How West Indies Salad became an iconic Alabama dish

A yellowed copy of a September 1993 story from the Mobile Press-Register hangs in a frame on the wall between the main dining room and the kitchen of Bayley's Seafood Restaurant, a landmark well-known to motorists who regularly travel Dauphin Island Parkway along the western shore of Mobile Bay.

In the story, Ethel Bayley shows how to make West Indies salad, a dish her husband, Bill Bayley Sr., created. He was a larger-than-life figure who started a small grocery store at the corner and soon turned it into a restaurant that, at its heyday, could seat as many as 500 people - which it did every year during the Senior Bowl.

"Dad was very entrepreneurial," says Bill Bayley Jr., Bill Sr.'s 73-year-old son who, 23 years ago, reopened a smaller version of the restaurant at Bayley's Corner in Theodore and has been running it nearly as long as his father ran the original. "His vision was way ahead of everybody else's."

When he was told his restaurant wouldn't make it "way down there" in south Mobile County, Bill Sr. insisted that if the food was good, customers would come. And they did.

Black-and-white photos show the evolution of Bayley's, starting in the 1940s until it closed sometime in the 1970s. A jolly-looking Bill Sr. smiles with a cigarette in one hand, the handle of a fryer in the other. Big Jim Folsom, two-time governor of Alabama, towers over everyone else in some of the pictures displayed on the wall.

Legend has it that, in addition to the West Indies Salad, the elder Bayley also came up with the concept of fried crab claws. The two seafood dishes are staples on menus along the Gulf Coast.

The 1993 story includes Bill Sr.'s recipe for the tangy salad, which the Texas native conceived when he was in the Merchant Marine, working as a port steward to stock groceries for Alcoa Ship Lines. While at sea, on a stop in the West Indies, he boiled some Florida lobster and added onions, then dressed it with oil and vinegar.

He was transferred to Mobile, where he met Ethel, a Bay Minette girl who became his wife. After they opened their restaurant in 1947, he re-created that salad in his kitchen, using fresh crab meat - and soon, his West Indies Salad was on the menu as a wildly popular appetizer.

As for the crab claws, Bill Jr. says his dad tried serving them steamed, with melted butter on the side, at first. But when he decided to batter and fry them, he knew he was onto something. Like the West Indies Salad, crab claws were always an appetizer, meant to be shared by everyone at the table while they waited for their entrees to arrive.

Bill admits that he never paid much attention to the West Indies salad when he was growing up. But he knows for a fact that fried crab claws were his dad's invention. "I was there," he says. "I remember it plain as day. It was a hit. We sell a lot of them, too."

'A family reunion'

Both dishes are proudly served at lunch and dinner at Bayley's, which Bill Jr. reopened in the building that used to serve as the catering kitchen for his dad's restaurant. The original Bayley's building next door is now a Greer's Market grocery store.

The spacious dining room with shining white tile walls and worn blue carpet welcomes customers, most of whom are regulars who chat with Bill. "People come in here and it's like a family reunion," he says. "Some have raised their kids on our gumbo."

Like his father before him, Bill opened his version of Bayley's with his wife by his side. Known as Nita (short for Juanita), she died of cancer in March.

Nita held court in the restaurant from her favorite spot in the back, where she could look out on the dining room. Her place is marked by a metal heart made by local artist Frank Ledbetter that reads "Nita's Chair." Above the sign hangs a pair of wings made of driftwood.

"She was my partner," Bill says, his gravelly voice softening. "After 40 years together, we were as much in love as the first day we met. We did everything together." One of their favorite things to do was ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

"She was a great woman. Everybody loved her. And she could cook anything."

In the huge kitchen, where the same cook has worked for Bill since he opened in 1995, the "Bayley bible" resides. "Everything we make comes out of that recipe book," he says.

Memories of Nita are everywhere, as are memories of Bill's parents. His dad's collection of whimsical old liquor bottles is displayed on shelves around the restaurant. Bill was a little boy when the restaurant first opened. His dad "worked me all my life," he says.

When he was 15, his friends would drive by on their way to the drag strip or Dauphin Island. "I'd be cleaning flounder or taking out garbage," he says, so he couldn't go with them. Later, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps and worked in construction.

But Bayley's always drew him back. He helped his father in the catering business in the 1980s, after the original restaurant closed, spending about two-thirds of the year on the road. They took Bayley's food to events "everywhere," he says - Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, even Washington, D.C.

When Bill and Nita started out, they intended to offer carry-out only. Soon they found themselves buying tables and chairs and dishes to accommodate diners.

Regular customers know to arrive early for dinner on Wednesday nights, when the special is all-you-can-eat fish and grits. In the summertime, Bayley's serves about 50 pounds of crab claws per week. And they go through about 30 pounds of West Indies salad every week, too, especially during football season.

These days, almost every seafood restaurant on the Gulf Coast offers fried crab claws and West Indies salad. Like his son said, Bill Bayley Sr., who died in 1997 at age 80, was a man ahead of his time.

Bayley's is located at 10805 Dauphin Island Pkwy. The phone number is (251) 973-1572. The restaurant is closed on Sundays and Mondays.

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