Local Goodness heads back to the cruise terminal
USA Children’s and Women’s Hospital’s Local Goodness fundraiser is back for a third year, and it remains one of the best farm-to-table events on the local calendar. This year’s gathering, sponsored by Hancock Bank, will run Sunday, May 1, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the City of Mobile Alabama Cruise Terminal.
Guests can expect to dine on locally sourced meats, seafood and produce as the event pays tribute to regional art, music and cuisine while raising money and awareness for the hospital’s mission of providing quality health care for children and women across the region. USA Children’s and Women’s is the Gulf Coast’s specialty hospital for obstetrics, neonatal intensive care and pediatric care, and events like Local Goodness support programs that reach families well beyond Mobile — the hospital serves patients from across southwest Alabama, the Mississippi Gulf Coast and the panhandle of Florida.
Bay Gourmet is handling the food this year, with live music from local bluegrass act Fat Man Squeeze setting the tone for the multi-course dinner. Wine and other adult beverages will be available, along with a signature Fat Man Squeeze cocktail, plus a silent auction rounding out the evening. Tickets are $150 and can be purchased by calling 251-415-1636 or visiting the USA Health System website.
The cruise terminal itself has become one of the city’s most distinctive event spaces. Built into the riverfront at the foot of downtown, the Alabama Cruise Terminal put Mobile on the cruise map when it opened in the mid-2000s and now doubles as a hall for galas and festivals, with the river and the skyline as a backdrop that no hotel ballroom can match. For a farm-to-table event, the waterfront setting is also a kind of statement — the venue sits at the point where the Mobile River connects the region’s farms and Gulf waters to the rest of the world.
The “local goodness” theme runs through more than the menu. By design, the event funnels its spending to Gulf Coast growers, fishermen and artisans, turning a fundraiser into a showcase of what the region produces — and a reminder that the hospital’s patients and its suppliers come from the same communities.
Five opens downtown in the former Bull space
After months of buzz, the restaurant Five is finally opening in downtown Mobile’s former Bull location this Thursday, April 28. Rather than a big grand-opening event, the debut is expected to roll straight into normal daily operations.
Hancock Bank’s sponsorship ties the event to one of the Gulf Coast’s oldest financial institutions, a Mississippi-founded bank whose roots in the region run back more than a century and whose community-giving programs have long leaned into children’s health causes. For the bank, Local Goodness is a natural fit: an event that celebrates the region’s producers sits comfortably beside a lender whose fortunes have always risen and fallen with the Gulf Coast economy.
The new “Gulf-to-table” concept sources its seafood from Harbor Docks in Destin, Florida, while leaning on local produce wherever possible. Its hand-cut steaks and hamburgers are fresh, never frozen — the burgers notably built with two thin patties and a slice of American cheese, a departure from the oversized burger trend that’s dominated menus for the past decade.
That sourcing arrangement gives Five an unusual pedigree for a Mobile restaurant. Harbor Docks is a Destin institution with its own fishing fleet connections, and its supplier operation has long furnished fresh Gulf catch to restaurants around the region. For diners, the promise is concrete: fish that was swimming days — sometimes hours — before it hits the plate, and a menu that can change with what the boats bring in.
The burger philosophy is a similar argument for restraint. While competitors chased tall stacks and novelty toppings, Five doubled down on the classic thin-patty format — crisp-edged, griddled flat, stacked two high and finished with American cheese, the kind of burger that dominated Gulf Coast lunch counters for generations. Fresh, never-frozen beef is the other half of the pitch, and it is a costlier standard than many fast-casual operations will accept.
While the space itself is nearly unrecognizable from its previous incarnation, regulars of the Bull should recognize some familiar faces still working the floor and behind the bar. That continuity matters in downtown Mobile’s restaurant scene, where a neighborhood bar’s regulars often follow the staff as much as the address, and where the turnover of a beloved spot is always received with a measure of anxiety.
