Built From Shipping Containers, This Orange Beach Restaurant Just Won Alabama’s ‘Best Restaurant With a View’

Tasting Table magazine has named The Gulf, an Orange Beach restaurant built almost entirely from repurposed shipping containers, Alabama’s “Best Restaurant with a View,” putting a national spotlight on one of the coast’s more distinctive dining spots.

The Gulf sits at Perdido Pass and Alabama Point in Orange Beach, and its architecture is part of the draw: the restaurant’s structure is crafted from stacked, repurposed shipping containers, giving it what fans describe as a “post-modern” look that mixes industrial materials with a laid-back beach aesthetic. The venue is entirely outdoor, with no indoor seating, relying instead on picnic tables, reclaimed materials and casual seating pods that let the Gulf breeze move freely through the space.

The restaurant’s menu rotates with the seasons, built around the freshest local ingredients available at any given time rather than a fixed year-round lineup. Combined with its open-air setting at the mouth of Perdido Pass, the restaurant offers what Tasting Table and longtime patrons alike describe as some of the most stunning waterfront views along the Alabama coast.

Perdido Pass, the channel beside the restaurant, links Perdido Bay and Orange Beach’s network of back bays and bayous with the open Gulf of Mexico. It is the main route for the city’s charter fishing fleet and recreational boaters heading offshore, so diners there look out on a steady stream of boat traffic passing beneath the Perdido Pass Bridge on Perdido Beach Boulevard as well as the Gulf beyond.