Naples’ Institutions: A Return to Spanky’s Speakeasy
There’s a reason Spanky’s has survived nearly four decades of Naples restaurant churn. This is a restaurant where the salad bar lives in the bed of an antique truck, popovers still arrive with the prime rib and nobody has suggested replacing the stained-glass lamps with something beige.
Husband-and-wife team Tim and Emily Monty took over Spanky’s from the original owners in 2015. Emily came from food-and-beverage management and Tim is a classically trained chef. According to a Florida Weekly profile, the two bought the restaurant instead of going on their honeymoon. I suppose there are worse ways to begin a marriage.
The “speakeasy” part is applied rather liberally. There’s no secret password or unmarked door. Spanky’s sits right on the water off Airport-Pulling Road, with a dim dining room packed with bicycles, model airplanes, stained-glass lamps and decades of accumulated miscellany. It feels wonderfully untouched by the prevailing desire to make every restaurant look like a hotel lobby.
Then there’s the soup and salad bar, inexplicably housed in the flatbed of a 1924 Ford pickup truck. It sounds like something added for novelty until you realize it’s been there for years and is still one of the things people specifically come back for.
Prime rib is the order to know. Thursday is prime rib night, complete with one of Spanky’s enormous freshly baked popovers, and the restaurant continues to come up whenever locals debate where to find good prime rib in Naples. The ribs have plenty of devotees of their own, and if the prime rib cheesesteak appears among the lunch specials, that’s an easy decision.
Spanky’s also has early dining from 4–5:30 p.m., an hour that perhaps only Naples could turn into a competitive dining category. I’d go late afternoon, when sitting outside doesn’t constitute an endurance sport. Have a drink by the water, stay for the prime rib and take a lap past the truck-bed salad bar.
There’s also a good reason to stop by Spanky’s right now. The restaurant is collecting new-condition children’s books for Emma’s Literary Legacy, the nonprofit founded by Ed and April after losing their daughter Emma to cancer. Emma loved reading throughout her treatment, and the organization now delivers books directly to children admitted at Golisano Children’s Hospital. This year’s delivery is set for September 15, Emma’s birthday. Bring a book to Spanky’s, enter the raffle, and you’ll have a chance to win a $250 gift card. Stay for a cold one while you’re there.
Spanky’s Speakeasy
1550 Airport-Pulling Rd. N., Naples • Mon.–Sat. 11 a.m.–9 p.m. • (239) 643-1559 • spankysspeakeasy.com
Originally published in
The Naples Florida Review.
Read the full edition here.