Fellsmere restaurant serves traditional Florida cuisine with a side of local history

For two decades, Marsh Landing has claimed pride of place on Broadway Street in downtown Fellsmere.

But the sprawling restaurant, with it's original cypress doorframes and eclectic décor, harbors a history that's as old as the town itself.

The restaurant serves mouth-watering helpings of fried frog legs, fried chicken and meatloaf with a generous side of community spirit.

"We've been honored over the years to be treated like a museum," said Susan Adams, who owns Marsh Landing with her semi-retired mother, Fran Adams, "but also like a clearing house."

Built in 1926 by the Fellsmere Estates Corp., the building went on to become headquarters for the Florida Crystal Sugar Co.

Fellsmere's past and present co-mingle on the walls of Marsh Landing's dining and banquet rooms. Rusted farm tools and framed Frog Leg Festival posters share space with gator hides and deer heads. Copies of the Fellsmere Farmer newspaper are laminated onto the table tops.

The treasures include a bobcat, a whole dear and an elk head hunted by a local man whose wife wanted it out of the house.

"They bring them to us because then they can still tell the stories and show their friends," Susan said.

There's a set of china that used to belong to the Historic Library Association, and there's a whole, taxidermized deer standing in a back hallway. A metal plaque honoring Gilbert E. Barkoskie, 1893-1983, named Cattleman of the Century by the Florida Cattlemen's Association, hangs near the front door.

"You never know what's going to come through the door at Marsh Landing," she said.

A little town with a lot of history

Fellsmere, which has a population of about 5,500, incorporated in the early 1900s, and in 1915 was the first city in Florida to grant women the right to vote.

It's always been an agricultural community, first growing vegetables, then sugar and later citrus.

Today, B&W Quality Produce grows watercress and arugula in the area, and grapefruit continues to be a big local crop.

By the 1960s, migrant workers were coming to Fellsmere to work in the citrus groves, Adams said.

"When I was growing up, the school would double in size during picking season December through March," Adams said of the '80s and '90s.

Now those migrant families have started putting down roots and have been in the area for two or three generations, she said.

The population is now about 75% Hispanic, Adams said.

The town includes multiple Mexican groceries, taco stands and restaurants.

"You can get all different kinds of tacos, because they're from different parts of Mexico," Adams said.

She's proud of the melting pot of flavors her town has become and the part Marsh Landing plays in it.

"We opened to tell the story of Fellsmere and to protect the history of Fellsmere."

A family of service

To understand the founding of Marsh Landing, it helps to have some background on the Adams family.

Tom Adams, was a third generation Floridian born in Jacksonville. He got into politics as a young man and was in the state Senate before serving as secretary of state from 1961 to 1971, then as lieutenant governor from 1971 to 1975.

Tom met Fran, who served in the Peace Corps, while on a trip to Colombia. The two married, and moved to Melbourne in 1980.

Tom, who had served on the Florida Tech Board of Trustees from 1965 to 1974, became the development associate and later vice president for University Development, according to university archivist Anna Norris.

"We came to Melbourne when I was 2," said Tom and Fran's daughter, Susan.

After first living near the university, the family moved to Fellsmere, just across the Brevard County line in Indian River County.

"They wanted us to have a more rural experience," Susan said of her parents.

Fran Adams immediately became involved in the Fellsmere community. She had a plant nursery and a landscaping business. She served on the Indian River County Commission. She helped start the Fellsmere Frog Leg Festival, which celebrates its 33rd year in January.

When she was growing up, Susan remembers the old Fellsmere Estates building as kind of scary. It was boarded up and abandoned. "The city was going to tear it down," she said.

In 1996, her mother talked to city officials about auctioning off the property instead. Fran Adams went to watch the auction and came home a few hours later with a surprise.

"She said, 'I didn't like what anybody was going to do with it, so I bought it,'" Susan said. "A lot of people think the (Frog Leg) festival came out of the restaurant. The restaurant actually came out of the festival."

Building a community institution

Fran's family had a restaurant in North Carolina, so she knew the business.

Still, it took six years to get Marsh Landing open. In addition to renovations and restorations, she worked with the city and the county to bring a sewer line into downtown Fellsmere. She didn't want to open a restaurant and have to serve food on paper plates.

Susan and her sister Sarah were in college when the restaurant opened. T.J., their younger brother, was still in high school, so he worked there in the beginning.

Susan graduated from law school in 2004, and came home to help her mother prepare the restaurant for a hurricane. That was the Space and Treasure Coasts' triple threat hurricane season. Each time Susan prepared to head back to Tallahassee, another storm loomed.

"I ended up staying," she said, something she'd secretly planned all along. She promised her mother she'd get a law degree, but she never promised to get a law job.

"I just kind of wiggled my way in and made myself indispensable," she said.

Recipe for success

Since then, the mother and daughter have turned the restaurant into a local institution.

A coffee club meets every morning for breakfast and gossip.

"If you're not the hot topic at coffee club, you got away with it," Susan said with a chuckle.

Thursday is bluegrass night, with a two-hour jam session. (Make a reservation two weeks in advance if you want to go.)

Marsh Landing is where many local teenagers interview for their first job. Susan loves watching them go off to college and come back home to start families.

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Her father, who died in 2006, used to come in for lunch daily.

Many of the recipes come from Susan's grandmother, like the fried chicken, collard greens and the cornbread.

Susan developed her swamp cabbage recipe by talking with Fellsmere old-timers. "Because it's a wild tree, each batch has a different flavor," she said of the dish made from the hearts of cabbage palms.

Though Fran travels a lot now, leaving Susan in charge, the restaurant is still a family affair. Susan's husband, Jay Davey, cuts cabbage palms for the swamp cabbage stew. Their 13-year-old son, James Henry, sometimes works as a host or busser.

Susan followed her mother's lead, serving on the Fellsmere City Council, as mayor and now on the Indian River County Commission.

"My mom always said if you're going to be part of the community, you have to be part of the community," Susan said.

It's advice she's taken to heart.

"It keeps us out of trouble, and busy, and in the middle of everything," she said. "And you know every Southern woman wants to be in the middle of everything."

Suzy Fleming Leonard is a features journalist with more than three decades of experience. Reach her at sleonard@floridatoday.com. Find her on Facebook: @SuzyFlemingLeonard or on Instagram: @SuzyLeonard. 

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: On the menu at Marsh Landing: Fried frog legs and lots of local history