The Waterfront

The Waterfront sits at the Lake Forest Yacht and Country Club property in Daphne, Alabama, giving it one of the more literal waterfront settings among the city’s restaurants, with a premier view of the bay from its patio and dining room. The restaurant is an original concept from the P.P. Hospitality Group, the local restaurant company built around Chef Pete Blohme, who is also known on the Eastern Shore for his bakery work in nearby Fairhope and for hosting the Raw Ingredients podcast, on which he travels and talks with food personalities in the industry. The Daphne location gives that same hospitality group a full-service restaurant serving coastal cuisine inspired by Southern favorites with some global influence, and it has been billed as one of the newer additions to Daphne’s dining scene.

The menu draws heavily on Gulf Coast seafood and Southern comfort cooking, opening with hot starters like fried jalapeno cheddar cornbread muffins served with whipped butter and a honey drizzle, a seafood gumbo built from Gulf shrimp, chicken sausage, okra, tomatoes, onion, and a dark roux served over rice, and Conecuh calamari, fried and curled Conecuh sausage drizzled with honey and served with a spicy mustard. Cold starters include a housemade white cheddar pimento cheese with bacon served alongside wonton chips and pickles, and cast iron roasted oysters finished with breadcrumbs, bacon, and a garlic butter sauce.

Sandwiches, all served with fries, include a shrimp roll tossed in citrus herb aioli and served on a grilled roll with drawn butter on the side, a fried shrimp po’boy finished with a key lime aioli drizzle and remoulade sauce, and the restaurant’s award-winning Sarah B Burger, a grilled ground chuck patty topped with strawberry jam, goat cheese boursin, lettuce, tomato, and onion that has become one of the menu’s more talked-about items. Entrees lean further into the seafood focus, with a steak and Gulf shrimp combination pairing a seven to eight ounce blackened ribeye with grilled Gulf shrimp, a fried trio covering flounder, shrimp, and oysters served with fries and both remoulade and cocktail sauce, and a grilled artichoke chicken topped with house creamy artichoke dip, mozzarella, and panko breadcrumbs.

The kitchen also runs a fish of the day priced at market rate, changing with what’s available from Gulf suppliers rather than locking in a single fish year-round, alongside a jerk chicken plate finished with a papaya barbecue jerk sauce and served with the vegetable and starch of the day. The restaurant runs a daily happy hour from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, in addition to its regular service hours of 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day of the week. Its location on the water gives it outdoor seating options that few other Daphne restaurants can match, and Restaurant Guru gave the restaurant a Recommended designation in 2023, adding to the culinary attention Chef Pete Blohme’s broader hospitality group has brought to this newer Daphne location.

For dessert, the kitchen offers a grilled pound cake topped with macerated seasonal fruit, whipped cream, and powdered sugar, along with a lemon curd finished with graham cracker crumble and whipped cream, both leaning toward the same Southern comfort register as the rest of the menu. Between the water views, the seafood-heavy menu, and the daily happy hour, The Waterfront has become one of the more distinctive dining destinations in Daphne since opening, and its ties to Chef Pete Blohme’s hospitality group give it a level of culinary attention that few other yacht club restaurants along the Eastern Shore can claim, one reinforced by Blohme’s continued visibility through his Raw Ingredients podcast and his long-running bakery work across the bay in Fairhope.