Tucked about half a mile east of County Road 32 on Boothe Road, well off Fairhope’s well-traveled commercial corridors, Clovis Café has quietly built one of the friendliest followings in Baldwin County by sticking to a simple formula: cook everything from scratch, serve it fast, and treat every customer like a regular.
Owners Tania Cooper and Faye Klumpp opened the café in May 2024, and the place has been humming at lunchtime — and on many weekday evenings — ever since. The dining room fills with a mix of workers on their lunch break, families grabbing dinner and church groups lingering over breakfast, and the staff, in a rotating wardrobe of brightly colored T-shirts, greet arrivals through the wooden front doors more like neighbors than customers.
Those shirts carry the café’s unofficial motto. The front reads “Clovis Café.” The back reads, “You had me at Swamp Soup.”
The name on the door
New customers routinely ask about the name, and the answer has nothing to do with food history or family lineage. “Clovis is the name of Faye’s French bulldog,” Cooper said with a laugh. The dog got top billing; the food got the reputation.
That reputation rests on a menu of Southern diner staples made to order. With the exception of the Swamp Soup — the signature item that lent the T-shirts their punchline — and the daily special, every dish is prepared when it is ordered rather than held in a steam table. The daily specials rotate widely, from savory meatloaf to a Philly cheesesteak, and regulars have learned to check the café’s Facebook page, where the day’s desserts, sides and specials are posted each morning.
Swamp Soup and Simply Supreme
Swamp Soup, the dish that inspired the branding, is the kind of hyper-local specialty that defines small Gulf Coast kitchens: a hearty, green-flecked pot of turnip greens and vegetables that regulars order by name. It sits alongside a dessert case anchored by the “Simply Supreme Cheesecake,” available by the slice for dining in or as a nine-inch, twelve-cut round to carry home for a family table.
The kitchen is accommodating beyond the standard menu. The café caters private events, and it offers gluten-free, vegetarian and low-sugar options — a range that is still unusual among down-home Southern diners and one of the reasons the customer base keeps widening beyond the immediate neighborhood.
A family place, in practice
What sets Clovis apart, regulars say, is less the menu than the atmosphere. The staff work in casual attire and multiple shirt hues, the pace is unhurried, and children are treated as full customers rather than an afterthought. Online reviews since opening have followed the same themes: excellent breakfasts, top-notch hospitality, and the feeling of eating in someone’s kitchen rather than a restaurant.
That is a niche in demand in eastern Baldwin County. As Fairhope’s population has pushed outward along the Farm and Highway 104 corridors, family-run cafés like Clovis have filled gaps left by national chains, serving the morning coffee-and-eggs crowd and the after-church lunch rush that larger establishments often pass over.
Homemade, and priced for families
The made-from-scratch approach shows up in the details. Soups and specials are prepared in-house, the cheesecakes are built in the kitchen rather than shipped in frozen, and portions are sized to what a working family actually eats. The café also keeps its offerings flexible — catering trays for office lunches and celebrations, low-sugar desserts for diabetic customers, vegetarian plates for the increasing number of diners who ask for them.
Cooper and Klumpp have deliberately kept the operation lean and personal. Both owners work the room alongside their staff, which is part of why the café’s small dining area can feel like a community room at peak hours. On weekend mornings it is not unusual to see tables of friends who arrived separately end up in one long conversation.
Finding it
Clovis Café sits at 19548 Boothe Road in Fairhope, roughly a half mile east of the intersection with County Road 32. It is a short drive from central Fairhope but a world away from the traffic of Highway 98, which is precisely the point: this is a destination for people who plan their lunch, not people who stumble into it.
Hours vary by season, and the daily specials change without notice, so the café’s Facebook page remains the most reliable guide to both. Customers who make the drive once, regulars say, tend to make it again — and to bring friends the second time.
For a town that has gained national attention for its art scene, its bayfront and its boutiques, there is something fitting about one of its best-kept culinary secrets sitting on a quiet road in the county, named after a French bulldog, serving Swamp Soup to a room full of friends.