During our time along the Gulf Coast of Alabama, we had noticed a restaurant that seemed to be extremely popular. One morning, we even tried to get into the place, but we found that it would be a 30 minute wait. On our last morning in Gulf Shores, we decided come hell-or-high-water, we were going to Hazel's Nook for breakfast. To our surprise, we were immediately seated when we got into the place.
Hazel's Nook was originally called Hazel's Family Restaurant when it opened in 1957. It garnered a reputation for some of the best Southern-style family cooking along the Alabama Gulf Coast. In the early 80's, the original owners were ready to retire and a young man of Richard Schwartz entered the picture. Schwartz took over Hazel's and eventually renamed it Hazel's Nook. A couple years after taking over Hazel's, Schwartz started Doc's Seafood Shack along Canal Road in Orange Beach. Schwartz tried his hand a couple of other concepts - notably Hazel's Family Seafood and Jake's Steakhouse - before combining the two into Doc's Seafood and Steak along Perdido Beach Blvd. in Orange Beach.
We stayed just down the road from Hazel's Nook on our last night in the area. We got up early enough for the start of our long drive back to Iowa and we decided to head to Hazel's Nook before we left town. We didn't know when we'd be able to stop for our next meal and my wife thought it would be a good idea if we had something in the morning.
Pulling into the parking lot at Hazel's Nook, we noticed that there wasn't a line out the door as there was a couple of other times we drove past the restaurant during the morning breakfast hours. (see map) We figured that if people were waiting to get into the place that it had to be a popular place.
We were seated at a table just inside the front door at Hazel's Nook. The place wasn't fancy with generic chairs and tables throughout the place. The low slung ceiling had a number of fans hanging down churning air in the little restaurant. To say it was cozy is an understatement.
Our server was a lady by the name of Terri who came over to give us some menus and to check to see if we wanted any coffee. My wife took some, but I passed. I ended up getting some orange juice instead.
We figured out why Hazel's Nook was so popular. It turns out that Hazel's has both an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet and a lunch buffet. During breakfast, the buffet features house-made biscuits with gravy, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage and fruit offerings. They also have a man at an omelet station making build-your-own omelets. The menu features pancakes, French toast, Eggs Benedict, waffles, and country-style egg breakfasts. They also had a Cajun omelet - the Bienville omelet - that featured crabmeat, Cajun-spiced shrimp, and mozzarella cheese topped with a hollandaise sauce. That certainly got my attention.
(Hazel's lunch menu features sandwiches and burgers, along with their house specialty fried shrimp with hushpuppies. The lunch buffet has a daily feature along with fried chicken, meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, and other lunchtime items.)
I wasn't all that hungry after a dinner we had the night before, but I thought I'd get something. I got the Old Thyme Country Breakfast consisting of two eggs, bacon and toast. For another side, I had a choice of hash browns or grits. Well, hell - I was in the south and I had to try the grits.
The breakfast was pretty basic. The eggs were greasy, the bacon was fine and the grits were, well, they were grits. Now, my gold standard for grits continues to be the ones that they served at the DeSoto Hotel in Savannah, GA. Those grits just melted in my mouth, they had such a wonderful texture and a great flavor. I've never come close to having grits as good as what they served for breakfast at the DeSoto Hotel, but the grits at Hazel's Nook were actually very good.
My wife got the exact same breakfast - eggs over easy with bacon. She got hash browns instead of grits and she got rye toast instead of the whole wheat toast that I got. She, too, thought her breakfast was fine. Nothing spectacular, but definitely not bad.
As we were eating, I had my back to the door. My wife looked around me at one point and said, "We got here at the right time. The line is 12 to 15 people deep outside the door."
I turned around and looked. "It's the breakfast buffet," I said to my wife whose back was to the breakfast buffet. "There's been a steady stream of people going through that and to the omelet bar, too."
They were trying to turn tables quickly and we needed to get on the road. We were hoping to get past Nashville before stopping for the night so we didn't have more than an 8 hour drive the next day to get home.
Hazel's Nook is a popular place with the locals around Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. We noticed the waitstaff talking with a lot of people they knew who came in primarily for the breakfast buffet. Our country-style eggs and bacon breakfast was fine and the grits that I got with my breakfast were good. Hazel's Nook isn't anything fancy, but the food is down-home Southern cooking and that's what has kept them in business for nearly 65 years.
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