Reservations are required at Char 32, and after one visit it is easy to see why. The restaurant occupies a corner of the historic Point Clear Swim and Tennis Club, and on any given evening the dining room fills with a mix of Eastern Shore regulars, Fairhope visitors, and travelers who wandered in from the beach resorts and stayed for the second cocktail.
A steakhouse with a signature
The name gives away the house specialty. Steaks arrive Pittsburgh-style, seared to a dark char outside and exactly to order within, a technique the kitchen executes with the confidence of repetition. The seafood program earns equal billing: fish plates are served over rice or vegetables and finished with sautéed crab meat, and the marinated crab claws — an appetite-sharpening Gulf Coast classic — come with house-made crostini for the sauce.
The menu is short by design. Lamb lollipops anchor the appetizer list alongside the crab claws, a regional take on South Indies salad, and a roasted duck breast for diners who want something off the standard surf-and-turf axis. Entrees come with a fresh salad and a choice of baked potato or fries, and sides like creamed spinach and sautéed mushrooms are made to be shared across the table. The crab bisque has its own following, and regulars structure their orders around it.
Inside the Tennis Club
The setting does half the atmospheric work. Char 32 sits inside the elegant, historic Point Clear Tennis Club, and weather permitting, diners can take a covered patio table overlooking the tennis courts — a vantage point few steakhouses on the Gulf Coast can match. A private room handles larger parties, and the bar, with its own compact menu, suits solo diners and couples who did not plan far enough ahead for a table.
General manager Daneen Buck, a Point Clear hospitality fixture, runs the front of the house, and the staff’s pacing is part of the experience: unhurried without being slow, attentive without hovering. The wine list leans classic, with Cabernet Sauvignon well represented for the steakhouse crowd.
Point Clear’s dining scene
The restaurant is part of a dining tradition in south Baldwin County that runs from the grand hotels of Point Clear to the casual seafood joints along the Bay. Char 32’s niche is the special-occasion sweet spot — the anniversary dinner, the post-golf feast, the last-night-of-vacation splurge — that demands a real kitchen without demanding a jacket and tie. Yelp and TripAdvisor reviewers consistently single out the crab claws and the charring on the steaks.
For visitors plotting a dinner in Point Clear, the practical notes matter: book ahead, especially in summer and during holiday weeks; ask for the patio if the weather is good; and leave room for dessert even when it feels impossible, because the kitchen’s sweets travel as well as its entrees. The restaurant’s phone number is (251) 517-7700.
Few restaurants earn the kind of word-of-mouth Char 32 enjoys — the friends who arrive skeptical and leave converted, the tables of regulars who order without menus. In a resort town crowded with dining options, a small steakhouse that nails its short menu, night after night, has found a formula worth reserving a table for.
How Daneen Buck got here
Buck’s path to the front of the house runs through a family that has been feeding Baldwin County for generations. Born and raised in Fairhope, she grew up around the food business — her father sold meat for Armour to restaurants across the area, and both parents were serious home cooks who passed the love of cooking and entertaining down to their children. ‘Dad was a great cook. Mom was a fabulous cook,’ she says.
In 1978 her parents bought the old Little Giant gas station on Scenic 98 that is now Battles Wharf Market. Her father set a red hot dog steamer by the door and the Buck Dawgs drew lines wrapped around the building. When fuel prices climbed past what the vintage pumps could even display — they topped out at $1.99 — he simply quit selling gas, and the market has been the beloved no-gas gas station ever since. Her brother Ken runs it today as a go-to for sandwiches, breakfast wraps, biscuits, and a well-picked wine shelf, with a morning coffee crowd that swaps tall tales at the counter.
Before Char 32, Buck ran Buck’s Diner in downtown Fairhope for 11 years, a popular breakfast-and-lunch spot that closed when the building was sold and the lease was not renewed. After turning down offers to manage other people’s restaurants, she decided to bet on herself: ‘I had nothing to lose. If it didn’t work out, I could just walk away and start over.’ A steak-and-burger joint was the plan, but when she walked into the long-unused restaurant space at the Point Clear Swim and Tennis Club, the ambiance changed the concept — and ninety days after signing the lease, with plenty of help from friends, Char 32 opened on January 25, 2018.
The Buck family’s other counter
The restaurant instinct runs deep on both sides of the family. Buck’s parents were fixtures in Fairhope kitchens, and the family’s grocery-turned-deli at Battles Wharf still draws a daily crowd of regulars who come for sandwiches and stay for the conversation — a place she only half-jokingly calls a gastaurant. Generations of Point Clear diners also remember long-gone haunts like Boo Boo’s King Cole Club and Max’s Hamburgers, the small rooms where the area’s dining culture took root before the Eastern Shore boom.
