Where to Eat near Alabama Cruise Terminal

A beignet cafe on upper Dauphin Street, open from 8am on a weekday and 9am at the weekend

Order: Beignets, which is the whole proposition and the reason to walk the extra three blocks past everything else.

Pro tip: This is the earliest opening on the list and the one that solves boarding morning: 8am Monday to Thursday, 8am Friday, 9am Saturday and Sunday. Its own site asks you to check its social media or call before visiting in case of last-minute changes, which is a small business being honest and worth doing on a day you cannot be flexible.

The Dauphin Street oyster house, founded in 1938 and serving Gulf seafood in the same room ever since

Order: Oysters for whoever wants them and fried Gulf seafood for whoever does not.

Pro tip: Open every day, 11am to 9pm Sunday through Thursday and 11am to 10pm on Friday and Saturday — the only full-service kitchen downtown with no closed day at all, which matters when your sailing date is fixed and the rest of the street is not.

A Dauphin Street bar and grill with a balcony, open on Sunday mornings when almost nothing else downtown is

Order: Burgers and Gulf seafood, upstairs on the balcony if there is room.

Pro tip: Sunday opening is 10am, earlier than every other sit-down room here, which makes this the fallback for a family with an afternoon boarding and a morning to fill. It is closed Monday and Tuesday, so check the day before you build a plan on it.

A Southern farm-to-table kitchen on Dauphin Street that serves brunch on both weekend days

Order: Brunch, if you are here at the weekend — it is the meal this kitchen serves on the days most families are in town.

Pro tip: Brunch runs Saturday and Sunday, 10am to 2pm, and it is the more grown-up of the two weekend options on this list. Lunch is weekdays only and dinner is Tuesday to Saturday only, so the day you sail decides which meal is even available.

A Southern Creole dining room on the 34th floor of the Trustmark Building, which its own site measures at 424 feet above Mobile

Order: The Creole end of the menu rather than the steak end — the kitchen's own framing is Southern Creole with hints of Caribbean, and the room is the reason you booked it.

Pro tip: There is a dress code and the restaurant states it plainly: no shorts, no flip-flops, no t-shirts, and jeans are discouraged. That is worth knowing on a night when your good clothes may already be in a suitcase tagged for the ship. Dinner runs Monday to Thursday until 9pm and Friday and Saturday until 10pm; the Sunday jazz brunch, 11am to 3pm, is the only weekend daytime slot.

Southern heritage cooking with a coastal flair, in a small room across from Bienville Square

Order: The seafood side of the menu. The owner grew up in Mobile on southern food and fresh seafood, and that is the register the kitchen writes in.

Pro tip: Read the hours before you plan around this one. It serves dinner only, Tuesday to Saturday, 5pm to 8:45pm — an end time, not an approximation — and it is closed Sunday and Monday. Private dining tops out at ten people. If you sail on a Sunday, this is a two-nights-out dinner or nothing.