The opening adds to a downtown corridor that has been rebuilding its entertainment roster block by block, with Dauphin Street’s bar and restaurant strip anchoring the city’s nightlife economy. Each new kitchen widens the range of reasons visitors and residents come downtown after dark — something city officials and merchants have pushed for through a decade of streetscape investments and LoDa entertainment-district marketing.
Finalists set for Alabama Gulf Seafood Cook-Off
The second annual Alabama Gulf Seafood Cook-Off is coming up fast. The Wharf in Orange Beach will host the competition on Wednesday, May 25, starting at 5:30 p.m.
Local favorite Chef Gillian Clark of Kitchen on George will compete against Leonardo Maurelli III of Ariccia Trattoria in Auburn, south Baldwin County headliner Brody Olive of the Perdido Beach Resort in Orange Beach, and Josh Quick of Odette in Florence for the top prize.
The field makes for a genuinely statewide bracket. Clark’s Kitchen on George has become one of Mobile’s favorite neighborhood tables, an Oakleigh-area bistro known for Gulf seafood handled simply. Maurelli’s Ariccia brings the hotel-restaurant polish of Auburn’s Hotel at Auburn University, where he has run an Italian kitchen with a Gulf accent. Olive’s post at the Perdido Beach Resort makes him the home-water favorite — a chef cooking minutes from the boats that supply him. And Quick’s Odette, in the Shoals, represents north Alabama’s surprising rise in the state’s food conversation.
The winning chef advances to the Great American Seafood Cook-Off (GASCO) in New Orleans and earns an automatic qualifying spot in the 2016 World Food Championship, which will also be held at The Wharf later this year.
The stakes give the Orange Beach evening more weight than a friendly cook-off. The Great American Seafood Cook-Off is the national stage where each state’s champion cooks head to head, and Alabama’s representative carries the banner of an industry that is, quite literally, the state’s own — Alabama’s coastal waters and farm-raised operations support one of the largest seafood economies on the Gulf. A win in New Orleans means national exposure for the chef and for Alabama seafood at a moment when Gulf products have been fighting for shelf space against imports.
The World Food Championship connection doubles down on that exposure. Bringing the multi-category world championship to The Wharf puts Orange Beach on a competitive-cooking circuit that draws entrants and audiences from across the country, and it builds on the venue’s growing reputation as a host for large-scale festivals and food events on the Alabama coast.
For the four chefs, the May 25 competition is both contest and showcase — a chance to cook Gulf seafood at its seasonal best for a hometown-adjacent crowd, with a trip to New Orleans on the line. The format typically asks each competitor to present a signature seafood dish to a judging panel, and the public gets to watch the plates come together in real time.
Lebanese American Club hosts Hafli
The Lebanese American Club will present its annual Hafli celebration Saturday, April 30, at 6:30 p.m., offering Lebanese dining, dancing and a silent auction at the St. Mary Catholic School gym. Tickets are $25 for adults and $10 for children 14 and under, with all proceeds benefiting the LAC Scholarship Fund and its affiliated charities. Those interested can contact Kamal Constantine at 251-709-7499 or by email for more details.
The Hafli is one of the area’s longest-running celebrations of Lebanese culture, a community whose immigration to Mobile stretches back more than a century. Families whose names are woven through the city’s merchant history — grocers, shopkeepers and restaurateurs among them — gather for the food and dabke dancing that connect generations to the villages their grandparents left, and the evening’s proceeds have funded scholarships for decades. St. Mary’s gymnasium, in the heart of the neighborhood where many of those families settled, has long been the event’s natural home.
From a hospital gala on the riverfront to a scholarship dance across town, the last days of April put Mobile’s tables to work — raising money, marking heritage and, in the case of a new downtown kitchen, opening the doors. The week ahead offers a full plate in every sense.
The cook-off also lands during a season when the coast is rebuilt around its food identity. In the months since the oil spill clouded the Gulf, restaurants and seafood interests have made a deliberate point of serving — and publicizing — Alabama catch, and a competition built entirely on local seafood doubles as a declaration that the product is safe, abundant and worth celebrating. Organizers expect that message to carry from the Wharf stage all the way to New Orleans in the fall.