Tacos and turnip fries: Dragonfly Tavern and Dragonfly Foodbar keep food fun in Fairhope, Daphne

“Let’s give them something to taco about,” the operators of Daphne’s Dragonfly Tavern recently joked as they posted their daily specials, and if the joke is good enough for them, it’s good enough for us.

And there is a lot to talk about when it comes to Dragonfly. There are tacos galore. There are turnip fries. There’s a playful spirit to the menu, which includes Asian as well as Latin influences. There is the unique spot it has carved out for itself on the Eastern Shore, as both a go-to neighborhood spot and a favorite of dedicated foodies. (Ask another Eastern Shore restaurateur where they go to eat, and there’s a pretty good chance Dragonfly will be on the short list.) And there’s a lot of history.

The history, briefly: Doug and Brie Kerr opened the tiny Dragonfly Foodbar in the heart of downtown Fairhope in 2010. In those days, Doug Kerr referred to their Asian-fusion concept as “fine dining in a tortilla.” The Foodbar eventually moved to a bigger (but still small) spot on Church Street, and the Kerrs opened the Dragonfly Tavern in Olde Towne Daphne. The Tavern’s larger size – and in particular its bigger kitchen – allowed them to expand not just their customer base, but their menu.

The biggest transition yet came in 2024, when rising rent, limited space and chronic parking challenges prompted the Kerrs to move the Foodbar from downtown Fairhope to a spot about a mile and a half south on Section Street. The new location features much more space for customers and for the chefs, as well as plenty of on-site parking. So, these days, “Dragonfly” means two full-size, full-service restaurants in two neighboring cities. The constraints of the Foodbar’s old locations meant their menus were different in the past, but nowadays they’re converging.

Wait, did somebody say “turnip fries?”

Indeed. Tempura Turnip Fries are a prominent example of the Dragonfly way, which is to present you something that looks like a gimmick but turns out not to be a gimmick at all. They’ve been a staple at the Tavern for years, and it only takes the first bite to see why. The tempura shell gives them the crispness you want from a potato-based French fry, and the sliced turnip inside compares well in terms of texture. But the turnip packs earthy, peppery, savory flavors that put plain old potato to shame. You can’t help but think that if these had been invented first, potato-based fries might never have taken off.

Brie Kerr laughed when the subject came up. She’s been hearing all this for years.

“Those have been on the menu since we opened in the very first location, there was a newspaper article that actually featured those,” she said. “We always call it, you know, the local’s favorite, but a lot of the guests, for their first time in, are like, ‘How do y’all fry a turnip green?’ And we have to explain that it’s not the green, it’s the root.

“People have begged for that recipe from Doug so many times and he is like, ‘nope,‘” she said. “He will not give it up and it’s impossible to recreate at home exactly those flavors, but, yeah, that’s always been a fun original dish unique to us.”

By the time you get to your first turnip fry, you’ve already encountered another cornerstone of the Dragonfly experience. There’s a standard menu that provides a full range of options: tacos, sliders, smash burgers, noodle- and rice-based bowls, salads, small plates and sides. But there’s also a daily “feature board” of specials – and the feature board is so full that you might not see the need to look at the “real” menu.

One recent example included: A Smoked Brisket Quesadilla with queso cheddar mix and chipotle aioli; a Crispy Gunpowder Redfish Taco with pickled jalapeno crema and miso firecracker slaw; a Tempura Fried Oyster Mushroom Taco; a Crisply Firecracker Tofu Taco with spinach, tomato, bleu cheese dill aioli and fried garlic; a Main Street Taco with smoked pork belly, pickled onions, queso fresco and chili aioli; a Crispy Key Spice Crawfish Taco with green chili aioli, arugula, pickled onion and shallots; Minestrone; and an Heirloom Tomato Plate with Crispy Redfish, augmented with bacon, bleu cheese and avocado vinaigrette. (The quesadilla and the tomato plate are $16-$17, with everything else running $7-$9.)

A theme emerges as you read all that, and it’s that there’s someone in the kitchen who really likes to play around with their flavor profiles. That someone is Doug Kerr, who encourages a similar freedom of experimentation among his chefs.

