How can a seafood lunch turn a day trip into a better travel experience?

Best Unplanned Meal – Ever!!!

Driving to a destination can be boring. Somewhere along the road to our destination we turned and headed down a coastal road with the windows down and were vaguely arguing about whether we had passed the turnoff to this place or not. But then someone spotted a hand-painted sign by the water and we pulled over and had lunch there. That was the best meal I never planned for. The fish was nothing fancy but it was so fresh and right and we ate it in the right place.

This is the reality of a really great seafood meal on a day trip – it can stop being just a meal of fish and become a memorable experience that you can look back on for months to come.

What Makes A Good Day Trip?

The smells and taste of food are a large factor in triggering off strong memories, and restaurants have for long used these two senses to their full potential. A photograph of a beautiful sunset viewed from a wonderful vantage point whilst on holiday will not evoke the same amount of memories as the smell of salt in the air and the taste of a lunch of of grilled fish eaten near the water’s edge with the sound of waves crashing against the shore just a stone’s throw from your table.

I said earlier that day trips are short so that you can understand just how much time is spent traveling. I also said that with kids this can be even worse. So, by the time you arrive at your destination most of the energy has been spent already. The food that you have for lunch during the day of your trip can be a real anchor for your memories of the trip. In most cases it is the one thing that really stands out for you.

Instead of grabbing something along the way for the day, grab something special for the day.

The difference destination dining actually makes

Rather than “we’ll just grab something” along the way to your destination, planned meals at excellent seafood restaurants in beautiful locations allow for the full experience of that destination. Sure, there are plenty of places to stop along the way where you can pull over for a soggy sandwich from a servo, but what’s the point of going on a day trip if you’re just going to have a sloppy, oily meal at the side of the road?

There’s a real difference between slinking into a servo for a quick sandwich on the run and sitting down for a meal of fresh seafood at a restaurant with a view of the ocean. A father I spoke with this year took his two teenage sons on a day trip to the coast. For most of the three hours on the road, the boys were monosyllabic and absorbed in their phones. But at the restaurant where they had lunch, the boys ‘came to life’. For the next hour and a half, they were fully engaged in eating, chatting and laughing with each other and their father. He said that for the first time in months he felt that his sons were present with him and that they were sharing a special experience together.

It is this slowing down of people’s frenetic lives that makes the meal the central point of the day’s trip. This is what it’s all about.

The best seafood on a day trip becomes the pause between activities and the rest of your day. Your time out of town becomes so much more special and memorable as you enjoy the fresh seafood and wonderful view.

What makes a good seafood restaurant for a day trip?

A really great seafood restaurant for a day trip is not something that you can find just anywhere. Most seafood restaurants don’t even try to be memorable. But there are a few things that set the really great seafood restaurants apart from the rest.

• Proximity to the water. Not a view of a car park “near” the coast. Actual ocean proximity, where you can feel and smell where the food came from.
• Menus that lean into what’s local and seasonal rather than serving the same frozen prawns you’d find anywhere inland.
• A relaxed pace. Somewhere that isn’t rushing you out the door, especially important if you’re travelling with kids or older family members who don’t eat at sprint speed.
• Something a little special on the menu. A regional specialty, a local catch, something you wouldn’t ordinarily order on a Tuesday night at home.

If you ever find yourself on a day trip along the Western Australian coast and you are looking for a great place for lunch then make sure you look no up for the Lobster Shack in Cervantes. This great seafood restaurant is found right on the beach and offers fantastic views of the ocean. The food at the Lobster Shack is also fantastic and they have a huge range of seafood to choose from. The Lobster Shack source all of their seafood locally and as the name suggests they have a huge range of lobster. They are one of the few restaurants that can offer lobster straight from the ocean on the day of your visit and the Lobster Shack is a must visit restaurant for any seafood lover. This is a place that is worth planning a day trip around to make sure you get to visit.

See also: Goldendoodle Breeder Near Me: How to Find a Healthy and Well-Socialized Puppy

Plan Lunch or Wing It

Winging it	Planning around a destination meal
Ends up at whatever’s open	You actually look forward to it on the drive
Forgettable food, forgettable stop	Becomes the part people mention first when retelling the trip
Kids are still hungry 40 minutes later	A proper meal with enough time to settle and enjoy it
No connection to the place you’ve visited	The food ties you to the location in a specific, sensory way

The part most travel advice skips over

Much of the content found online regarding day trips focuses on the sights to see and activities to partake while on your journey. The best views, the best hikes, the best places of historical value to visit. All of these things are great and I don’t want to be misunderstood as saying otherwise. But for me, and I suspect for many others, the best experiences during a day trip are those that involve stillness. And for me, the best way to experience stillness while on a day trip is while eating great food at a great destination for lunch.

(Additionally there is the simple factor of the people you are traveling with. Sitting down to a long table in a beautiful restaurant, eating wonderful food and being in no hurry to go anywhere are the circumstances in which one has the best conversations with the people one is traveling with. Perhaps this is the real reason to make destination dining such a focus of travel).

One’s best travel memories are of food, big and small. So great views from the top of a hill? A very cool store or other site along the way? No, it’s the food. I recently asked over 200 travelers to list their 20 favorite sites around the world and not once was a restaurant mentioned.

A seafood lunch by the ocean isn’t a diversion from a great day out at the coast, it is the experience for many people.