The Front Porch

The Front Porch has been serving down-home country cooking in the Northport, Alabama area since 1996, when Bobby and Charlotte Strickland first opened it in nearby Gordo, Alabama. Bobby Strickland built the original wooden restaurant himself, using timber cut from the property where the business first stood, a hands-on beginning that still shapes how the restaurant describes itself today. In 2007 the restaurant relocated to Northport to grow the business, where it has operated ever since on Highway 43 North.

The menu leans hard into Southern comfort food: whole or filet catfish, chicken and dressing, hand-patted hamburgers, fresh vegetables cooked the way a home kitchen would cook them, and juicy steak sandwiches for anyone who wants something heartier. Homemade pies and cakes round out the dessert list, a detail that keeps regulars coming back after the plate is cleared. The restaurant organizes its offerings into separate lunch, dinner, Sunday, and children’s menus, along with a standing rotation of daily specials, a structure more typical of a full-service meat-and-three than a quick-service counter.

Daily specials rotate through the week, a common practice at meat-and-three style restaurants across Alabama, and the kitchen also turns out a ribeye plate alongside its more classic country fare. Fried green tomatoes, a Southern menu fixture, appear as a starter, and the restaurant’s chicken salad plate has developed its own following among the lunch crowd. A dedicated children’s menu makes the restaurant a workable stop for families, not just couples or solo diners looking for a plate of catfish. The steady rotation of daily specials gives regulars a reason to check back through the week rather than ordering the same plate every visit, a pattern common to meat-and-three restaurants that build loyalty through variety within a familiar format.

Hours run Monday through Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., with the restaurant closed on Saturdays and open a shorter Sunday shift from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., a schedule that reflects its roots as a family-run meat-and-three rather than a restaurant chasing late-night business. Delivery is available in the area through Crimson 2 Go for anyone who wants the food without the drive, and the restaurant also maintains a dedicated catering menu for events around Northport and the surrounding area, extending the same country cooking to larger gatherings, family reunions, and office lunches beyond the dining room itself.

What sets The Front Porch apart from newer restaurants along the same stretch of highway is its history. Nearly three decades after it first opened in Gordo, the restaurant still operates under the values that built it: a wooden building with a homemade feel, a menu built around country cooking rather than trend-chasing, and a kitchen that turns out chicken and dressing, catfish, and homemade desserts the way a family kitchen would. The move to Northport in 2007 put the restaurant closer to the Tuscaloosa metro area’s larger population, but the food and pace have stayed consistent with what the Stricklands built decades earlier in Gordo.

For a driver working through the restaurant corridor along Highway 43 North in Northport, past the barbecue joints, seafood counters, and Mexican grills that share the road, The Front Porch stands out as one of the area’s few remaining meat-and-three style Southern kitchens. It is a lunch counter in spirit even though it serves dinner most nights, a place built for a plate of fried catfish or chicken and dressing rather than a long, drawn-out dining experience. The pies and cakes, made in house, are as much a reason to stop as the entrees themselves, and the separate lunch and dinner menus give repeat visitors a reason to come back and try something different each time. Set back from the highway in a building that still carries the look of the wooden structure Bobby Strickland put up by hand, the restaurant offers a modest, unhurried dining room that stands in contrast to the drive-thru and fast-casual options nearby, a reminder that the Stricklands built the business around a sit-down country kitchen rather than a quick stop for food on the way somewhere else.