Gulf Shores, AL

[Dan Thomas]

Colleen has put her foot down and want's to go somewhere besides our usual Asheville, NC/Pawley's Island, SC for vacation this year.
It looks like were are headed to Gulf Shores, AL instead, as they appear to have a very nice beach, enough golf choices for me and spa choices for her
The dining scene doesn't look too promising from what I can tell by the interweb sites, so any recs are much appreciated. I will probably be doing a fair amount of cooking too, so any seafood market recs would be helpful as well.
We are going to head over to New Orleans one day while we are there and we are both looking forward to that!

[Gary Guss]

Go to Fairhope one day for lunch and stop at Panini Pete's
http://www.paninipetes.com/
Fairhope is a cool place to visit also its on the bay
http://beautifulfairhope.com/

[Robin Garr]

I don't know if this has changed - it's been 10 years or more since we drove around the Gulf Coast in the Biloxi and Gulfport area for a spell, but at that time there were tons of Vietnamese fishing settlements all along the coast, with a good variety of hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese joints to serve them. We found them invariably welcoming, friendly and lacking in English, which made for a good experience.

Not sure it's still true, but if you get desperate with nothing but junk food and chains in sight, check the Yellow pages for Vietnamese and see what you can see.