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.
Marcus Richardson, who has worked in the Streets kitchen for nearly 30 years, was on the line when the fire broke out. “It was just a regular day till the cooler exploded,” Richardson recalled. “I never seen nothing like that happen. So, I ran and got the fire extinguisher, the cooler was shooting flames like a flame torch,” he added. No one was injured. The fire broke out around 10 a.m. Saturday while customers and staff were inside the restaurant.
Four Decades in Bay Minette
Streets Seafood has served the Bay Minette community for close to 40 years and was founded by Eugene Overstreet, a Vietnam-era veteran and Purple Heart recipient. 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, and grew into a popular stop for local schools, the area’s retirement community and beach-bound travelers passing through Baldwin County.
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.”
Among the items the family was able to recover from the wreckage were sentimental military keepsakes belonging to Eugene Overstreet. Johnson said the items held personal, not monetary, significance for a father who built a business the same way he served his country — with everything he had.
Investigators Focus on the Kitchen
Two days after the blaze, smoke still lingered around the collapsed structure as investigators worked section by section through the debris. Bay Minette Fire Rescue Chief Mike Minchew said the extensive damage and a roof collapse have complicated efforts to pin down exactly what sparked the fire.
“We’ve narrowed it back to around the kitchen area. We’re just not sure what actually caused the fire,” Minchew said Monday. He said the building’s total loss may ultimately make it impossible to determine a precise cause. “We still don’t know what caused it and we may not know what caused it due to the extent of the damage in the kitchen,” he said. “The building is a total loss. It’s going to be hard to determine.”
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.
Beverly Watts Collier shared a similar memory on the restaurant’s Facebook page: “My boys have grown up in Street’s, 2-3 times a week, sometimes more! They have become our family.”
Family and Neighboring Businesses Step Up
Streets’ extended family in the restaurant business has rallied to fill the gap left by the fire. Crystal Whatley, whose uncle owns Streets and who got her own start working there, now owns Saving Grace Kitchen in Bay Minette. She has begun offering breakfast service — something Saving Grace didn’t previously serve — starting at 6 a.m. to give displaced Streets regulars somewhere to go, and she’s offering jobs to former Streets employees while they get back on their feet.
“He has employees that literally their whole families work there. Just trying to be present with that until they can get back on their feet, find another job,” Whatley said. “We are trying to help just as much as we can with them being displaced right now until Eugene figures out what he is going to do. I don’t know how long that is going to take. We’re just trying to do our part as a community and support each other and help.”
Whatley said the loss hit close to home. “It was just devastating to our community, our family,” she said. “We want to step up and help.” She noted that Bay Minette has few locally owned restaurant options. “We don’t have a lot of restaurants in Bay Minette,” Whatley said. “Waffle House and Hardees.”
Joyce Overstreet, Eugene Overstreet’s sister and longtime owner of the Stagecoach Café in the nearby community of Stockton, said family and displaced employees are being supported by both businesses. “We are trying to figure out how we can help the many senior adults that come to us,” she said. “We are just simply overwhelmed by the love, support and community.”
Java J’s Café also posted on Facebook welcoming longtime Streets customers, noting it has a smaller menu but the same neighborly feel. “Here you can get a hot breakfast, a fresh cup of coffee, and a place where you’re still treated like family,” the post read. “Small businesses understand what it means to lean on one another during difficult times, and we’re honored to offer a place to gather until their doors open again.”
Emily Byrd, an employee at Southern Gyp Boutique next door to Streets on U.S. 31, said the restaurant’s breakfast crowd was a daily fixture in the shared parking lot. “It was the same people,” Byrd said. “They would park daily here to eat breakfast. It’s definitely sad.”
Food Trailer, Rebuild Plans
The family is planning to set up a food trailer serving a limited menu at the restaurant site from 4 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, an effort to reconnect with generations of customers while the family weighs next steps.
Streets’ adjacent meat and seafood market was untouched by the fire and remains open, offering a small piece of the business’s legacy even as the restaurant building itself is gone.
The family has said it has not made a final decision on rebuilding, though Minchew said Eugene Overstreet has discussed plans to demolish the damaged building and rebuild. Joyce Overstreet said her brother, who is in his late 70s and has spent decades working the kitchen, has no intention of walking away from the business. “Despite all of his sisters and his daughter’s urging, he is not going to retire and he is going to rebuild,” she said.
Johnson struck a more cautious tone about the family’s plans. “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 campaign to support displaced Streets employees has raised more than $9,200 toward a $12,000 goal, and the family is asking longtime patrons to continue sharing memories of the restaurant on its Facebook page.
“It’s literally an icon of Bay Minette,” Whatley said. “It’s sad, but we are going to rally together and support each other as a community and we’ll make it. We will do what we need to do.”
Food Trailer Reopens as Family Regroups
Restaurant owners opened Street’s food trailer in the restaurant’s parking lot on Monday, Aug. 4, from 4 to 7:30 p.m., giving employees and loyal customers an early chance to reconnect as the family weighs next steps for the building itself.
Multiple Departments Responded
Bay Minette Fire Rescue was joined by crews from the Pine Grove, White House Fork and Crossroads fire departments in battling the blaze on Highway 31. The first engine arrived on scene within about five minutes of the call, with crews making entry through the restaurant’s front door as the building was evacuated. Owner Eugene Overstreet has said he believes a cooler malfunction in the kitchen may have contributed to the fire, though investigators say the official cause remains undetermined. Street’s has served the Bay Minette community since 1983.