Four Decades of Feeding Fairhope
Tamara Wintzell has been a fixture of the Fairhope restaurant scene for more than four decades — long enough to remember when the town’s dining options could be counted on one hand, and long enough to have started, sold, and started again more restaurants than most operators open in a lifetime. These days she pours all of that experience into one place: Tamara’s Downtown, the Section Street restaurant locals treat as an extension of their own dining rooms.
Her route to Fairhope was anything but direct. Born in New Orleans — “Most people don’t know that I’m a full-blooded Puerto Rican,” she says — she moved as an infant to Jacksonville, Florida, where her father drove stock cars. After two years of college she sold insurance by day and tended bar at night, a combination that revealed where her real talents lay. Eight years at a Mercedes dealership in Atlanta followed, along with a bartending job at an El Chico’s that turned into a management offer within a week. She trained in Dallas, and her first store management assignment transferred her to Mobile — a place she admits she imagined with some trepidation. “All I could think of was rednecks, guns, and dirt roads,” she laughs. “They told me I could walk everywhere and wouldn’t need a car. Ha!”
The Old Bay Steamer Years
Nine months into the El Chico’s job, Wintzell left to open the Old Bay Steamer in Fairhope, one of the town’s first full-service restaurants. The concept worked well enough to expand to Gulf Shores, Pensacola, and Fort Walton Beach before she sold the locations — though the Fort Walton Beach restaurant continues under new ownership, something she follows with proprietary pride. “They are doing a nice job there,” she says.
The ideas kept coming. She sketched out concepts for a sports bar, a nightclub, a Mexican restaurant, and a tapas spot called Aurora’s — in the space now occupied by Little Whiskey. Eventually she pared the portfolio down to two: Tamara’s Downtown, which has now served Fairhope for well over a decade, and The Venue, the wedding and event space on Section Street, which she later leased to a wedding company so she could focus on the restaurant.
High Standards, Long Lines
The focus shows. Tamara’s has been voted Best Bloody Mary Bar and Best Happy Hour by Best of Baldwin, and its Sunday Jazz Brunch draws a line down the sidewalk before the doors open. Wintzell stopped taking reservations years ago after too many no-shows, and she is unapologetic about the policy. “As long as the atmosphere is inviting, the service and food quality is good, people don’t seem to mind a short wait,” she says — and waiting guests can get a drink from the bar while they stand in it.
Her management style is direct and personal. Each day she lines up the staff to check uniforms and remind them of her standards; every new employee receives a packet of rules and expectations. When the restaurant is short-handed, she removes tables rather than compromise the experience. And she still cooks — most days you will find her either on the line or running food to tables. “I do it all,” she says.
The pandemic years tested every restaurant’s economics, and hers responded the way a career operator’s would: smarter purchasing, less waste, and tight price control rather than shortcuts on quality.
A Menu Locals Know by Heart
The dishes that made the restaurant’s reputation remain its best sellers: the Chicken Tamara, the Cowboy Ribeye, and the Jubilee Pasta, with barbecue shrimp and escargot anchoring the appetizer list. The strawberry cheesecake has its own following — “I love cheesecake,” its owner admits, “and our Strawberry Cheesecake is the best!”
Give First, Then Cook
Wintzell’s community footprint is as large as her restaurant resume. She hosts the sponsor party for the Fairhope Witches Ride behind The Venue, supplies food at a discount for the annual Taste of Rotary, caters the wine festival that benefits the Fairhope Volunteer Fire Department, and supports the Police Ball each year. Every holiday season she runs a toy drive for Care House in Bay Minette and Family Promise in Robertsdale. After Hurricane Sally knocked out power across the Eastern Shore, she emptied her freezer, cooked outside, and gave the food away to anyone who needed a meal.
Still in Love With the Work
She and her longtime partner Pat Risby — “he can build anything. If he builds it, I will run it” — have been together 15 years, and her family has clustered nearby: two sons, three grandchildren, and visits from her 92-year-old mother, who walks everywhere in town. What keeps her behind the line after four decades is the same thing that always has. “The customers. Every day is a new day,” she says. “I know that nobody has to walk through that door to dine with us, so I want Tamara’s to meet my standards.”
She compares the work to entertaining in your own home — with a warning attached. “But believe me, you’re married to it!” The plan going forward is to keep standards high, refresh the menu, and spend more time in the courtyard and with the family that has gathered around her. Fairhope, meanwhile, gets what it has always gotten from Tamara Wintzell: a restaurant run like someone’s name is on it — because it is.