Worth the Drive
Cheeseburger in Paradise The Pirate’s Cove Yacht Club serves a strong helping of local atmosphere By Jennifer Kornegay
Pirate’s Cove 6664 County Road 95 Elberta, AL 36530 251-987-1224 www.piratescoveriffraff.com
Elberta
To help celebrate Alabama’s 2012 “Year of Food,” each month freelance writer Jennifer Kornegay will take you to an out-of-the-way restaurant worth the drive.
Jennifer Kornegay 18 MAY 2012
L
ong before Johnny Depp donned too much eyeliner and the persona of Captain Jack Sparrow in the mega-hit “Pirates of the Caribbean,” a humble little sailboat marina and restaurant claimed a thin stretch of white sand on Arnica Bay down on the coast in Josephine, and strung up the Jolly Roger flag. Pirate’s Cove Yacht Club opened more than 50 years ago, and with its skull and crossbones motif as well as signs reading “Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” this special place has been embracing and celebrating the freedom of the pirate life ever since. But don’t let the foreboding fool you. The scallywags and riff-raff at Pirate’s Cove are friendly and warmly welcome all who manage to navigate their way to it; most come by boat, but you can get there by car. Whatever your mode of transport, when you arrive, you’re greeted by a relaxed yet rambunctious scene. Rows of sailboats rest in slips, their tall, straight masts pointing skyward. A long pier juts into the bay on one side, and a wonderfully weathered shack-like structure is corralled with a wide deck that’s shielded from the sun by a tin roof. In the summer, powerboats beached on the
shoreline hide almost every inch of sand, while upwards of 20 dogs, some just visiting and others “Cove” residents, chase each other and their own tails. Crammed onto the picnic table benches on the deck is a diverse barefoot and flipflop-clad cross section of society, everyone from college students, families with kids, grizzled old salts, leather-clad bikers, locals and tourists. In fact, lunch at the Cove is like a sociology experiment, with people from all walks of life – including a few truly colorful characters – converging to enjoy the sun, fun, food and almostanything-goes attitude synonymous with an afternoon spent at Pirate’s Cove. They may be as different as night and day, but here, they have something in common: They’ve all journeyed to Pirate’s Cove for a cheeseburger, some fries and probably a bushwhacker. While the menu at Pirate’s Cove offers pretty standard lunch-counter favorites like corn dogs, chicken fingers and pizza, it’s the cheeseburger that is most-often ordered. It has even (maybe) been immortalized in song. Rumor has it that South Alabama native and famed singer-song-
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