HOW MANY TIMES have you been on a road trip and realized that you must have taken a left turn where you should have made a right and ended up in what felt like the middle of nowhere? More often than not, whenever that happens, you’ve actually arrived somewhere that’s pretty special to the folks who call it home. When we started planning the survey for our eighth annual South’s Best awards, we wanted to include a way for you, our readers, to not only vote for your favorite places but to nominate them too. And while we’re always excited to showcase bustling cities on the rise and charming small towns, we also hoped to recognize beloved gems that might be tucked away on side streets or along back roads. As usual, your responses were overwhelming, and we’re honored to celebrate many of them on the following 72 pages. So the next time you take a wrong turn, remember that you might be only a few steps away from a town’s best-kept secret. Just ask a local.
—Southern Living Editors
THE VOTING PROCESS An online survey was conducted by third-party agency Proof Insights among Southern Living consumers, asking them to rate their favorite places across the South. The survey was fielded from July 12 to August 23, 2023, and had over 20,000 respondents.
produced by LISA CERICOLA, TARA MASSOULEH MCCAY, and CAROLINE ROGERS
BEST DIVE BAR
YOU DON’T BECOME the Gulf Coast’s most hallowed beach bar without a bit of divine intervention. “When you look at where God put the Flora-Bama, it’s in the middle of where all kinds of demographics gather—that’s what makes it special,” says co-owner and lifelong Alabama native John McInnis III. “You’d have fishermen and locals mixed with tourists, bikers, and military personnel from the [Pensacola Navy] base. All of a sudden, they were hanging out together in this little shack by a liquor store. That’s what it looked like in the late seventies and early eighties.”
Now in its 60th year, the destination’s siren call of live music, fresh oysters, and boozy milkshakes (known as Bushwackers) attracts the same ragtag band of revelers it beckoned in its early years. But the snowbirds, spring breakers, and all the groups in between have one thing in common, says co-owner Cameron Price, an Army Airborne Ranger veteran who first visited the area as a grad student fleeing the Massachusetts winter: “Every single person who walks into the Flora-Bama wants to have a good time.
And that’s not hard to do there. You’ll see white sand between the floorboards, love notes penned on the walls in permanent marker, and a clothesline of ladies’ unmentionables strung above the dance floor (this is a dive bar, after all). Kids can enjoy the scenery till 6 p.m., and everybody else can hang around until they close at 2:30 a.m. On Sunday mornings, come back at 9 or 11 a.m. for church. Everyone’s welcome, and for many folks, their first pilgrimage to this sprawling shack on the beach begets a second one—and maybe a hundred more after that.
Claimed by residents on both sides of the Alabama-Florida line, the dive has been a fixture since 1964 (a couple of years after the states were connected by the Perdido ass Bridge), when a local family built an unassuming package store there. The late Joe Gilchrist bought it in 1978 and transformed it into a live-music venue, recruiting country artists on the rodeo circuit to come down and play. Once Pat McClellan joined him as a partner in the mid-eighties, they began adding some of the bar’s signature events, like the annual Interstate Mullet Toss (people throwing fish in the name of charity, which raises thousands for area youth organizations each year) and the Frank Brown Songwriters’ Festival (the largest and oldest of its kind in the country, which brings in big names in music).
Like most places that have good stories, the Flora-Bama has seen some tough times along the way. After Hurricane Ivan walloped the area back in 2004, there was nothing left of the original beachfront building. For about three years, the bar operated out of a collection of tents and trailers. But the faithful patrons still kept showing up. “You probably had close to a million people a year going through there and having the times of their lives,” says McInnis, who became a majority owner along with Price in 2009. “That’s love.”
They then built up the Flora-Bama again—this time constructing the rambling wooden shack 22 feet above flood level. Beyond that, they haven’t altered much. “Our goal was to make it better without changing it because it’s such an iconic establishment,” says McInnis. That means a continued commitment to supporting charitable organizations (they give to more than 30 groups annually, from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation) and a devotion to redefining hospitality, providing a welcoming spot for all kinds of sunseekers to gather season after season.
“You’re more a shepherd of the Flora-Bama than you are an owner of it,” says Price. “When you look at all the people who have made memories here over the years, that’s the magic of this place.”
MATTHEW COUGHLIN
BEST BBQ JOINT
Loyal diners return for the pork, ribs, and especially the chicken, all of which are cooked on wood-fired brick pits. The chicken is dipped in Alabama white sauce, a mayonnaise-based concoction invented by Big Bob himself a century or so ago here in Decatur. —Robert Moss
2. SAW’s BBQ Birmingham 3. Down South BBQ Foley 4. Miss Myra’s Pit Bar-B-Q Birmingham 5. Meat Boss Mobile 6. Archibald & Woodrow’s BBQ Northport and Tuscaloosa 7. Demetri’s Homewood 8. Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q Bessemer 9. The Bar-B-Q House Troy 10. Chicken Comers Bar-B-Que Phenix City
BEST BANANA PUDDING DREAMLAND BAR-B-Q MOST PEOPLE in Alabama know Dreamland for its slow- cooked, hickory-smoked ribs, created by original owner John “Big Daddy” Bishop in Tuscaloosa in 1958. For 35 years, they stuck to serving mainly ribs, white bread, and sauce, but when a location opened in Mobile, public demand caused the business to consider accompaniments. “The people there basically said, ‘We have to have sides, or we’re not coming back,’” recalls CEO Betsy McAtee. Items like baked beans and potato salad were added to the menu soon after, but the most exciting development was in the realm of dessert— namely banana pudding. Now offered in all 11 of the locations, the Southern picnic staple is a top-three seller for the business. McAtee maintains that the recipe isn’t complicated. The secret is in the cookies, she says. Instead of Nilla Wafers, Dreamland uses longtime local favorite Bud’s Best Cookies’ Vanilla Wafers. “People tell me all the time that, next to their grandmother’s, it’s the best they’ve had,” she says. “And I take that to mean it really is the best; they’re just not going to throw their grandmother under the bus —Tara Massouleh McCay
illustrations by KENDYLL HILLEGAS
