Starting as The Captain's Half Shell Oyster Bar in 1985, which appears to have had other locations and likely as well a spin off of the extant Captain Benny's of Houston, today this is the home of Shipwreck Grill since around fall 2009, and the owners, Wade and Mary Beckman, eventually opened a second restaurant (Amico Nave) directly across the way where a hair salon had occupied an old restaurant for years. Perhaps there's hope for NailSpa to become a restaurant again?
While in the immediate years prior (maybe since 2004 to about 2007) it was "The Boat", a seafood restaurant, which repainted the formerly blue boat tan (as well as adding an enclosed bar area, apparently), it was originally "The Captains Half Shell Oyster Bar" back in 1985, with a rather limited menu (all seafood, something The Boat did but Shipwreck Grill does notably not do), and still held that name a decade later. Eventually the restaurant called it quits and the "boat" sat abandoned for a few years. Based on the Sam's Seafood name on the tax records, it may have been a spin-off of another Houston-based restaurant, this time Sam's Boat.
One more thing for you...according to tax records, just prior to Shipwreck changed hands to become "Melting Pot African-Caribbean Cuisine". Certainly sounds intriguing, but unfortunately, I'm sure they'd be out of business by now (and still in the boat?). Meanwhile, Shipwreck Grill, has momentum continuing even in the summer months even years after opening, and doesn't yet have the risk of the newspaper running a snarky headline of "Shipwreck Grill runs aground". Let's hope that doesn't happen.
206 East Villa Maria Road
Slight updates 2019
