Chef John Davis arrived in Gulf Shores as the result of a COVID-19 pandemic layoff and a job opportunity for his wife. What he found was a community and a dream job at a fine dining restaurant he thought would take him to retirement. Instead, it led him to a new adventure.

Davis is a born-and-bred California surfer whose culinary journey led him to Charleston, South Carolina, for culinary school. He met his wife, Michelle, and hasn’t left the South. They settled in the Atlanta area and raised a family while both working in the hotel and restaurant industry.

Once the children graduated and flew the coop, the couple decided to sell their home and explore. The first stop was the Florida Keys for a year while they helped a friend get his hotel up and running. The next stop took them to Starkville, Mississippi, where he got a job working at a food service management company.

“We did stadium dining like luxury boxes and corporate dining and that kind of thing. When the pandemic hit, I got laid off. Everything shut down,” Davis said. “Simultaneously, my wife got a job as the general manager at The Wharf Springhill Suites, so we packed up and moved to Gulf Shores.”

After getting settled, Davis started looking for a job and answered his first-ever ad on Indeed.

“It was for the Sunset Cork Room. I never knew what it was. I walked in the door, met Nina and hit it off immediately. I thought going into a local fine dining restaurant would be perfect; have complete control over what I want to do and open five days a week. This will be my swan song. My last little dance,” he laughed. “Just ride off into the sunset with Nina, and I’ll just be the chef and play golf on the weekends, and it will be great. And it was.”

After 19 years in business, Nina Martin decided it was time to sell Sunset Cork Room and retire. Davis wasn’t ready to let it go, but the restaurant served its last dinner Jan. 20.

“I fell in love with the Cork Room, the patrons, the employees, and everything about it was special,” he said. “It was a community place that had a cool vibe that I fell in love with. I had the opportunity to continue it somewhere else.”

Davis struck a deal to purchase the business from Martin. The original building had been sold, so he knew he had to find a new location, and it wasn’t an easy task.

“We set off looking for a location. We looked at every place and found nothing,” Davis said. “I am just a chef, not a billionaire with all kinds of capital to build out. It had to be a deal where it was a turnkey operation where I could just come in, bring the team, turn on the gas and hit the ground running.”

When Davis heard Safari Club at the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo had closed in April, he made a call. After a month or two of negotiations with the zoo, its board and stakeholders over a 40-plus-page lease, Davis had found a new, bigger home for his restaurant.

Sunset Cork Room had 75 seats including the bar and was only open for dinner five nights a week. The zoo location offers more interior seating with around 100 seats, another 100 seats outside (which are not yet open for dining) and a larger kitchen. The new location also came with a requirement for lunch and brunch and being open seven days a week. It also has a new name.

Davis renamed the restaurant Savanna. The name fit with the new location as well as an ode to one of the oldest Southern cities. He chose the feminine spelling to honor the many strong women in his life.

The long negotiations and lease period gave Davis and his executive chef, Tina Goodwin-Allen, about three to four weeks to get up and running.

While the menu now includes lunch and brunch, the dinner menu will be familiar to Sunset Cork Room patrons. Davis said the Cork Room had become his signature style: clean contemporary cooking with a French influence.

“I believe in good ingredients. If you cook them well you don’t have to do a lot to them,” he said. “My thing is to cook it right, process it right, and usually everything works out well.”

The challenge of coming up with a lunch and brunch menu was keeping it cohesive to fit with the dinner menu.

“You can’t have filet mignon for lunch. No one would come,” Davis laughed. “We wanted to do some things that were a little different like the hot pastrami sandwich, which you don’t see much of down here. I like doing things that you don’t see on a lot of menus.”

Davis said he steered away from Gulf Coast menu regulars like shrimp and grits and leaned into different items. The lunch menu features a seared tuna niçoise salad, a grilled portobello mushroom sandwich and poutine. He also inherited a brick oven, which added pizza to the menu. While pizza is easy to find, Davis is keeping with his “different” theme and offers a filet mignon with blue cheese pizza.

Diners can also expect the menu to change every couple of months.

“We like to change the menu every few months as opposed to running a lot of specials,” Davis said. “We constantly evolve the menu. We always keep the classics; the lamb lollipops stay on the menu all the time. We will always have a filet on the menu and always have a grouper. Anything else, all bets are off.”

Savanna opened its doors Sept. 5, and Davis said they got crushed for the first time at lunch Friday, Sept. 8. He said the floodgates opened and they got killed, but that is a great problem to have.

“What it is is heartwarming because the community has embraced us, and they want to come in and see good food. I mean it is really encouraging, and it was our second day,” Davis said. “We learn from our mistakes, and we know what we have to do.”

Martin may have retired, but you can still find her at Savanna. Davis said she can’t help herself and needs to stay busy, so she is helping him with the wine program and acting as a host.

Despite years in the industry, Davis said this new chapter has taught him that people are good.

“That is one thing that almost gets me choked up thinking about. All the people and the community that has come in is overwhelming and humbling,” he said. “We have hired some good people who have stepped up and understood it is going to be crazy for a little while. They are willing to chip in and do their part. It kind of restores my gratitude for humanity. That was surprising.”

Looking to the future

Despite only having recently opened, Davis is looking forward to the future possibilities of his new business and location.

“One of the things that intrigued me about this location was the opportunity to do catering. We have two huge event spaces. One has a stage and is a closed event area where we could have little concerts out there. There is another space that is a great wedding venue, and we have a little breakout room for business parties,” Davis said. “I have spent a lot of years in the catering game and doing banquets, so I am excited about that. Once we get the restaurant up and running, my next goal is to start pounding the pavement and start going after some events. This is just a gorgeous location to have events.”

Davis’s passion and love for what he does is evident.

“For chefs, I believe it is more than a job. We do this because we are passionate about it. We are people-pleasers, and we want to make something great,” he said. “In the end, we just want to be part of a community and have people that want to be part of the community, whether they are employees or guests or vendors.”