A Dauphin Street building that has cycled through several restaurant concepts over the years is now home to Bar-B-Quing With My Honey, a barbecue restaurant and bar that opened its sit-down location just past Florida Street in Mobile’s Midtown neighborhood. The space previously housed Island Wing Company and, before that, a Ruby Tuesday, but the kitchen behind the bar has changed considerably along with the menu.
The Dauphin Street corridor east of Florida Street has become one of Midtown’s most competitive stretches for casual dining, with the block collecting pizza, burgers, wings and now full Southern barbecue within a few hundred feet of one another. Restaurants that take over a space with this much turnover inherit both advantages and baggage: the parking is worked out, the infrastructure is in place, and regulars already know the address, but they also arrive with memories of the predecessors that failed there. The new tenant’s challenge is to give people a reason to associate the building with something different.
The dining room itself still carries echoes of its Island Wing days, with televisions positioned at nearly every booth and table tuned to sports throughout the evening. The bar area is largely unchanged from the Ruby Tuesday era, but what comes out of the kitchen now is a full Southern barbecue spread, from smoked meats to fried sides and made-from-scratch desserts.
For Midtown residents, the formula is familiar by design. Barbecue and sports on television is one of the most reliable pairings in Southern restauranting, and the owners have leaned into the room’s existing layout rather than fighting it. On the night of a recent visit, the screens carried a steady rotation of games while servers worked a dining room that was busy but not overwhelmed, a pace that felt about right for a restaurant still settling into its rhythms.
First plates and early impressions
A recent evening visit began with a shared order of fried green tomatoes, a handful of thickly sliced tomatoes finished in a light, crispy batter and drizzled with a crawfish cream sauce. The dish set a strong tone for the meal, even as several menu items turned out to be unavailable that night, including pulled pork nachos and candied yams. The crawfish cream sauce gave the appetizer a distinctly Gulf Coast accent, and the cornmeal-free batter stayed crisp under the sauce rather than going soggy, which is where many versions of this dish fall apart.
In place of the nachos, a Duci burger delivered a well-done, likely smoked patty topped with cheese, lettuce and tomato, juicy enough that the bun struggled to hold together. The burger read as the kitchen’s compromise between barbecue and bar food — smoke applied to a hand-held — and it mostly worked, though diners who prefer a pink-centered burger should know the patty arrives fully done, as smoked patties generally must.
The three-meat plate is the real test
A three-meat combination plate showcased the kitchen’s smoking capabilities well beyond the pulled pork: ribs coated in a sweet house barbecue sauce, tender pulled chicken, and a smoked sausage that stood out as the strongest of the three proteins. The plate came with a choice of two sides, and finely chopped collard greens with bits of pork, along with golden, flour-breaded fried okra, rounded out the plate.
Combination plates are where barbecue kitchens earn their reputation, because they force a single pit to do several things well at once. Here the sausage was the revelation — coarsely ground, heavily smoked and snap-skinned — while the ribs, glazed in a sauce on the sweeter end of the Alabama spectrum, will satisfy diners who prefer that style and leave dry-rub purists to ask for sauce on the side. The pulled chicken was moist and pulled generously, if less distinctive than its plate-mates. The collards carried real pork flavor, and the okra’s flour breading held up through the meal instead of dissolving into the plate.
What it costs
Menu prices at the Midtown location run in line with other casual sit-down spots in the area: the fried green tomato appetizer is $12.99, the Duci burger is $8.99, the three-meat combo plate is $23.99, the fish and grits plate is $15.99 and the oyster po’boy is $16.99, with dessert options like the bourbon bread pudding at $5.49 and the sweet potato pie at $4.49. The restaurant can be reached at 251-217-7159 for takeout orders or to check on same-night menu availability.
Against the neighborhood’s steakhouses and seafood rooms, the combo plate is the value play on the menu: two people splitting a $23.99 three-meat plate with an appetizer will eat as well and as cheaply as anywhere on the corridor. Calling ahead is genuinely practical advice rather than filler, given the availability issues discussed below.
Dessert closes the deal
Dessert proved to be a high point of the visit. A bourbon bread pudding arrived with a rich sauce and well-balanced raisins, while a sweet potato pie sampled the following day offered a flaky crust and smooth, well-seasoned filling. Bread pudding is a demanding test for a kitchen that does not specialize in pastry — the line between custard and mush is thin — and this version cleared it comfortably, with the bourbon present but not performing. The sweet potato pie, warming spices and all, tasted like the kind of recipe that comes from a family card rather than a corporate binder.
Two locations, two personalities
Bar-B-Quing With My Honey also operates its original location at the Loop, which continues to serve as a takeout-focused outpost, while the Dauphin Street location offers table service, a full bar and occasional karaoke nights. The two-outlet arrangement is a sensible one for a young barbecue operation: the original location keeps the brand visible to its established takeout base, while the Midtown room adds the margins that come with adult beverages and table service.
Despite the added atmosphere, the Midtown location has faced growing pains with menu availability, running out of multiple sides and entrees on the night of the visit. Running out of candied yams and pulled pork nachos on a weeknight is the kind of thing a new operation can survive, but it is also the kind of thing that decides whether a first-time customer comes back, and the kitchen would be well served by tightening its prep forecasts.
For a relatively new restaurant working through supply and staffing challenges, the strength of the smoked meats and desserts suggests the kitchen is worth a return trip as the operation continues to find its footing.
The verdict
Bar-B-Quing With My Honey is not yet the finished article, but the bones are good, and on Dauphin Street the bones matter. The sausage and the collards alone are worth the drive Midtown, the fried green tomatoes with crawfish cream sauce are one of the better starts to a meal in the neighborhood, and the desserts would stand out in any dining room in town. Once the kitchen learns to forecast its sides the way it already understands its smoker, this will be an easy recommendation rather a qualified one.
In a corridor where restaurant concepts have come and gone with the seasons, the early evidence suggests this one has the cooking to stay. Whether the room fills on karaoke nights or quiet weeknights, the pulled pork, the ribs and the bread pudding give Midtown barbecue lovers a new option that does not require crossing the bay or the state line to smoke something properly.
Bar-B-Quing With My Honey’s Midtown location is at 2617 Dauphin St. in Mobile.
A fish and grits plate paired a pair of fried fish filets with a bed of grits, both finished in the same crawfish cream sauce used on the fried green tomatoes, and improved further with a dash of hot sauce. A side of thick-cut fries filled in for an unavailable loaded baked potato. The dish is a nod to Mobile’s own traditions — fish and grits is a Gulf Coast staple long before it became a brunch cliché — and the kitchen’s version held together nicely, the sauce bridging the fried fish and the creamy grits without drowning either.
An oyster po’boy ordered for takeout featured golden fried oysters on a hoagie roll, with lettuce and tomato served separately to keep the bread from getting soggy, resulting in a solid if pricey sandwich. The deconstructed packing was a thoughtful touch for an order destined to travel, and the oysters arrived crisp and intact, though at nearly seventeen dollars the sandwich sits at the upper edge of what the neighborhood market will bear for a po’boy.
The takeout experience held up well, too. Po’boys travel badly by nature, and plenty of kitchens treat an order headed out the door as an afterthought; packing the dressings separately here showed an awareness of what actually happens to a sandwich in a paper bag on a ten-minute drive. For Midtown office workers and families ordering ahead, that attention to the to-go side of the business may matter as much as the dining room itself.