No Name Pub

No Name Pub is a small bar and restaurant on Big Pine Key, just off the Overseas Highway on Watson Boulevard. Its dining room, wrapped in dollar bills from wall to ceiling, is as much the attraction as sitting down for a meal. It makes a memorable Keys stop if you want a bit of local character; skip it if you’re trying to eat in a hurry.

Visitors started pinning dollar bills to the walls in the 1970s and 1980s, and the tradition grew until notes covered nearly the whole room. Look up at the ceiling as well as around the walls: the pub’s neon and other old signs are tucked into the same collage. There’s a covered outdoor patio too, so you can choose a more open seat than the dim interior.

The operator traces the business to a 1931 general store and bait-and-tackle shop. A small restaurant room was added in 1936; by the mid-1950s, the shop was gone and the bar and restaurant had become the whole business. That’s when “No Name” was added to the pub’s name. Its history also recounts a brief upstairs brothel that closed in the late 1930s.

The pub says two Italian cooks left behind its pizza recipe around 1960, written on the kitchen wall, and that it is still in use. Pizza is the best fit for the place’s food story. This is a sit-down restaurant with a lot to look at; visitors report that waits and pizza can run long when it’s busy, so leave room for a slow meal. The pub has its own parking and restrooms, and the patio gives you an outdoor option.