Locals restaurant in Fairhope, Alabama, caters to visitors and, yes, lots of locals
Locals Fairhope is known for its gourmet burgers. (Susan Swagler / Alabama News Center)
Wherever you visit, it’s almost always a great idea to eat where the locals eat. In the artsy, tourist-friendly town of Fairhope on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, locals eat at Locals. So, you should, too.
Locals Fairhope is owned by the husband-and-wife team of Wade and Ashley Peryer. After managing other people’s restaurants for years, they wanted a place of their own. Mindful of the neighboring restaurants already in business, they decided, in 2011, to open something that Fairhope didn’t have: a gourmet burger place.
The name of their farm-to-table restaurant and bar with gourmet burgers and lots more reflects the couple’s commitment to their community – especially their food community.
“When my wife and I first came up with the idea of opening a restaurant, we decided, since we live in a breadbasket – Baldwin County – that produces so many good things, to use local ingredients,” Wade says. “Plain and simple.”
Locals Fairhope serves locals and visitors with fresh ingredients sourced in Alabama from Alabama News Center on Vimeo.
Ashley is from Fairhope. Wade grew up in New Zealand, but he knows this area and its culinary treasures quite well.
“We have Local Appetite,” Wade adds. “They provide us with our spring mix, radishes, cucumbers. … It all depends on the season.” Mushroom Man Tan sources the restaurant’s wild mushrooms. They also rely on a farmer named J.C. Bishop as well as Urban Pepper Farm for seasonal vegetables. Even regular folks in the community – many of them customers – who have locally grown produce of their own contribute to the menu here. “Satsumas,” Wade says. “Meyer lemons. We get messages all the time, ‘Hey, do you want some satsumas?’ We just buy in small batch and come up with a recipe for whatever we can get.”
This “priority on using fresh, local ingredients” is one thing that sets Locals apart, Wade says. “Now that’s not to say other restaurants don’t do it,” he adds, “but I don’t think they do it to the extent we do. Everything is prepared fresh every day. Fresh is best. And you can taste it.”
Locals is regionally famous for its burgers, and between the regular options and a rotating “special” burger made with something you might not yet have tried – like kangaroo or camel or elk – the choices can be daunting.
Want to build your own burger? Get ready to make some important decisions. Proteins include grass-fed beef, bison, pork, cage-free chicken and a weekly wild game. Cheeses range from Baldwin baby Swiss to caraway-flavored Leyden to Cajun spice to a rosemary-scented semi-soft Provence. There are several toppings: sautéed onions or mushrooms, bacon, avocado, boudin, egg, pineapple, jalapeños and more. Sauces include mint or garlic or roasted red pepper aioli, peppercorn mustard and a spicy sauce called viper, among others. Choose your bread – a French roll or focaccia or whole wheat – or go breadless on a salad.
“There’s 14,000 different combinations on our menu,” Wade says. “If you did the math and went through, times, times, times is 14,000 with the breads we use, the cheeses we use, the proteins we use, the topping and sauces we use, the sides. So yeah, 14,000 different combinations.
“We have our select burgers,” he says, “just to make it easy on people, because it can be quite overwhelming. Someone sits down and says, ‘Alright, I gotta create a burger.’ Some people just stick with a regular cheddar cheeseburger. Some people create their own masterpiece. Sky’s the limit. It’s great.”
The weekly wild game choices get people talking.
Wade says that Addam Evans of Evans Meats & Seafood can provide Locals with “pretty much any game that’s available – as long as it’s not endangered. We’ve gone from python to camel, llama, kangaroo, antelope, bison, wild boar, emu. … I love the idea because, you know, I think the more exotic you get, more eyebrows you raise. It generates interest; people talk. My wife and I, at first, had a conversation about, ‘Whoa, we’ve gotta tame down the wild game. We don’t want to be known as that freak place.’ I listened to her and haven’t gone too extravagant, but I’d like to.”
About that python. “We didn’t actually do a burger with the python,” Wade says. “We did python cakes, very similar to a crab cake.” They served them with a homemade remoulade and sold out in an hour and a half.
Other dishes at Locals Fairhope include made-to-order pastas, farm-fresh sides and fish from the nearby Gulf. Expect dishes like pink-eyed pea salad; cheesy arancini with roasted red pepper aioli; a blackened mahi sandwich with fenugreek cheese, sautéed onions and peppercorn mustard; Gulf-fresh shrimp and grits with Conecuh Sausage; and wild mushroom pasta in a garlicky cream sauce. Everything is from scratch, even the breads and desserts.
Locals, in the heart of Fairhope’s bustling downtown, is a singular place that beckons visitors to sit a spell, and there are plenty of places to do that.
The restaurant is in a beautiful Tuscan-style building with wood beams and terracotta tiles. There’s a spacious porch, breezy with ceiling fans; a cozy, romantic private dining room; a bright, window-lit front dining room near the busy kitchen; and THE BAR with daily happy hours, full service, inventive cocktails, wine and local craft beers at a handsome mahogany and marble bar.
Perhaps most striking, and one of the main reasons the Peryers relocated from another space nearby (where they enjoyed several successful years), is the large, beautiful, meandering, cobblestone-paved courtyard. It’s deeply shaded with native trees and shrubs, comfortable seating and lots of tropical plants in interesting planters. “You can relax, have a glass of wine, some great food and just pretend you’re somewhere else,” Wade says.
Ashley always wanted to be able to offer music, and this gives her a space to showcase local talent on Friday and Saturday nights.
“It’s just a good, local gathering spot for anyone to come enjoy themselves,” Wade says. “I think it creates a place for people to escape. To enjoy fresh, quality food in a positive atmosphere. My wife and I are very metaphysical when it comes to positive energy, and we’ve done a fantastic job generating and creating that here. And I just hope a lot of our guests will take a little bit of that with them.”
Like most places near the Gulf beaches, customers are seasonal and varied. “The locals love us; the tourists hear about us, and they come to check us out,” Wade says. When the locals go out of town in the summertime, the tourists take their places. “It happens that we’re in the top five of Yelp and Google and TripAdvisor,” Wade says. “And we have been that way for the last 10 years, which I’m proud of. And I attribute that to my crew, because they’re maintaining the standards we put forth and it’s a recipe for success.”
He’s also proud, he says, of his wife, his kids, and his culinary team and the success they’ve grown together. Wade says he employs nearly 30 people. “I’ve worked in restaurants my whole life, and I can honestly say that the morale and the crew I have are fantastic. We owe a lot of our success to the people we have. We try to foster a positive, happy work environment. We like to cut up … but when push comes to shove, we get in there and do the work.
“Every morning, I wake up and my feet hit the floor, my tail wags and I go at it. I’m happy to do it because I’m proud of it.”
312 Fairhope Ave.
Fairhope, Alabama 36532
Hours:
Lunch served Sunday through Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Dinner Tuesday through Saturday 5 to 9 p.m.
Susan Swagler has written about food and restaurants for more than three decades, much of that time as a trusted restaurant critic. She shares food, books, travel and more at www.savor.blog. Susan is a founding member and past president of the Birmingham chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier International, a philanthropic organization of women leaders in food, wine and hospitality whose members are among Birmingham’s top women in food.
