Sandy's Seafood: dangerously delish

Palm Coast Observer
Business

Former gator trapper John Mericle is one of four owners at new family-owned restaurant Sandy’s Seafood & Steak.

John Mericle used to be a surfer boy.

He said so sitting in his new restaurant, Sandy’s Seafood & Steak, where, displayed in the back on a white table cloth, is an almost-14-foot, 800-pound alligator. It’s the second-largest ever caught in state history.

“I knew from the first time I ever went that it was something I wanted to pursue,” Mericle said of alligator trapping.

Having grown up on the Matanzas Inlet, his father-in-law, Dale, introduced him to the gator game when he was 17. Later, he became St. Johns County’s licensed trapper, responding to gator-spottings on golf courses and in backyards — a job he left when his three uncles, Bill Sweat, Lawrence Masters and Nick Scapellati, had the idea of opening a “Saint Augustine-style” seafood place in Palm Coast.

“That’s as big as you’ll ever see ’em!” Mericle told a group of patrons ogling the stuffed reptile posed in an attack stance in the back. “You don’t want to open your front door and see him in the morning,” he said, smiling.

Mericle once caught an alligator using just a broken shovel handle. He used it to tire and distract the animal before jumping on top, wrestling its jaws to the ground and tying it up.

“We really want people to see where they live,” he explained. Sandy’s gets most of its vegetables fresh from Mericle’s father-in-law’s farm — Barnes Farm, in Hastings.

It grows its own Datil peppers and makes its own Datil pepper shrimp sauce. Mericle is even looking into reacquiring his trapping license to serve in his restaurant game he caught with his own hands.

“This is Florida … This is what we do,” Mericle said. “We catch alligators. We cook shrimp … It’s a family thing.”

Sandy’s Seafood & Steak is now open at 10 Palm Harbor Village Way. Gator tail is on the menu.