Avenue Pub at Terry Cove: Fresh Food, Cold Drinks and Dolphins at the Dock in Orange Beach

Ask Jessica Alford what brought her from Cincinnati, Ohio, to the general manager’s office of a waterfront restaurant in Orange Beach, Alabama, and she will give you two answers. First, she says that in 2015, both she and her mom had a bit of a mid-life crisis. Second, it coincided with the cold weather in Cincinnati. The two of them moved south, landed in Pensacola, and fell in love with the coast.

Today Alford runs the Avenue Pub’s Orange Beach location at Hudson Marina, where the food comes out fresh daily, the bands play through the weekend, and dolphins — she will tell you herself — show up outside the kitchen door most mornings.

From the Hangout to the Pub

Alford’s route through the beach hospitality world ran through one of its biggest names. She began working with the Hangout Hospitality Group and moved to Orange Beach in 2019, staying with the company for five years. During the pandemic she worked from home as a blogger helping with web content, and she admits the adjustment was not for her. “A lot of people struggle with going from brick and mortar to working from home,” she said. “I’m one of them.”

She missed the chaos of the restaurant business, the characters who work in the industry, and most of all the customers. So she dusted off her resume, posted it online, and immediately got a call from Craig Williams, founder and owner of Avenue Pub. She interviewed in December and started as general manager in January.

A Tuscaloosa Original Comes to the Beach

Avenue Pub started in Tuscaloosa and expanded with the Orange Beach restaurant, its second location. Williams purchased the former Anchor Bar and Grill space on Terry Cove at Hudson’s Marina, along with the rights to the restaurant and bar menu, and briefly considered continuing to operate as the Anchor Bar. Regulars found the name game confusing, so Williams decided to transition fully to the Avenue Pub brand.

The location is the real anchor. Situated where the water meets the beach, the pub can be reached by car or by boat, and Hudson Marina’s pier hosts fishing charters, dolphin cruises, pontoon and jet ski rentals, and the renowned Orange Beach pirate ship cruise. Upstairs, the open-air restaurant and bar look out over Terry Cove, the Perdido Pass bridge and Robinson Island to the east — one of the best free views in a town full of them.

Downstairs, plenty of TVs keep sports on, and the sandy edge below is a favorite spot for kids to chase hermit crabs while parents enjoy a cold beverage. Dogs are welcome on leashes, provided they stay well-behaved, which makes the pub a regular stop for the boat-and-dog crowd that defines Orange Beach weekends.

The Menu: Fresh, Small and Deliberate

About thirty percent of the menu is shared with the Tuscaloosa store, including the Sriracha Burger and the Chicken Club, but the rest belongs to Orange Beach — and it is built on a simple principle. The concept is founded on a made-fresh-daily menu and a fun atmosphere. “Everything we do is by continuous prep,” Alford says. “We don’t even own a freezer.”

The kitchen’s best seller is the shrimp taco, and the method explains why. Fresh Gulf shrimp get a house flour and seasoning mix, a bath in egg wash, and about thirty seconds in the fryer so they come out light and crispy. The toasted tortillas are topped with house-made sweet chili mayo, cabbage slaw and cheddar cheese. The smoked tuna dip is a made-from-scratch family recipe, prepared with freshly caught tuna loin that is smoked in-house and broken down by hand.

The fish and chips have developed their own following. The kitchen uses wild-caught grouper bought and brought in-house for prep, and Alford is matter-of-fact about the skill involved: “You need to understand the anatomy of the fish to know how to cut them.” The fish tacos get the same treatment, with a house blackening seasoning and an olive oil marinade, topped with homemade strawberry sriracha sauce and goat cheese crumbles. Every burger on the menu is 100 percent Certified Angus Beef, never frozen.

Cocktails With a View

The bar program leans crisp and refreshing, built to pair with the food and the heat. The Salty Dog mixes Tito’s vodka with freshly squeezed grapefruit juice. The Strawberry Basil is fashioned with Honeysuckle Vodka and a fresh puree of strawberries and basil. On a summer afternoon on the upper deck, with fans spinning and the bridge in view, the drinks do exactly what they are supposed to do.

Live music runs Thursday through Sunday in the high season, scaling back to Friday and Sunday in the winter months, when the snowbird crowd keeps the deck busy. The pub also hosts private groups with enough notice, and management is tuned in to customer requests when it comes to adding new food items and cocktails to the small, deliberate menu.

A Day in the Life on Terry Cove

Alford’s favorite part of the job is the setting itself. She loves being outside, especially after Cincinnati winters, and on slow mornings she has been known to fish off the restaurant. Every day she sees dolphins and fish all over the place. “I love it here,” she says — a simple summary of a career that moved from Ohio to Pensacola to the Hangout to the pub, and found its footing at the edge of Terry Cove.

For visitors plotting an Orange Beach itinerary, the pub’s position inside the Hudson Marina complex makes it an easy half-day: a morning dolphin cruise or fishing charter, lunch on the deck, an afternoon on the sand below, and live music as the sun drops behind the bridge. Boaters can tie up and walk up; landlocked visitors will find parking on site.

In a beach town dense with restaurants, Avenue Pub’s formula is refreshingly unpretentious: buy good fish, prep it fresh every day, keep the menu short, hire people who love the water, and let the view do the rest. It is a formula that has worked since the day the Anchor Bar’s old space became the second Avenue Pub, and with the marina’s boats coming and going below the deck, it is working still.

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