One of the first things you notice is a sign saying that parking for the (New Orleans) Crescent City Classic, a road race, is prohibited.

Then, over the bar, you’ll see a Coast Guard banner with signatures and comments from a Coast Guard unit. How’d those things get there?

“The Coast Guard found Tipseas and made it their home (during the oil spill clean-up) while they were here,” said Sherry Odom, one of Tipseas’ owners, adding the unit presented the banner on their last visit to the establishment, which celebrated its second birthday last

October.

Tipseas is a restaurant and bar located right across Highway 181 from the beach. It’s one of those places that you used to be able to find all over the Alabama Gulf Coast — a spot where you can find freshly prepared seafood that is actually good for you.

“I have been in the food and beverage business since I was a teen,”

said Odom. “My mother leased space in the Cotton Bayou Marina for me.”

Odom mentioned that she had been towed into the marina and told the then owner that the place needed a kitchen.

“It was a closet at the end of the bar,” said Odom. She then went on to Babyo’s, which her mother also leased for her.

Odom went on to other things, culminating in owning the Santa Fe Chile Co. with Karen Hameroff. The women sold the company, and with both having deep roots on the Gulf Coast (Hameroff is from Pensacola) decided to open a restaurant on the coast.

But both women found the coast had changed.

“We felt like tourists in our own towns,” said Odom.

The pair met when Hameroff did the architectural plans for a house that Odom owned on Bayou Texar in Pensacola. She had studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Hameroff raised fresh herbs, which Odom used in making some of her bottled spice and dressing mixes.

But, the pair felt something of the “old” Gulf Coast could come back.

“This was my back yard,” said Hameroff. “I loved the quaintness of

Orange Beach.”

“I have family here, I grew up here. I am a waterbug,” said Odom.

The pair returned to the area, and collaborated in the opening of Nix Steak and Oysters at the Wharf before establishing Tipseas.

The road race sign, Odom says, was brought in by a customer who knows Odom’s love of Mardi Gras.

“We had to open a place so we would have something good to eat,” quipped Odom.

Both women said the restaurant does a lot of charity work, and they have the “SMART” (Students Making Achievements Receive Tipseas scholarships) program to help Gulf Shores students go to college in the state of Alabama.

“It’s like a baby (the restaurant) and it takes a lot of work to help it grow,” said Hameroff. She added that she does a “lot of mediation and yoga” to deal with the stress of owning a business.

Charity and outreach, Odom, says is how the restaurant deals with the “recent catastrophic event” — the oil spill.

“We’ve seen how it affected our whole community,” she said. “When someone comes in and says they are losing their house, what do you say?”