Few restaurants along the Gulf Coast carry the kind of history that rides on the shoulder of the Causeway in Spanish Fort. The Bluegill has been feeding travelers and locals on Battleship Parkway since 1958, surviving hurricanes, ownership changes and the slow disappearance of the old fish camps that once lined the shore of Mobile Bay. Today it remains one of the busiest waterfront dining rooms in Baldwin County, a place where fresh local seafood, live music and a wide deck over the water still do most of the talking.
From a Fish Camp Called Slim’s
The story begins just before the Bayway became the artery it is today. Wallace and Evelyn Johnston opened the original Blue Gill in 1958 inside an old fish camp on the north side of the Causeway, the road that was for years the only way to drive between Spanish Fort and Mobile. The couple’s daughter, Sandra, grew up in the business, and the restaurant’s early reputation was built on the kind of straightforward Gulf cooking that made the Causeway the region’s seafood mecca.
Nature tested the place repeatedly. Hurricane Camille pushed floodwater through the building in 1969, and in 1979 the original restaurant was destroyed by Hurricane Frederic, one of several Causeway landmarks the storm washed away. The Johnstons rebuilt on land just east of the first location, opening in March 1980. When Hurricane Katrina battered the coast in 2005, the rebuilt restaurant was heavily damaged, and it reopened in 2006. Each time, the Blue Gill came back — a persistence that made it a symbol of the Causeway’s stubborn identity.
Harry Johnson, who had been a regular customer, bought the restaurant in 1998 from Sandra Weekley, the Johnstons’ daughter, and kept the operation running through the Katrina years. In 2010, Cooper Restaurants — the family company behind Felix’s Fish Camp on the Causeway and the Ruth’s Chris Steak House franchise in Mobile — purchased the business and shortened the name to Bluegill. The company was founded by brothers David J. Cooper Sr. and Angus R. Cooper II, and its restaurant portfolio now stretches from the Causeway to a private supper club in west Mobile.
A Restaurant First, an Event Venue a Close Second
Under the Coopers, the Bluegill has grown into one of the most active event venues on Mobile Bay. Its management emphasizes that it is a restaurant first, with a deck, two bars and a wharf amphitheater that host live music nearly every night. The kitchen is anchored by signature dishes like the Flaming Oysters, fried crab claws, a seafood gumbo made with chicken, shrimp and oysters, and a Crab Stack Royal that stacks fried green tomatoes and jumbo lump crab cakes under crawfish royal sauce. Two private-label beers — Riverside Pilsner, brewed by Braided River Brewing in Mobile, and Bluegill Blonde, brewed exclusively for the restaurant by Catawba Brewing in Asheville, North Carolina — reinforce the local flavor.
The restaurant’s calendar has become a community institution of its own. The Mobile Big Band Society performs 1940s and 1950s swing on the third Tuesday of every month, drawing dancers of all ages. From March through September, Sunday Fun Day brings full-service dining and a rotating lineup of bands. On Mondays, when the doors are closed to the public, the east lot often fills with private events, from corporate parties and wedding receptions to nonprofit gatherings. The Wild Game Cook-Off benefiting the Alabama Wildlife Federation each October remains one of the busiest nights of the year, and groups like Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Central Gulf Coast and the Dauphin Island Sea Lab have used the property for fundraisers and family celebrations.
A Home for Wooden Boats
The Bluegill’s connection to the water is more than scenic. The Causeway was once home to Stauter-Built Boat Works, the boatbuilder whose craft carried generations of Bay area families out after shrimp, crabs and bait, and wooden boats still hold a nostalgic pull here. That pull is why the restaurant became the host of the Causeway Classic Wooden Boat Show, an event first staged on the property in May 2024 with 20 to 30 registered boats on display.
The show has since grown into an annual fall tradition. The third annual Causeway Classic Wooden Boat Show is scheduled for Oct. 24 at the Bluegill, this time benefiting the Child Advocacy Center of Mobile, with the event continuing to expand after raising more than $16,000 for the center the previous year. For a restaurant built on the idea of creating memorable moments for the community, the wooden boat show has become a signature piece of the calendar.
A Restaurant You Can Reach by Boat
Part of the Bluegill’s charm is geography. The building sits on the north side of the Causeway with its own dock, overlooking the marshes of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, and boaters can tie up and walk straight in for lunch or an evening show. Sunsets from the deck have become a draw of their own, and on peak nights servers shuttle trays of freshly shucked oysters — dozens of them — out to tables on the water’s edge.
Nearly 70 years after Wallace and Evelyn Johnston opened the doors of a rickety old fish camp, the Bluegill remains what it has always been: a working piece of Causeway history where the seafood is local, the music is loud and the deck is full. Dress it up or dress it down, the welcome is the same.