For longtime patrons, Harry A's return brings a familiar question: what has changed, and what remains?
According to Franklin County News, the bar at 28 W. Bayshore Drive sat closed for the better part of a year, then went through foreclosure, before new owners bought it at auction for $1.475 million and brought it back. That much has circulated on the island's Facebook groups since winter. What hasn't gotten as much attention is a detail buried in the timeline: the new owners aimed to have the doors open by March, months before Memorial Day weekend typically breaks the tourist season loose.
The year the island lost its bar
Harry A's was founded by Tallahassee businessman Harry Arnold, and for years it was the place locals meant when they said they were "going out." Trivia nights, live music, Happy Hour that actually functioned as a gathering point rather than a marketing gimmick. Over time, it changed hands more than once. The most recent owner before the current owners was Havard Spencer of the Atlanta area. In July 2023 he struck a deal to sell to the owner of a pair of burger restaurants out of North Carolina, but the transfer never went through, and the arrangement collapsed after a legal dispute that dragged on. The restaurant closed roughly a year before the sale to its current owners, then sat empty long enough to end up on the courthouse steps in foreclosure. The chairs and tables were still inside. So were the walk-in coolers, untouched in a 6,875-square-foot building built for a crowd nobody was serving.
That's the version of Harry A's most islanders had gotten used to by 2025: a landmark with the lights off.
Two bars, two kinds of ownership
Not far away, on the same short stretch of island where everyone eventually runs into everyone, the Blue Parrot Oceanfront Cafe kept running the whole time, and the contrast between the two restaurants is the part of this story worth sitting with.
Blue Parrot has had one real change of ownership since Steve Rash bought it in 1996, and it looks nothing like what happened at Harry A's. Within a year of Rash's purchase, Nic and Missy McCuen came on as managing partners and ran the place for a decade before retiring and selling their interest to George Joanos in 2006. Joanos, who grew up working in his father's Tallahassee restaurant, still runs the kitchen himself. Most mornings, he's the one cutting the day's catch.
The two restaurants have different histories: Blue Parrot remained open, while Harry A's later closed and went through foreclosure.
Why March, not Memorial Day
That history is exactly why the timing of this reopening matters more than the menu does. Cody McCray, who bought the building with his partner Kyle Shaffer, has been visiting the island since he was a kid in the 1990s. He has described Harry A's as once being the heart of the island, a place people went for music and Happy Hour and Trivia Night.
"We're in it for locals to support," McCray said, according to Franklin County News. The article also reported that the plan was to have the work done by March, well ahead of peak summer.
That's a full two months of shoulder season before Memorial Day traffic shows up, time enough for the people who live here to work out the kinks, learn the new staff's names, and decide for themselves whether the place earned its name back.
What's actually on the table now
The kitchen kept some of the old bones and added its own stamp. What's showing up on plates and in reviews since the reopening:
- Stuffed shrimp, cheese grits, and blackened grouper sandwiches, the kind of Gulf Coast staples the old Harry A's built its reputation on
- Dragon shrimp tacos and a Bloody Mary bar that regulars have already started asking for by name
- The Elvis A, a dessert built on peanut butter, cream cheese, Nutella, banana, and toasted marshmallow
- New Orleans style beignets dusted in confectioner's sugar
- Fried green tomatoes and the Justice burger, paired, according to more than one customer review, disturbingly well with a PB&J
None of it reinvents what the building used to be. That appears to be the point.
The name stayed, so did the manager
The reopening brought back some familiar elements. Longtime manager Tara Klink came back to run the floor, overseeing a staff that's grown to more than thirty employees during the busy months. The name stayed Harry A's. The address didn't change. What changed was the ownership.
Live music has picked back up on the nights that used to matter most, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday, the same nights that once anchored a summer week here before the building went quiet. If you haven't been back since it reopened, that's the detail worth checking for yourself: not whether the food tastes the same, but whether the room still feels like the one where you used to run into everyone you know.
The reopening is a reminder of how much local places contribute to life on St. George Island.
If St. George Island's rhythms, its bars, its bridges, its bay side and its Gulf side, are the kind of details you find yourself tracking even when you're not house hunting, that instinct tends to matter later too. When the time comes to talk about property on the island instead of just the restaurant scene, Chasity Hill has spent her career rooted in exactly this stretch of coast. Talk with Chasity, schedule a tour, and bring your questions about the place you already know how to enjoy.
