On Highway 31 in Spanish Fort, wedged between the sprawl of the Eastern Shore’s retail corridor, a small restaurant has built one of the most devoted followings on the Gulf Coast one breakfast burrito and one sticker at a time. Rise Breakfast and Tacos, at 10198 Highway 31, is the creation of Tony Luna and Erika Sisk — a takeout kitchen with a waiting area covered in stickers, tables with board games, a rooster statue by the door, and food that has turned morning commuters into regulars who plan their route around it.
The sticker ritual is the first thing every newcomer learns. A family member greets arriving guests with a bag of stickers and asks them to pick one — a cat, a devil-superhero, whatever speaks to them — and add it to the wall. Every surface inside is covered in the results, a kind of crowd-sourced gallery that grows with every table of first-timers. It is silly, it is memorable, and it sets the tone: this is a place that takes its food seriously and itself lightly.
From San Jose to Spanish Fort by way of Gulf kitchens
Tony Luna’s route to Spanish Fort ran through some of the Gulf Coast’s busiest kitchens. He arrived in Alabama from San Jose, California, as a teenager when his mother moved the family south, and his first restaurant job was at Hooters — where within two weeks he discovered a knack for cooking and was pulled into certified training. California Dreaming came next, then a first sous chef job at the Hangout in Gulf Shores, a head chef role at Baumhower’s, and finally executive chef at Live Bait in Gulf Shores, where he is proud of a specific metric: raising the restaurant’s TripAdvisor ranking from 86th to 32nd.
It was at Live Bait, in 2016, that he met Erika Sisk — first a colleague, later the partner in everything. The next chapter was the Good Guys Food Truck, which Tony describes as the first food truck to join the Baldwin County Chamber of Commerce. When California Dreaming called him back to the corporate world, he realized quickly that it was not for him, and pivoted to selling tacos out of his home in Daphne under the name Taco Tony’s Underground Taqueria — an underground restaurant in the truest sense.
The building on Highway 31
The Little Cake Shop building on Highway 31 had a history in the family imagination. Tony’s mother, who once ran a small deli in a gas station, had pointed at the building during a drive years earlier and told her son she hoped he would buy it for her when he was rich and famous. When the space came up for rent, Tony leased it. It needed serious work, and money was short — which is where Erika re-entered the story. He told her he could not pay her. Her answer became the restaurant’s founding line: “I didn’t ask if you could pay me, I asked you if you needed help.”
Together they built the kitchen, painted everything, and opened in May 2022. The two work side by side every day, and the partnership — friends first, they both insist — is the engine of the place. Krystal, Tony’s sister, runs the front with the sticker bag and the menu recommendations that first-time visitors quickly learn to trust.
What to order
Everything at Rise is made to order, and the menu splits its loyalties between breakfast and tacos. On the taco side, the kitchen turns out barbacoa, fresh salsas, and the house nachos — crunchy tortilla rounds built to hold up under queso, pico, and green sauce without going soggy. The breakfast menu is where the kitchen shows off: a long list of Benedicts, breakfast burritos with a local reputation that has spread well past Baldwin County, breakfast bowls, and even Bananas Foster French Toast.
Portions run generous — reviewers regularly mention being full until dinner — and the clientele, as Tony and Erika describe it, are “real people who want real food and have real reactions.” Hours run breakfast through lunch Monday through Saturday, with a Wednesday dinner service, and the operation remains takeout-first, so check hours before you go.
Why “Rise”
The name carries weight for Tony beyond the breakfast hour. It refers to his faith, to rising through obstacles, and to a life that has climbed from a teenage transplant with no plan to an owner building something in the town that took him in. He pays that forward in concrete ways, including bringing leftover food to the homeless in downtown Mobile — a habit the staff and regulars know about because it is simply part of the operation.
There is also the rooster. The colorful bird at the entrance reminds patrons to rise and shine, and it has become the restaurant’s unofficial mascot — the logo for a brand that grew from an underground taqueria into one of Spanish Fort’s favorite stops without ever advertising much beyond word of mouth.
A morning worth planning around
The Eastern Shore’s breakfast scene has deepened in recent years, but Rise occupies a lane of its own: fast, made-to-order, personality-forward, and priced for everyday. The waiting-area games — chess, checkers, dominoes, Uno — suggest the pace: you might wait a few minutes, and that is part of the experience. Regulars come for the burritos and stay for the conversation; first-timers leave with a sticker on the wall and, usually, a return trip already planned.
Rise Breakfast and Tacos is at 10198 Highway 31 in Spanish Fort. The rooster is calling, the griddle is hot, and the wall has room for one more sticker — yours.