During our first day along the Alabama Gulf Coast, we did a lot of exploring of the Orange Beach/Gulf Shores area. Traveling down W. Beach Blvd. west of Gulf Shores Parkway in Gulf Shores, we didn't find many options for restaurants along that stretch of road. After traveling along W. Beach Blvd. for a couple miles and realizing that there were no restaurants down that far, we circled back on Lagoon Ave. and headed back to the east. On our way back down Lagoon Ave, I looked over and saw a restaurant sitting back on 11th Street in Gulf Shores. It had a front porch dining area and looked pretty nice. We decided to give the Beach House a try for dinner that night.
Oklahoma native Brent Sexton graduated from the University of Nevada - Las Vegas with a degree in physical education. He landed a job as a health/physical education teacher and coach at a middle school in Las Vegas just after he graduated in 2012. But after two years as a teacher, he made a 180-degree life turn by quitting teaching and moving with his girlfriend Erika Duff to Gulf Shores to open a restaurant. The couple opened the Beach House Kitchen & Cocktails in October of 2014. The couple got married two years later, then in 2019 they opened a new pizza restaurant in Orange Beach called Sauced. After another life-changing moment - the birth of the Sexton's daughter in 2020 - Brent decided to get into real estate and became an agent in late 2020. Erika Duff continues to run the Beach House and is helped out at Sauced with the Sexton's business partner and chef Lee Bell. And there's a chance you may even see Brent Sexton playing his guitar at one of the many live music venues in and around the Gulf Coast of Alabama. He's obviously a guy who doesn't let the sand stick to his feet.
The Beach House isn't on the beach - not a lot of restaurants in the area were on beach front property - but is situated on 11th Street between W. Beach Blvd. and Lagoon Ave., right in between the Gulf Coast and Little Lagoon. (see map) There was a pretty good sized parking lot in front of the restaurant which shares its building with an ice cream shop and a couple other businesses. We saw cars in the lot with license plates from Illinois, New York, Colorado and Texas.
We were greeted at the front stand by a young lady who asked if we wanted inside or outside dining. The front patio was about half-full, but it was sort of cool outside so we decided to sit inside. She took us to a booth along the wall and dropped off some menus. Moments later, our server for the evening, a laid-back young man by the name of River came over to greet us. My wife got a Tito's and cranberry, while River suggested their house IPA that's made for the Beach House by the Fairhope Brewing Company in Fairhope, AL - about 30 miles away from the coast. We never made it up to Fairhope to try that craft brewery, but I did have a couple of the Causeway IPA's from Fairhope Brewing Co. during our stay along the Gulf Coast. The Beach House IPA that Fairhope Brewing was very good - hoppy, yet smooth.
The dining room at the Beach House featured a long bar with a faux awning across the top of the bar. Quite actually, the decor was rather muted with a few flat-screen televisions and some small pictures on a lime-green wall. There were a number of tables on the hardwood floor in the center of the restaurant while the booths were opposite the bar area. It wasn't fancy, but it certainly wasn't a dive.
We were hungry, but not all that hungry since we had just had a dozen oysters-on-the-shell a couple hours previously. And they were big and meaty oysters, at that. But we needed something else for dinner that evening.
The menu at the Beach House wasn't all that extensive. They had just a handful of entrees, a number of sandwiches and wraps, and just one burger on the menu. They had salads and appetizers including wings, bacon-wrapped shrimp, and spring rolls.
But they also had a handful of tacos on the menu including shrimp tacos, beef tacos, chicken tacos and fish tacos. Of course, I'm a big fan of fish tacos - especially grilled fish tacos. (They also had battered fish tacos on the menu.) I got the blackened fresh-caught triggerfish tacos. They came with shredded lettuce, avocado, chopped tomatoes and red onions. Aged white cheddar cheese came with the tacos, but I told River to hold the cheese. I just don't like cheese on fish tacos. The tacos also came with a chili-lime aioli.
The tacos came on lightly grilled flour soft shells. And there was a nice chunk of blackened triggerfish in the tacos. The chili-lime aioli gave the tacos a nice little punch in taste. The tacos were light and tasty, a perfect dinner for what I needed that evening.
My wife went with the Southwest salad. It sort of intrigued her because the salad featured roasted sweet corn with black beans, chopped red onions and tomatoes, and avocado slices on a bed of mixed greens. Aged white cheddar cheese was supposed to also come with the salad, but she also told River to hold the cheese. A cilantro-lime vinaigrette came with the salad. And for an extra $5 bucks, she got some grilled chicken strips on the top of the salad. She also got a side of mixed vegetables to add to the healthiness of the meal.
She thought her salad was very good. She really liked the different flavors in the salad including the cumin-flavored black beans. My wife offered me a bite of the black beans and I thought they were great - I had never thought about adding cumin to black beans when we make them at home. She was very happy with what she ordered that evening.
As we were having dinner, we heard a commotion coming from the kitchen just off the bar area. Suddenly, bartenders and other waitstaff were running to the kitchen and we wondered what was going on. We hadn't seen River for a while and when I heard someone ask to call for an ambulance, we were worried that something had happened to him. Moments later, the EMT's came in the front door and went back to the kitchen. (Turns out the Gulf Shores fire and rescue station is directly across the street from the Beach House.)
Finally, we saw River come out of the kitchen. My wife said, "Oh, good. There he is." River came over to our table and explained that one of the kitchen workers suddenly fainted and literally fell at his feet.
"I was just coming into the kitchen and I saw her sort of wobble out of the corner of my eye," he was explaining to us. "Then when I turned toward her, she literally fell in front of me." He said that he stayed with her as she came to and up until the EMT's came to help get her up. "So, that was sort of exciting," he said.
"I'll say," my wife said. "We didn't know what was going on and then we heard someone call for an ambulance. And we hadn't seen you for a while."
"Well, that's where I was," he said while apologizing to us for not coming back out to our table to check on us. My wife said there was no need to apologize, but she was worried about they young lady who passed out. "I think she'll be fine," he said. "It gets hot in the kitchen and she may have been dehydrated."
River tried to tempt us with dessert. "We have a key lime pie that I think is the best in the area," he said. As good as he was making it sound, we decided to pass. We were pretty full even with the light meals we just had.
So, other than the excitement in the kitchen, we thought our visit to the Beach House Kitchen & Cocktails was fine. It wasn't anything special, nor was it bad at all. The meals we had - the blackened triggerfish tacos and the Southwestern salad with grilled chicken - were nice and light, exactly what we were looking for. The menu offerings are pretty narrow, but that's usually pretty good compared to restaurants that offer a lot of everything and are usually only average in the quality of the foods. And our server with the unique name - River - did a good job for us. The Beach House was a nice place, nothing fancy, but not a dive. We could see why it was a popular place the night we were there.
I have eaten here several times during my GS visits. always excellent service and fish tacos are the best
Posted by: Carole Zinnel | August 08, 2021 at 08:01 AM