You could say the brand-new Riverside Café & Grill, with its unique riverside setting and delightfully broad menu, has been seven years in the making. For the chef behind it, though, it has been a lifetime goal. Either way, the new restaurant makes Mobile County's Escatawpa Hollow Park even more of a destination — and that's saying something.
A Park Rebuilt From the Ground Up
The park takes its name from the Escatawpa River, a winding blackwater stream whose bends offer plenty of inviting beaches. It sits northwest of Mobile, right where U.S. 98 crosses the river near the Mississippi state line. For years, the campground was privately owned. Mobile County purchased it in 2019 using funds from the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, known as GOMESA, and county officials laid out ambitious plans to develop it into a full public park.
Since 2021, those plans have steadily become reality. The park closed in early 2021 for a wave of upgrades expected to cost $4.8 million, then reopened in late 2022 with new walkways, roads, picnic shelters and an elevated bathroom facility near its beach. A new RV campground, complete with its own bathhouse facilities, was nearing completion, and a large playground has since opened for use. On July 16, county officials celebrated the opening of Riverside Café & Grill, a full-service restaurant that also includes a gift shop and general store.
The Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, passed by Congress in 2006, shares a portion of federal revenue from offshore oil and gas leasing in the Gulf with four producing states — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — and their coastal counties and parishes. The money is earmarked for purposes such as coastal conservation and restoration, hurricane protection and mitigating the effects of offshore energy development, which is how Mobile County has been able to pay for projects like the Escatawpa Hollow purchase.
Far More Than a Concession Stand
Given the setting, you might expect something close to a glorified concession stand — hot dogs, burgers and snacks for day visitors, maybe something a little heartier for RV campers. A recent visit found that Riverside Café blows those expectations out of the water.
The facility itself is first-class, with a cool, spacious dining room and rustic décor tempered by touches celebrating Mobile's eclectic port-city history and its role as an epicenter of Mardi Gras.
The menu borders on extravagant. The obligatory café options are there — burgers, hot dogs, chicken tenders and wings, all in the $9-$16 range. The sandwich menu escalates from there, with options from grilled cheese, chicken salad and BLT up to a Cuban and a French dip (all $12-$15, with a side). Then there's the po-boy section, featuring fried shrimp, oyster and catfish po-boys, along with a muffuletta and a Reuben, all at $15.
Several entrée salads sit at the same price point, alongside flagship entrees such as a hamburger steak plate ($19.95), a Big Creek Lake Catfish Dinner ($24.99) and a Jubilee Platter ($29.99) featuring fried catfish and shrimp, "pimento cheese bombers" and dipping sauce. Keep going, and you'll find fried crab claws (market price), gumbo ($8.99 for a cup, $13.99 for a bowl) and Crispy Boudin Balls ($12.99).
There's also a full breakfast menu, including a take on breakfast gumbo, tomato gravy, shrimp & grits, and catfish & grits topped with Julie sauce, a creamy New Orleans-style sauce with crawfish.
A Hometown Dream for Chef Stevie Watford
For chef Stevie Watford, an ambitious menu is nothing new. Watford operates Stevie's Kitchen on Florida Street in midtown Mobile, as well as an offshoot café at USS Alabama Battleship Park.
Watford grew up not far from Escatawpa Hollow and had long dreamed of bringing his professional talents to the area he loves. As a kid, he said, a trip into town more often meant Lucedale, Mississippi, than Mobile. "Our parents took us to the river," he said. "That's way before any of this was even developed. Basically, you'd just pull off the side of the road and go down a trail into the different rivers."
"I always had loved this place," he said. "When the opportunity came about, I just jumped at it. I was like, 'Man, this is perfect.'"
Watford knew he wanted a full menu, and he knew diners in the area had a taste for seafood. He also knew the bar was set high for catfish: Rocky Creek Catfish Cottage, a landmark venue a few miles west, has long drawn diners from Mobile, roughly a 45-minute drive depending on where you start.
"From being out in this area, I just knew that there was a market for, especially, seafood and good Southern food," Watford said. "I was like, I'm gonna tap into that market and pair it up with my gumbo and some of the other things we do at the other restaurants. And that's kind of how I come up with it."
Putting the Menu to the Test
It's a lot — far more than could be sampled on a single visit — but everything tried was excellent.
Start with the gumbo, since Watford mentioned it first. Nine dollars for a cup isn't as outlandish as it once would have seemed, and Watford's gumbo gives you plenty for the money: plenty of shrimp, plenty of sausage, plenty of chicken, thick enough that a spoon could practically stand up in it.
Flavor-wise, it hits the sweet spot on the gumbo spectrum — authentic enough to satisfy a connoisseur, without being so dark it would scare off newcomers. "My grandfather and my mother taught me how to make gumbo, and I started making it as a kid," Watford said.
That authenticity carries over to the boudin balls. Boudin is a type of Louisiana sausage that comes in countless varieties but usually features pork, rice and plenty of pepper. Boudin balls dispense with the casing, rolling the filling into appetizer-sized bites that are breaded and fried. It's a dish that may need explaining to some patrons, but Watford was undaunted. "I wanted to add that Cajun flavor," he said. "You go to Louisiana and New Orleans, and you see it everywhere. And we've had very good reception with the boudin balls at the Florida Street location. So, it was easy to put it on this menu."
Served piping hot, the boudin balls won instant approval from a Louisiana-native colleague who has been known to be a bit of a boudin snob. That colleague also ordered the fried shrimp po-boy, which came loaded with more crisp, tasty shrimp than the bread could easily contain — enough that he took half of it home with him.
The Big Creek Lake Catfish Dinner, with two filets over fries, delivered on the promise its name suggests: large filets in a golden crust that showed they hadn't been overcooked, breaking to reveal clean, flaky flesh. Watford said he sources his catfish from Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. "It's an excellent product, excellent company that we buy from," he said. If you want the all-you-can-eat experience, Rocky Creek still stands ready, but for a more reasonable portion, Riverside's catfish dinner will do very nicely.
Dessert wasn't even attempted on this visit, though a full case held options like crème brûlée and red velvet cake. Riverside Café also runs an ice-cream counter, with plans to expand soon into shakes and dirty sodas. "The ice cream has really been a big player," Watford said. "When people, especially if they're at the river and they're hot, they come in for ice cream. Or if they're coming in for a chicken basket, then they see the ice cream and it's an easy sale."
More Growth Ahead
Since taking over Escatawpa Hollow, Mobile County has purchased adjacent land to support even more development. The county says the 45-acre campground is now part of a 220-acre park, with a grand scheme that includes cabins, a conference center, a disc golf course, more walking and biking trails, and rentals for tubing and paddling.
Watford is thrilled to be part of it. "This was always a dream to have a restaurant out in my hometown, and you couldn't pick a better spot," he said. "I mean, it's just absolutely gorgeous out here. And especially with what the county has done and what they're about to do, you know, this whole place, people have no idea what this is about to be."
Riverside Café & Grill is located at Escatawpa Hollow Park and Campground, 15551-B Moffett Road in Wilmer, Alabama.
