Few restaurant origin stories are as improbable as the Half Shell Oyster House’s. The chain was launched in Gulfport, Mississippi — three years after Hurricane Katrina flattened the city — and much of the decor in its restaurants, including the locations in Mobile and Spanish Fort, was salvaged from debris washed up on the beach after the storm.
From that rebirth, founder Bob Taylor and his three partners have built a 17-location oyster house empire spanning Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, plus a sister restaurant, The Rack House, in Gulfport. The Mobile and Eastern Shore locations have quietly become two of the area’s most dependable lunch and dinner stops for Gulf seafood.
An oyster griller on duty
The bar is the heart of the operation, and there is always a skilled oyster griller on duty, with several flavors of grilled oysters to choose from — shucked on the spot, with raw oysters also available. A recent Wednesday visit found the bar busy, the day’s oysters from St. Bernard Parish: medium-sized, with just the right amount of saltiness. The “Orleans” preparation — melted butter, garlic and Parmesan cheese — is simple and delicious, and orders have a way of arriving with one extra for good measure.
The menu around the oysters runs deep: blackened redfish, a fresh Half Shell salad with house vinaigrette, and a daily spread of locally caught fish. (Redfish fans take note: since game fish can’t legally be sold in Alabama, the restaurant’s redfish is farm-raised — a fact the bar staff will happily explain.) Dressings are all made in-house, and the kitchen sends out a lemon aioli that pairs perfectly with the blackened redfish.
Two soups worth the trip
Before any oysters arrive, regulars recommend the soups. The seafood gumbo, made with a dark roux and loaded with crawfish, shrimp and crabmeat, is tangy with a sweet finish; the crawfish, corn and crab bisque — thick, sweet, topped with chopped green onions — is a longtime favorite. The kitchen has recently tweaked both recipes, and early verdicts are positive.
Lunch portions hit a sweet spot: just the right size, reasonably priced, and combinations can be matched to whatever the diner’s taste is that day. Save room, against all wisdom, for the house-made bread pudding.
Gulf Coast roots
Manager Matt Larrow, a Michigan native who married a Pascagoula girl and never left the coast, embodies the restaurant’s fishing-adjacent personality — the kind of manager who swaps redfish regulations and ice-fishing stories with customers between courses. That informality, paired with seafood the customers actually know how to judge, is a big part of why the Half Shell formula has scaled to 17 locations without losing its touch.
For Mobile-area diners, the choice is easy: grilled oysters at the bar, a cup of gumbo, whatever the boats brought in that morning — and a dining room built, quite literally, from the storm that made it all possible.