That history is part of why Char 32 feels the way it does: a lifelong restaurateur’s kitchen, staffed like a family dining room, in a building with its own stories. Buck still requires reservations, still paces the room at an unhurried clip, and still treats every table like company is coming — which, at the Tennis Club, they usually are.
Lessons From the Eastern Shore’s Lost Restaurants
Buck’s approach to Char 32 was shaped in part by the restaurants her father called on as an Armour meat salesman. His favorite was Gino’s Restaurant in Magnolia Springs, a popular spot with a small kitchen. When Gino expanded the dining room to meet demand, the kitchen could only turn out so many plates, and the restaurant eventually closed. The lesson stuck with Buck, and it is one reason Char 32, with its own famously compact kitchen, requires reservations and does not rush to turn tables. “People come to Char 32 to relax, visit, and have an unhurried dining experience,” she says. “We want each visit to be special and we don’t turn tables often.”
Longtime residents also remember Boo Boo’s King Cole Club in Point Clear, one of the few places to get a meal on a Sunday, where owner and cook Marie served a short menu of gumbo, West Indies salad, hamburgers and charred steaks. Regulars learned that whether the kitchen took an order could depend on Marie’s mood, and sometimes on how the Atlanta Braves were doing. Other names from that era include Max’s Hamburgers, which stood where The Supper Club is today on Scenic 98, and Pelican Point, a Harry Johnson restaurant at the end of Baldwin County Road 1 where Weeks Bay meets Mobile Bay. Buck counts all of them among the influences on her own vision. Neighbor Jimbo Meador, whose family lived near the old Little Giant station, still calls today’s Battles Wharf Market the “no gas-gas station.”
Who Runs the Kitchen
Buck is Char 32’s founder. She built the menu to fit the small kitchen, working out the recipes, wine pairings and kitchen layout herself in the 90 days between signing the lease and opening. Jeremy Ellis is the executive chef. The restaurant focuses on charred steaks, seafood and desserts made in-house, and it uses local ingredients whenever it can. Outside the restaurant, Buck says entertaining is what she loves most: “I love entertaining. Especially with friends and family at home, I like to decorate and add in the fun factor. I want everyone to be happy.”
Char 32 has also hosted seasonal wine dinners. One of them, a French-themed “Sip into Summer” evening, was held on Thursday, July 18, 2024. It featured Absintheminded Wine, Judge Roy Bean Spirits, Admiral Shellfish Company oysters and table decor by local ceramic artist Shelley Leigh.
Inside a Char 32 Wine Dinner: Red, White and Rosé
The July 2024 “Red, White and Rosé” wine dinner shows how the restaurant handles a special night. Held on a Thursday evening at Char 32, the dinner had five courses, each paired with a French wine chosen by Seth Hargett of ABM (Absintheminded) Wines. Guests sat at large tables with black tablecloths. The centerpieces were made of palmetto fronds, lemons and barnacle-textured ceramic candle holders by local potter Shelley Leigh.
Guests arrived to a glass of cold champagne or an “Old Scenic 98” Old Fashioned. Char 32 bartender Jonathon made the cocktail with bourbon from Judge Roy Bean Spirits. The menu went like this:
- First course: Oysters on the half shell from Admiral Shellfish Company on the Fort Morgan Peninsula, paired with a 2022 Domaine d’Elise Chablis. The farm’s oysters are known for their salty flavor and deep cups, which come from the strong tides and wave action near the mouth of Mobile Bay.
- Second course: A salad of grilled Chilton County peaches, pork belly, crumbled cheese and tomatoes, served with Domaine de Saint Ser Cuvée Prestige Rosé 2023.
- Third course: Crab-stuffed black grouper on a maque choux of Devotion corn bought from a farm market in Point Clear, served with a Pouilly-Fumé. The dish reflected the kitchen’s focus on seasonal produce.
- Fourth course: A cheese-crusted beef filet. Many guests expected a red wine with it, but Hargett poured a French white wine instead and explained why it pairs well with beef.
- Dessert: A rich chocolate pot de crème with the evening’s only red, a 2019 Château de la Jaubertie Mirabelle.
Server Ryan Pope cleared glasses and plates between courses. By the end of the night, guests heard that the series would continue in Pensacola with a September 11, 2024, dinner at Dharma Blue. Readers interested in future wine dinners should contact Char 32 directly for current dates.