If you've lived in Port Orange long enough, you know the pull-off under the Dunlawton Bridge without needing an address. It's where the commercial boats tie up, where the smell test used to be the whole point of a stop at Two Jerks Seafood, and where a lot of us learned that fresh means the ice never quite melts before you get it home. For years, that lot at 79 Dunlawton Ave was a market first and a landmark second.
As of this year, that's flipped. The retail counter is gone. What's coming in its place is a restaurant, and it's going to change the shape of an already crowded little stretch of waterfront dining.
What actually happened to the market
Two Jerks closed its retail seafood market on January 1. The family posted a thank-you on Facebook a couple of days later, telling regulars they'd share updates once construction on the new restaurant got underway. The commercial fishing and wholesale side of the business, the boats and the direct sourcing from Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina waters, kept running. The counter where you used to grab shrimp or a red snapper fillet on the way home from the beach did not.
That property has a longer history than most people realize. James C. and Virginia Freeman bought it in the 1980s. It later operated as King's Seafood before becoming Two Jerks under father and son James P. and Michael Freeman. Before any of that, it was the site of DJ's Deck, a name some longtime residents still use out of habit.
The city paperwork tells the rest of the timeline. A site plan modification went in last October to redevelop the market into a full restaurant, adding restrooms and a kitchen, tearing down the existing tiki hut, and rebuilding a larger structure with an outdoor bar. The waterfront footprint is being extended too. Michael Freeman told Business Debut in June that the concept is now called Two Jerks Tiki Bar & Grill, and it's not aiming to be a special-occasion spot. The menu leans into burgers, fried chicken sandwiches, fried fish sandwiches, and steamed shrimp, priced so a family can eat without what Freeman called
"absurd" pricing.
Freeman also said the goal is to serve vacationers, locals, and race visitors looking for a family meal on the water, which is worth sitting with for a second if you live nearby. Race weekends already reroute traffic and fill parking along Ridgewood and Dunlawton. A restaurant built with that crowd in mind, sitting right where boats already unload, means this corner of the river is about to see more weekend foot traffic than it has in years, not less.
As for timing, engineering delays have pushed the original schedule back. Freeman's June estimate put the earliest opening window at November or December of this year, with February or March of 2027 as a real possibility if the engineering work runs long. So if you're the type who plans a first visit around a birthday or a boat trip, don't pencil it in before winter.
The dining row that was already there
What makes this news land differently in Port Orange than it might elsewhere is that Two Jerks isn't opening in isolation. It's dropping into a dining cluster that's formed, restaurant by restaurant, along the same short bend of the Halifax River near the bridge.
Our Deck Down Under has been running for twenty years just under the Dunlawton Bridge, with its own boat slips so guests can dock and walk straight up for a fried fish basket or a plate of steamed oysters. Aunt Catfish's On the River, over on Halifax Drive, has built a genuine following around Southern comfort food, a fixins bar, and cinnamon rolls that regulars specifically plan around. Tiki Docks Port Orange, on South Ridgewood, leans into the tropical drink and river-view side of things. A little further south on Peninsula Drive, Pat's Riverfront Cafe has quietly held down the daytime shift for more than thirty years, the kind of place where the servers know your order before you sit down.
Add Two Jerks Tiki Bar & Grill to that list and you've got four sit-down waterfront spots within a few minutes of each other, all built around the same view of the same bend in the river. That's not a coincidence of geography. It's a dining district that grew organically out of a working waterfront, and it's still growing.
For residents, this is the kind of detail that matters more day to day than it might seem. If Two Jerks pulls even a fraction of the race-weekend crowd Freeman is describing, parking and wait times at Our Deck Down Under and Aunt Catfish's could shift on the busiest weekends of the year. If you've got a standing Sunday brunch habit at one of these spots, this is worth knowing before the new place opens, not after you're stuck circling for a spot.
What locals lose in the meantime
The part of this story that doesn't get much attention outside Port Orange is what disappeared along with the market. There's no longer a walk-in counter under that bridge where you can pick your own fillet, ask a question about how to cook it, and walk out ten minutes later with dinner. That resource is gone for now, and it won't come back in the same form once the restaurant opens. The wholesale and commercial fishing side continues, which is good news for the family's fishermen and their long-term footing on a working waterfront that keeps shrinking elsewhere on the East Coast, but it doesn't help you if you were counting on a Tuesday afternoon stop for shrimp.
That tradeoff is worth naming plainly. A retail seafood market that served the neighborhood for years became unavailable in January, and what replaces it won't open until winter at the earliest. For a few months, this stretch of river is quieter than usual. That's not a bad thing if you like your waterfront a little less busy right now. It is a real gap if buying fresh, local seafood on your own schedule was part of your routine.
Why this is worth watching
None of this is a reason to do anything differently today. It's a reason to pay attention over the next several months. A forty-year-old family business is betting on a bigger, more casual restaurant model instead of a retail counter, and it's building that bet around exactly the kind of foot traffic Port Orange already sees every race weekend. Whether that bet pays off will say something about how this little cluster under the bridge keeps evolving, and it'll be visible in real time: construction progress, a soft opening, the first busy Saturday.
If you're the kind of person who already has an opinion about the smoked fish dip at Our Deck Down Under or the cinnamon rolls at Aunt Catfish's, you'll probably form one about Two Jerks Tiki Bar & Grill too, eventually. For now, the honest answer is that the market is gone, the restaurant isn't open yet, and the best move is to keep an eye on that corner through the fall.
Wendy Schwoerer and her team have spent more than 25 years paying attention to details like this across Port Orange and the rest of Volusia County, the kind of local texture that doesn't show up in a market report but shapes how a neighborhood actually feels to live in. If you're curious about what else is changing nearby, or you ever want to talk through anything real estate related in Port Orange, the Wendy Schwoerer Team is easy to reach and happy to talk, no pressure attached.