"We love it," Charles Mereday said, describing his return to south Alabama after nearly two decades away. Mereday had spent 35 years cooking, 25 of them as an owner, including a run as executive chef at Mobile's Battle House Hotel. He and business partner Brittany Hadden were living in Evansville, Indiana, running their own restaurant there, when a consulting project brought them back to Baldwin County last November. They never left. Their new restaurant, Atticus, opened this year in the exact storefront at 61 N. Section Street where Plane & Level Coastal used to be, before it closed in September 2025.
That detail matters more than it sounds. Fairhope didn't build a new restaurant district this year. It refilled an old one, and it refilled it with people who could have opened almost anywhere.
The résumés behind the new menus
Atticus is the most recent arrival, but it's not an outlier. Look at who else has picked Fairhope in the last eighteen months.
Little Bird opened at 404 Oak Ave. in June 2025 under chef Bill Briand, a five-time James Beard Award nominee who got his start knocking on the back door of Emeril's in New Orleans. The restaurant, run by Deep Roots Restaurant Group (the same team behind Hope Farm), was named for Briand's late mother. This year, The Local Palate's "Ultimate Alabama Dining Guide" named Briand Best Chef in the state.
Pearl brought chef Will Sams downtown, a Gulf Coast native trained at the Culinary Institute of America who cut his teeth with New Orleans's Link Restaurant Group (Cochon, Fishers) before helping open Playa in Orange Beach. Kingfisher Seafood, which opened in January 2025 under a canopy of live oaks, is the first Baldwin County concept from Tyler Hood, who owns several Chimes restaurants across Louisiana. And this August, 87 West opened at 212 Fairhope Avenue as a cocktail-first bar from sisters Carly and Chelsea Pirtle and partner Steve Olechnowicz, after clearing final approval from the Fairhope City Council in July. Carly cut her teeth behind the bar at Dragonfly Foodbar just down the street. The name is a nod to the town's own line of longitude.
None of these people needed Fairhope. A Battle House alum, a James Beard nominee, a CIA-trained chef with New Orleans pedigree, an owner of multiple Louisiana restaurants. They could have opened in Mobile, New Orleans, or Nashville. They opened here, in storefronts that already had front doors.
| New Arrival | Landed At | Background |
|---|---|---|
| Atticus | 61 N. Section St. (former Plane & Level Coastal) | Charles Mereday, ex-Battle House Hotel executive chef |
| Little Bird | 404 Oak Ave. | Bill Briand, five-time James Beard Award nominee |
| Pearl | Downtown Fairhope | Will Sams, CIA-trained, former Link Restaurant Group |
| Kingfisher Seafood | Downtown Fairhope | Tyler Hood, owner of multiple Chimes locations in Louisiana |
| 87 West | 212 Fairhope Ave. | Carly and Chelsea Pirtle, Steve Olechnowicz |
The same pattern off Section Street
The restaurant wave gets the headlines, but the same reuse-not-expand pattern shows up everywhere else downtown, and it's worth noticing because it tells you something about how tight this footprint actually is.
Apple Market is taking over the former Winn-Dixie space at 187 Baldwin Square this year. Owner Kamal Constantine, who already runs several Piggly Wiggly stores across Mobile and Baldwin counties, chose to bring in a new, locally grounded brand rather than hand the space to another national chain.
A few blocks over, Swanky Stitch didn't even need its own address. The needlepoint boutique opened inside Downtown Nutrition at 9 N. Church Street in July, sharing the floor with an existing business rather than displacing one. Lartigue's Seafood Market, a name Fairhope has known since 1978, made a similar move, recently relocating into the Eastern Shore Shopping Center rather than building new.
Put those three together with the restaurant list and a pattern holds across every category, dining, grocery, and retail alike. Downtown Fairhope's square footage isn't growing much. What's inside it is changing hands, and changing hands fast.
What it means for a weeknight here
If you already live in Fairhope, the practical version of all this is simple. You no longer have to cross the bay for a serious tasting menu. Atticus is doing a four-course format with foie gras, handmade dumplings, a 36-ounce porterhouse, and a wood-fired veal chop, all a few blocks from where Plane & Level used to sit. Little Bird is doing Gulf-forward Southern cooking from a chef the state's own dining guide just called the best in Alabama. Between those two and Pearl, that's three kitchens with real regional credentials inside a five-minute walk of each other, something this town didn't have two years ago.
It also means your errands look a little different than they did last year. If your grocery habits were built around the old Winn-Dixie, that space is becoming Apple Market this year, same building, new name on the door. If you've been driving to Daphne or Mobile for a needlepoint canvas, that hobby now has a home nine steps into Downtown Nutrition.
The other practical note, the one nobody puts in a press release: when this many destination-level businesses land inside the same four or five blocks, parking on Section Street and Church Street on a Friday night gets tighter than it used to be. Plan to walk a block further than you're used to, or go earlier than you think you need to.
None of this changes what downtown Fairhope looks like from the street. The buildings are the same ones that were here last year, some of them the same ones from a century ago. What's different is who's cooking, pouring, and stocking shelves inside them, and the caliber of who chose to do it here instead of somewhere bigger.
If you're already living the daily version of this town, that's the story worth knowing before your next reservation. And if you're the kind of person who tracks a market by watching who moves into it, not just who moves out, the Beach to Bay Group keeps an eye on both sides of that ledger across Fairhope and the rest of Baldwin County.
