“This place is so loved,” said Lindsay Parker. “People who live on this water, you have your fishermen, you have people who retired when they were 40 or 50, no matter what, they want to have fun.”

That sounds about right, if you know Dog River and the people you’re likely to meet on its waters or living along its shores. Apparently they also wanted a bacon-wrapped foot-long hot dog called The Homewrecker, which is more of a surprise.

But you’re bound to get some surprises, when a dormant venue comes back to life under new ownership. This one was even a surprise to the new owners, Lindsay Parker and Gregory Pouyadou.

Going back to 2020, they knew they were ready to make a move, after years in New Orleans. The disruptions of the developing COVID-19 pandemic made it seem like an opportune time for a change. They knew a move to Mobile would put them closer to Pouyadou’s mother. They happened to notice a vacant restaurant not far down Dauphin Island Parkway from her home.

“We were visiting and saw this place for lease,” said Parker. “I came the next weekend to check it out, and we were like, cool, let’s do it.”

They kept the old name and the ramshackle look, of a waterfront Dog River hangout that had been vacant for a couple of years. Even so, there was considerable work to be done and a liquor license to be secured. The reborn River Shack opened on Labor Day weekend in 2021 and was promptly off to the races as old patrons returned and an energetic approach to the menu drew in new ones.

“When we first moved here, everyone was very welcoming. Everyone wanted to help us out. They wanted to see this place succeed,” said Parker. “We grew too quickly and did as much as we could to keep up.”

The growing pains appear to have had time to fade into the past. Recent visits found that even on weekday in the off-season, there’s a respectable lunch-rush crowd consisting of everything from industrial crews in coveralls (always a good sign for hearty fare and a fast turnaround time) to casually-dressed folks with plenty of time to enjoy the view of Dog River and Mobile Bay (also a good sign, if you’re looking for laid-back atmosphere).

Parker would later explain that the menu is driven by two forces. On the one hand, she and Pouyadou have some adventurous ideas and a love of experimentation; on the other, Mobilians have a pretty firm idea of the seafood-and-sandwich fare they want from a casual waterfront joint. One way this dynamic plays out is with a lively rotation of daily specials. On any given day the chef’s features might include some options to make you change your plans: Pasta, crawfish etouffee, lemon pepper catfish, a pork ribeye with crawfish brown sauce, a BLT built with fried green tomatoes and topped with shrimp remoulade, or homestyle tamales, for example.

Aside from what to order, one of your first decisions upon entering will be to decide whether to sit indoors or out. The distinction isn’t as great as you might think, especially on a typical spring day in midwinter. “Look down,” said one of my companions, as we stood in the main indoor dining area. “You can see water.”

True: We were basically on an enclosed dock. And that was just fine. Our crawfish queso ($10) appetizer arrived quickly and we dug in. The crawfish flavor was abundant. The crawfish themselves weren’t immediately apparent, but we found them lurking in the bottom of the dish.

One of my companions ordered the Shack Cheeseburger ($15), a fully-loaded handful that comes with the River Shack’s house-made bacon ketchup. He was too busy cramming it into his face to provide much in the way of useful commentary, but from that we can infer that it was pretty good. Afterward he praised it for its juiciness. He’d opted to use the bacon ketchup on his fries rather than putting it on the burger, but he said it worked great that way too.

The other went for the Shrimp Remoulade BLT ($14). Like the burger, it arrived at the table open-faced, which caught the group a little off guard. On one side of the takeout clamshell, my friend saw a heaping serving of large shrimp in remoulade sauce, nestled a huge nest of lettuce and thin slices of cherry-red tomato. On the other side was a pile of bacon. No joke, a pile. A whole lot of thick-cut bacon laid side-by-side. It was truly a sight to behold, even if it wasn’t immediately clear where the handle was.

After a few moments of low comedy, my colleague figured out how to fold the two halves over without losing too much of their cargo. The bacon was tender-crisp, he reported, remoulade creamy. He’s normally a guy who makes it a point to bring leftovers home, but not this time.

I, on the other hand, did leave with a full meal’s worth of leftovers. I’d gone for the flagship shrimp, fish and oyster platter ($27) and got more food than I could even think about downing in one sitting. And what I learned from this is that The River Shack knows how to do the basics: Frying may be a basic and arguably even lowbrow way to handle seafood, but it’s still easy to screw it up. In this case, everything was piping hot but nothing was dried out. Each item maintained its texture: Crisp shrimp, flaky fish, moist oysters. Say what you want, that’s not the easiest thing to pull off.

As successful as this visit was, I was left wondering about something I’d noticed on the menu: The Homewrecker, a foot-long beef hot dog wrapped in bacon and topped with cheese, chopped tomato and onion and jalapenos. I made a second visit just to see if The Homewrecker would live up to its billing, and frankly, it was a mistake to go solo. eating just half this monstrosity nearly put me in a coma.

Let’s be honest, foot-long hot dogs often disappoint. Sometimes it’s just two regular dogs in a long bun, with condiments piled on in an attempt to cover the fraud. Bacon-wrapped anything can be a gamble, because the bacon and the thing wrapped in it may or may not be cooked to the same degree.

But this? First off, this hot dog is the real deal. Really this is more of a sausage dog, and there’s more meat in it than in any half-pound burger. It’s jacketed in a spiral of thick bacon that is neither under- nor overcooked. The toppings lend spiciness and cut (albeit only slightly) the sheer overwhelming meatiness of the dog.

Homewrecker? I can’t speak to any risqué connotations here, but if your spouse sees you put down one of these, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be ordered to sleep on the couch that night.

If you’re looking down at it from the Dog River Bridge, the venue looks like the same old shack it always was. Under the rough exterior, a lot has changed: There’s a lot more bar space than there used to be, additional coolers help make maximum use of the small kitchen and stages allow musicians to perform inside, outside or in a pavilion, as circumstances permit.

While you can get exactly what you’d expect – fried seafood, a big burger, maybe a salad – you can find a lot more. Above all, you can find a venue trying to provide the communal experience its clientele seems to want.

That’s the reason for taking orders at a window, rather than going with full table service, Parker said. At The River Shack, people like to circulate.

“The clientele we get is very, very special,” she said. “We’ve been in the industry for 20 years. The people who come here, you will always meet someone interesting. And you always can sit at the bar and meet a regular that has stories.”

“Weekends in the summer, it’s shoulder-to-shoulder,” she said. “They don’t stay for just two hours. They’ll stay for like four to eight hours.”

Her advice: The wings are good. You can get your seafood blackened and you should seriously consider doing that, because Pouyadou worked for more than a decade at a well-known New Orleans seafood restaurant and knows how it should be done.

And keep an eye on those daily specials and the seasonal changes in the menu. Meeting the demand for something familiar doesn’t mean you have to be limited to the same-old same-old.

“Our menu is always changing,” Parker said. “Which people did not like in the beginning, but I think they’re starting to like it now. You know, a lot of people have their favorites and they’ll get mad when it’s not on there, but it comes and goes, it will always come back.”

Just like The River Shack did.

The River Shack is at 6120 S. Marina Drive in Mobile, under the Dog River Bridge. For the latest menu updates, visit www.facebook.com/RiverShackRestaurant.