Something worth noticing has happened along the mile of John Sims Parkway between Turkey Creek and Partin Drive. Three of the restaurants people are talking about this year did not exist eighteen months ago. The Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival, gone since 2019, is on the city calendar again for October. And the boardwalk that has always been the town's shaded shortcut into a swamp is doing more traffic than it used to on a Saturday morning. If you have lived here a while, this is your neighborhood assembling a new center of gravity in real time.
The boardwalk is still doing the heavy lifting
Turkey Creek Nature Trail is the piece of Niceville that residents never really put on Instagram, because they use it too often. The one-mile boardwalk connects two small city parks over a tannic stream that drains sixty-seven square miles of Eglin sandhills, running roughly sixty-nine degrees year round at 150,000 gallons per minute. Seven access docks step down to the water. In August that is not scenery, that is climate control.
A few operational notes locals sometimes forget:
- The gates open at 6:30 a.m. seven days a week, and the boardwalk closes twenty minutes before the posted park close.
- Dogs are not allowed. This still surprises new arrivals every weekend.
- The north trailhead off West College Boulevard near Hawks Landing has the kayak and canoe launch, three picnic pavilions, and restrooms. The south end at 340 W John Sims Pkwy is the busier entrance next to the highway bridge.
- The city runs free rides to the trail for seniors and anyone with mobility needs. Scheduling number is 850-685-9405.
The upstream College Boulevard side stays quieter than the John Sims side on summer weekends, and the water gets deeper as you walk north. That is the tubing move, drop in near the last dock and float back down.
A food corridor that snuck up on us
Look at what has opened on and around John Sims Parkway in the last eighteen months. Then look at what has been here forever. The list splits cleanly.
| New since 2024 | Still anchoring the block |
|---|---|
| Kiin Café (Japanese izakaya, 4504 E Hwy 20) | 3rd Planet Brewing (1400 E John Sims Pkwy) |
| PB&J Bistro & Café (120 Partin Dr N) | Create / JoJo's Coffee and Goodness |
| The Craft Bar (Niceville location) | Doc's Oyster Bar, Basil & Baxter's, The Local's Eatery |
Kiin Café opened this January in the Highway 20 corridor as a proper izakaya, indoor dining plus bar seating plus a back patio, about a hundred seats between them. The menu is yakitori skewers, dumplings, ramen, edamame, the small plates format that Destin has had for a decade and Niceville has not. That the ownership landed here rather than east of the bridge is worth paying attention to.
PB&J Bistro & Café is a different story. Chef Phillip Bauer and his wife Jess built a following at the City Food Hall in Destin Commons before opening at 120 Partin Dr N inside Central Partin, the small cluster of independent businesses around the corner from City Hall. Bauer's résumé runs through The Wine Bar, The Henderson Resort, and a sous chef stint at Bitterroot. The dining room has a bookcase that swings open into a private room with a leave-a-book take-a-book library on the shelves. Lunch runs Tuesday through Saturday from 11 to 3, dinner from 5 to 9. This is the kind of chef-owner economics that usually skips a market this size and heads for 30A.
3rd Planet Brewing has been quietly doing the community work on the same block, family and dog friendly, and using its space for events that keep pulling in from outside Niceville. The Fuego Jerk Bowl pop-ups and the Crawfish Cook-Off earlier this year both drew crowds that suggested the brewery is now a destination rather than a stop.
The Mullet Festival is on the calendar again
For anyone who moved here after 2019, some context. The Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival ran on the third weekend of October from 1977 through 2019, pulling attendance north of forty thousand in its bigger years, sometimes higher. It was canceled in 2020 for the pandemic and did not return. For six years the Mullet Festival Grounds at Highway 85 and College Boulevard sat mostly quiet while the City Council discussed long-term plans for the parcel, including the possibility of a tourism-generating complex on an enhanced-use lease from the Air Force.
The 42nd Annual Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival is now posted on the City of Niceville event calendar for this October, with advance tickets at $10, gate admission $15 Friday and Saturday, and $10 on Sunday.
That is the local news buried in the fall calendar. Headliners have not been announced. If you are new to town and have never eaten a mullet dog or watched Parker Willingham play under a tent while your kids ride a Ferris wheel next to a college campus, this is the year to fix that. If you have been here since the pre-COVID era, the sound of a Friday-night crowd walking east on College Boulevard is going to feel like something that was gone.
Everything else on the calendar between now and then
The rest of the summer and early fall does not feel padded, which is not always the case in a small town in August.
- July 25, Niceville Sunset Stampede 5K, 7 p.m. start at Northwest Florida State College. Evening race, which is the only sane way to run in August.
- August 8, 22nd Annual Josh Sprinkle Memorial 5K, 7:30 a.m. Local memorial race with the traditional donut and bagel table before the gun.
- August 20, ELVIS 56' 70th Anniversary tribute at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center on the NWFSC campus.
- September 26, Tyrus at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center.
- October (third weekend), Mullet Festival returns.
The Mattie Kelly programming is worth flagging separately. If you have not been over to the college side of town for a show in a couple of years, the schedule has quietly filled in with touring comedy and music acts that used to skip past Niceville for Pensacola or Destin.
Weeknight and Sunday habits
There is a rhythm forming on the water side of town that is easy to miss if your loop stays north of Highway 20. LJ Schooners Dockside Restaurant & Oyster Bar at 290 Yacht Club Drive in Bluewater Bay runs Sunset Shrimp Boils on summer Sundays starting at 4 p.m., with live music sets from Parker Willingham and Martin Lane on the calendar this June and July. The setup is casual, the boil is the boil, and the point is the sun going down over the bayou.
Add the library programming at 206 Partin Drive North, the puzzle swaps and craft afternoons, the summer reading program that runs June 3 through July 24, and Niceville has a weekly civic pulse that does not require driving to Destin.
One Saturday, plotted
If a friend were visiting and asked what a real Saturday looks like here right now, this is the honest answer:
- 6:45 a.m. Coffee at Create / JoJo's on East John Sims. House-roasted, no line yet.
- 7:30 a.m. Walk the boardwalk from the College Boulevard end. Turn around at the pavilion or keep going and float back down if you brought a tube.
- 11:00 a.m. Lunch at PB&J Bistro at Central Partin. Ask about the bookcase.
- Afternoon. Errands, laundry, actual life. Or a shoulder-season swim at one of the Turkey Creek docks.
- 5:30 p.m. A pint at 3rd Planet, or drive out to LJ Schooners for the shrimp boil if it is Sunday.
- 7:30 p.m. Kiin Café for yakitori and a nightcap, or whatever the Mattie Kelly has on that weekend.
Nobody would do all of that in one day. The point is that you could, without leaving town, and two years ago you could not.
What the pattern says about Niceville
The through line is that Niceville is finally being treated as a place people go, not only a place they leave in the morning to work at Eglin or on the beach. Independent chefs are betting on it. A dormant festival is being brought back. The city is talking with the Air Force about what to do with the land north of College Boulevard. The boardwalk keeps quietly working. Whatever else you thought about the town, this is a different kind of season than the last few have been.
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