For years, the answer to a fried shrimp craving on the Eastern Shore was simple: Market by the Bay. The Daphne restaurant, along with a sister location in Fairhope, built a devoted following on platters of fried seafood, cups of gumbo, and half po’boys loaded with whatever came out of the fryer. Then both locations closed, the Fairhope store first and the Daphne store a year later, and locals were left mourning one of the area’s most dependable tables.
The mourning did not last. Harry Johnson, a veteran of the coastal restaurant scene, quietly assembled a team to reopen Market by the Bay, and the restaurant that reopened is, by nearly every account, better than ever: a full-service restaurant with a liquor pour, a dinner service, and a Sunday brunch that has quickly become one of Daphne’s hardest reservations to walk away from.
Two Local Guys and a Food Truck That Never Was
The reopening story starts with two Daphne High School graduates who met after graduation and hatched an entirely different plan. Garrett DeLuca went on to the University of South Alabama and earned a business management degree. Chef Mike Sullivan was born in Mobile but moved to Daphne, then earned his culinary degree from the Culinard School at Virginia College in Birmingham.
Both had serious resumes. Garrett began working with Harry Johnson and his business partner John Thompson, of Callaghan’s Irish Social Club fame, after the two purchased Manci’s Antique Club in 2015, and he manages Buster’s Brick Oven in addition to Manci’s, both in Olde Towne Daphne. Mike’s path ran longer: after moving back home in 2006, his first local job was as a fry cook at Market by the Bay itself. He went on to serve as chef for Atria Senior Living, in charge of kitchens throughout the South, then spent six years in New York as an East Coast Culinary Specialist, traveling constantly. “It took its toll on me,” he says, and he came back to the Eastern Shore.
Back home, he and Garrett planned a food truck. They were far along in the planning when the two decided to eat one last meal at Market by the Bay before it closed for good, to say goodbye to the LeJune family, who had owned and operated the restaurant for more than twenty years. That goodbye changed everything. Victor LeJune, who owns the building, mentioned that he might like to see someone purchase the business rather than let it disappear.
“We had enough capital to do a food truck, but not enough to do a restaurant,” Mike says. So he called Harry. “We sat at a table and discussed the idea. Harry laughed at the food truck idea and green-lighted the idea of reopening Market by the Bay.” They closed the purchase on July 28, 2022, and opened that October. Modifications were needed to turn the lunch counter into a full-service restaurant, but the bones of the place, and its soul, stayed put.
What They Kept
The new owners faced a delicate question with every decision: how do you modernize a place people loved exactly as it was? Their answer was to preserve almost everything. “We didn’t want to change or take away what the LeJunes had created over 20-something years,” Mike says. The seafood market case remains, stocked with limited offerings of fresh shrimp, crabmeat, and oysters in season from Bon Secour Fisheries, the century-old Gulf seafood house whose name is synonymous with Alabama oysters.
And then there is the gumbo, the restaurant’s defining dish and the subject of the number one question customers ask: is it still the same? It is. Same recipe, made daily by the same guy who has always made it. It remains the best-selling item for pickup, bought by the quart by families who plan their week around it. On a recent Sunday evening drive back from Birmingham, one couple stopped in for a quart to take home and found the place hopping.
The fried seafood, the heart of the original menu, also survived intact. The kitchen uses a proprietary blend batter, and everything is sourced locally. Po’boys are served on New Orleans Gambino bread, the gold standard for a reason, with shrimp, oysters, and catfish as the anchors. Sides run to the classics done right: fresh, lightly dressed slaw, potato salad, turnip greens, baked beans, and cheese grits, with French fries, hush puppies, or fried okra on the side. Two Gulf Coast icons remain on the menu for purists: the West Indies salad, the crabmeat-and-oil classic that traces its invention to a Dog River steakhouse in the 1940s, and a smoked tuna dip made in-house.
What They Added
Where the old Market by the Bay was a lunch spot, the new one aims to feed people morning to night. Beer and alcohol were added, dinner service was built out, and a creative streak runs through the newer menu items. Appetizers include Boudin Egg Rolls, calamari, pickled shrimp, and a Chopped Cheese Po’boy that crosses a Philly cheesesteak with a cheeseburger and has become a quiet phenomenon. The kitchen also pours a Duck and Andouille sausage gumbo alongside the original.
Dinner options push beyond the fryer: red beans and rice topped with catfish, fried green tomatoes crowned with blackened shrimp, and a fresh catch of the day served over cheese grits and covered with crawfish and shrimp sauce. Mike, who has a smoker out back, is quick to correct anyone who thinks the restaurant is only about fried seafood: grilled options cover pretty much anything, and during football season the smoker turns out smoked ribs and wings, which also travel far better than fried shrimp for catering orders.
Sunday Brunch and the Dessert Connection
Sunday brunch, running from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., has been the biggest hit of the additions. The Bloody Marys come fully loaded with a house-made mix. The food list reads like a love letter to the Gulf: Blue Crab Beignets, Grits and Grillades, a special take on French toast, and a Sunday special of Fried Chicken and Grits served with hot honey.
There is a family thread running through the dessert case, too. Mike’s mother, Sonja Dowdle, who used to own Delish Desserts in Mobile, makes all the desserts: cheesecakes, strawberry shortcakes, and seasonal options, with whole pies available by advance order.
The catering side has grown into a genuine business of its own, with packages that are popular with drug reps and a steady stream of corporate events, all bookable through EZ Cater on the restaurant’s website. “Lunch remains strong, our dinner business is growing, and the catering business is picking up nicely,” Mike says. “Corporate luncheons are a big part of what we do.”
Everyone at the Table
Ask the two partners what they think of the local food scene and the answer is notably generous for an industry famous for rivalry. “We like to support the local restaurants. We want everyone to succeed,” they say. It is the same spirit that ran through the purchase itself: two guys who loved a restaurant enough to save it, a landlord who wanted it saved, and a backer who laughed at the food truck and funded the real thing.
Horace Sledge, a carryover from the LeJune days, remains an icon of the dining room and, by every account, a terrific person, the human continuity between the restaurant’s first two decades and its new one. The relationship with the LeJune family continues. The gumbo recipe continues. Even the crowd continues, filling the parking lot at lunch and settling in for dinner and brunch.
Harry’s advice to newcomers has not changed: “If the parking lot is full, don’t let that scare you away.” In Daphne, a full lot at Market by the Bay just means the gumbo is the same, the batter is still proprietary, and a second life, done right, can taste exactly like the first one.