BAY MINETTE, Ala. — A fire tore through Streets Seafood Restaurant on Highway 31 in Bay Minette Saturday, destroying the building and leaving behind four decades of memories for a community that considered the restaurant a second home.
The owner’s daughter, Leigh Overstreet Johnson, said the fire started in the kitchen before spreading through the entire building. Multiple crews, including Bay Minette Fire Rescue, responded as thick smoke poured from the structure. Everyone inside escaped safely, but the restaurant was declared a total loss.
“We just tried to get everyone out and make sure everyone was safe. Then we kind of just watched our whole livelihood burn up,” Johnson said.
Four Decades in Bay Minette
Streets Seafood was founded in 1986 by Eugene Overstreet, a Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient, and had served the Bay Minette community for nearly 40 years. Known to regulars simply as “Street’s,” the restaurant became a fixture on Highway 31, a stretch of road thousands of drivers pass every day.
Johnson said her father took pride in serving both his country and his community through the restaurant, and that the loss extends well beyond her immediate family.
“We are grieving, like this is our whole world we just lost. Our family, the employees, but then I was like … this is the community’s grief too, like they’re going to share this with us,” Johnson said.
Hours after the fire, the restaurant’s Facebook page posted a message that echoed that sentiment: “As a family we are grieving what was the center of our world and after today we realized that our community and customers will also be grieving what Streets meant to them.”
A Sunday Without the Lunch Crowd
By Sunday morning, the usual post-church lunch rush that filled the restaurant’s parking lot for decades was gone, replaced by a wrecked building and yellow caution tape. Johnson returned to the scene Sunday afternoon to survey the damage.
“It just breaks my heart to see it all because I was just walking around in there yesterday,” she said. “Our whole family worked there and helped. Everybody wanted it to succeed. We have employees that dedicated their lives to Street’s and loved it just as much as we did.”
Longtime customers described a restaurant that felt like an extension of their own families. Wanda Shiver, who lives nearby, recalled being brought to Streets as a child.
“Been there since I was a little bitty kid. And my parents would say ‘let’s go to Street’s’ after they’ve been out drinking all night, and that’s where we’d go. They’d come get the kids, we’d go up to Street’s and eat. It’s a very family-oriented place,” Shiver said.
Eric Watts, another neighbor, echoed that sense of loyalty. “I’m 60 years old. I’ve been going here since I was a kid. It’s just a local place that everybody loves, people eat there every day,” he said.
Market Survives, Rebuild Undecided
Streets’ adjacent meat and seafood market was untouched by the fire and will remain open, offering a small piece of the business’s legacy even as the restaurant building itself is gone. Johnson said the family has not yet decided whether it will rebuild.
“There’s a lot of people that are going to grieve the loss of this restaurant besides just my family. We know that Streets is very important to this community,” Johnson said. “We’re just kind of taking the time to reflect on things, to pray about things, to see where the Lord’s going to guide us next.”
A GoFundMe page has been created to help Streets Seafood’s employees, and the family is asking longtime patrons to share their memories of the restaurant on its Facebook page as it considers what comes next.