Owner Lindsay Richer put the business plan together back in 2022, drawing on brewpubs she and her husband found while traveling, and spent years waiting for a space with real outdoor seating before landing at Seaside Centre. The result reads less like a sports bar and more like a front porch with a tap list.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. Bunky's has built forty-plus years of loyalty around volume: big screens, a limited beer selection that reviewers openly note as a weak spot, and a menu proudly loud on wings and oysters. Boardwalk Bar & Grill, down by the boardwalk on South Miramar, plays a different game entirely: chargrilled oysters, tuna carpaccio, a seafood tower for special occasions. Neither one was built for a Tuesday where you just want to sit outside with a good pour and nowhere to be.

The Local is betting Indialantic wanted that third option all along.

What Richer Actually Built

Ask her what she's going for and the answer isn't complicated:

"We're bringing together craft beer, curated wines, shareable bites, community events, and an inviting indoor and outdoor vibe."

The menu, developed by Chef Steve Roj under the Steve's Caribbean Cuisine banner, leans Caribbean without pretending to be a destination restaurant. Jerk Chicken Wings, Caribbean Beef Sliders, Sweet Plantains. Richer has said the plan is to keep building it out with weekly specials based on what the neighborhood actually wants, rather than locking a menu in place before anyone's had a chance to order from it.

A few specifics worth knowing before you show up:

• The front patio seats twenty to thirty guests and is dog-friendly, a real point of difference from most of the beachside dining strip
• Beach access sits directly across the street
• Weekends bring live music, a detail confirmed by early diners rather than the marketing copy
• The vibe draws more from Asheville brewery culture than from typical Florida beach-bar design, high-top tables over booths, taps over frozen drink machines

None of this makes it fancy. It makes it specific, which is a different thing.

The Rest of the Strip Is Filling In Around It

The Local isn't the only new name on the block this year. Island Fish Grill opened in Indialantic in 2026 as well, running a dinner-only format built around eleven kinds of fresh fish served daily. It's a narrower concept than Bunky's sprawling raw bar menu, and it sits in its own lane entirely from The Local's beer-and-wine approach.

Put the three together and a pattern starts to show. Bunky's owns the loud, sports-forward, since-1981 lane. Boardwalk Bar & Grill owns the coastal fine-dining lane, the kind of place you book for an anniversary rather than a Tuesday. Island Fish Grill owns focused, dinner-only seafood. And now The Local owns something none of the others were trying for: an everyday, low-key hangout where a regular could realistically become a regular, not just a customer.

That's the actual news here. Indialantic wasn't short on places to eat. It was short on a specific kind of evening.

Why This Is the Kind of Thing Worth Noticing

A town of roughly a square mile with a Walk Score high enough that most residents can get to the beach, the boardwalk, and Fifth Avenue's shops without a car doesn't need volume in its dining scene. It needs variety in what an evening out actually feels like. For years, that variety topped out at loud-and-established versus upscale-and-occasional. The Local fills the space in between, and it does it in a spot residents were already walking past on the way to the sand.

Bunky's isn't going anywhere, and it shouldn't. There's a version of a beach town where the sports bar with fifteen screens and forty-five years of muscle memory is exactly what a Friday night calls for. But a town this walkable benefits from having more than one kind of night available on the same three blocks. Now it does.

If you live near Seaside Centre, you already know which nights call for Bunky's and which ones don't. The Local is for the ones that don't.

Jamie Dandridge has spent a career watching what makes Space Coast neighborhoods work, not just as real estate but as places people actually live day to day. If you're weighing a move to Indialantic, or you already call it home and want a clearer read on what the market here looks like right now, reach out to Jamie Dandridge for a conversation grounded in the same local detail you just read.