“Doug is an artist at heart,” said Brie Kerr. “His gift is taking food elements that you wouldn’t think of using in a dish to bring that balance to the dish. So, anytime we go in an Asian market or a Latin market or any type of different place, his brain just works that way. He’ll grab something off the shelf, and I don’t question him anymore, but you know, he’ll have a plan for it. You’re like, ‘That does not make sense,’ and then he creates the dish and it’s like, ‘This makes perfect sense.’

“He could throw the menu away right now at Dragonfly and rewrite one in 20 minutes,” she said. “And I’ve had to stop him from doing that so many times because I’m like, ‘Everybody would be really upset! They really like these things.’ … It’s so much fun, and he still has so much fun with it, and he has so much fun working with the chefs in both of the kitchens.”

Given that tacos have been a core part of the Dragonfly experience from the beginning, we had to sample a few. On a recent visit, I ordered a trio. I started with the Firecracker Shrimp ($7, with Asian slaw, pickled cabbage and spicy aioli) because it has a reputation as a crowd favorite and the Crispy Oyster ($7, with pickled cabbage and spicy dill aioli) for the sheer novelty of having oysters on a taco.

Both exemplified the Dragonfly knack for taking familiar elements (fried oysters, shrimp, tortillas) and putting a novel spin on them, resulting in a dish that’s both exotic and hearty. The same was true of my third choice, which was among the daily specials: a Wagyu Meatball Taco ($8, with cilantro, jalapeno aioli, arugula and pickled onion).

Meatballs? On a taco? Sure, why not, it worked. These meatballs were small enough to fit the taco form factor, but meaty enough to make the dish feel like more than a mere snack.

And I’d just barely scratched the surface. Other taco options on the Foodbar’s regular menu include the Braised Pork, with avocado crema, lime and habanero applesauce; the Five Spice Duck, with figs, cranberry, pickled radish and green chili; the Kung Pao Chicken and the Seared Tuna. You can see why people would keep coming back.

A companion and I also tried another fun dragonfly staple, what the Kerrs call “sticks.” Brie Kerr takes some of the credit for offering a rotation of appetizers that play on the Carnival-style corndog format. On this day it was Chicken & Waffle Sticks ($8). I ordered it half expecting chicken-on-a-stick wrapped in ordinary waffle and drenched in heavy syrup. That’s not what we got.

These sticks didn’t score high on appearance, looking like dark little corndogs. But they made up for it. The chicken was surrounded by a tasty cinnamon pecan tempura batter, with the well-balanced sweetness coming from blueberry honey, sriracha butter and a hint of powdered sugar.

Clearly, you’ll always have options at Dragonfly. How do you decide? You could do what a lot of regulars do and just order the special. Or you could ask. Either way, it’s a trust thing, and Dragonfly has become the kind of place that people trust to expand their horizons.

Brie Kerr said she encourages her servers to start building that trust by recommending the dishes they personally love the most. One example for her is the Crispy Oyster Blue Cheese French Toast appetizer, which she likes to pitch to first-time visitors.

“The oyster toast is crazy good,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else.” It combines bleu cheese French toast batter, fried oysters, pickled purple cabbage and a spicy aioli, she said, “So you’ve got creamy, you’ve got crunchy, you’ve got a little bit of spice, you know, it’s almost like a party going on in the bite because there’s like every little texture and flavor all at one time.”

What she’d really like people to know about Dragonfly, she said, is that it’s not just business, not just a community.

“We are such a family,” she said. “Our staff, our crew in front and in the back of the house, have been with us for so long, and when we had to move out of Fairhope, we kept every one of our employees, we had to take out a little extra money to take care of them.”

And that regard extends to customers, she said.

“We want them feel like they are our family when they come in,” she said. “Like when you get to your mom’s on Thanksgiving and you walk in and it’s the same faces, it feels comfortable and familiar.

“We have this funky, fun, different food every time you come in,” she said. “But we just really love to promote like that feeling of family. And people have just they’ve loved that, and they’ve loved on us so much, and the support that that we got when we reopened in the new location was just overwhelming.”

And there you have it. Love and tacos. What more do you need?

Dragonfly Tavern is at 1800 Main St. in Daphne; for daily specials and other information, visit the venue’s Facebook page. Dragonfly Foodbar is at 18874 S. Section St. in Fairhope.