In its long and colorful 94-year history, The Ark restaurant in the small St. Clair County town of Riverside has had just four owners.
Now, after nearly a century, the iconic Alabama restaurant famous for its fried catfish and butterfly shrimp has a second home, too.
Kyle Ostermeyer, who bought The Ark two years ago, has opened a new location in Springville, about a 30-minute drive from the one in Riverside.
The second-edition Ark, on Main Street in the heart of downtown, was formerly the longtime home of the old Springville Café and, more recently, Top Notch Café and Catering.
The main draw for Ostermeyer was Springville’s small-town charm, he says.
“It still has that, I like to call it, Hallmark movie feel — that small town, Norman Rockwell-ish type feeling,” Ostermeyer says. “With who we are as a restaurant and how we started in a small town, Riverside, I thought that was pretty cool.”
Since opening the restaurant, Ostermeyer says he is seeing lots of new faces that he never saw in Riverside.
“I would say it’s probably about 80 percent new business,” he says. “There’s a lot of people that just never made it out there (to Riverside).
“So, it’s the word of mouth,” he adds. “It’s like, ‘Hey, did y’all hear The Ark opened in Springville? . . . You’ve got to try it.’”
Shirley Abts bought The Ark restaurant in Riverside in 2013 and ran it for nearly a decade before she sold it to current onwer Kyle Ostermeyer in 2022. (Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
A new beginning
Before buying The Ark, Ostermeyer worked as a food sales rep, and he used to call on each of the Riverside restaurant’s previous two owners — Shirley Abts, who ran The Ark for more than a decade, and her predecessor, Sylvia Cornett, who, along with her husband, Bob, owned the restaurant for more than 30 years.
So he is well-versed in the restaurant’s history.
Abts had come out of retirement to buy The Ark from Sylvia Cornett in 2013, but after running it for nearly a decade, she mentioned to Ostermeyer that she was ready to sell the restaurant and retire for good this time.
“I’ve never had a restaurant before, but my whole life has been in the food and beverage industry in some form,” Ostermeyer says. “You go into these restaurants, and you call on successful owner-operators and you see what works. . . .
“Shirley was wanting to retire,” he adds. “It was one of those things. I hadn’t thought about buying it. It wasn’t on the top of my list. And then one day, I’m just like, ‘What do you think?’ Me and my wife talked about it and decided it’s something that we wanted to do.
“I mean, there were very few restaurants I would have bought, but that one had everything,” Ostermeyer continues. “It had the history and the customers and the story behind it.”
This rustic sign, which is almost hidden by trees, lets customers know they have arrived at The Ark restaurant in Riverside(Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
A colorful history
That history goes back to around 1930, when A.J. “Bud” Thompson took an old river barge and converted it into a restaurant and bar that he christened The Ark.
At a time when both St. Clair and Talladega counties were “dry” and didn’t allow alcohol sales, Thompson got around that inconvenience by anchoring The Ark about 30 feet out in the Coosa River. Customers arrived by boat or via a narrow walkway that led from the riverbank to the barge.
The “floating restaurant,” as Marie West Cromer wrote in a 1990 Birmingham News story, was like “an oasis between dry counties.”
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The old barge later burned and sank, according to newspaper accounts, and Thompson moved The Ark to dry land, building a log-cabin structure on the west bank of the Coosa River.
When a fire destroyed that building, too, The Ark settled into its current location on U.S. 78, just south of the Coosa River bridge, in the early 1960s.
With its proximity to the nearby Talladega Superspeedway, which opened in 1969, The Ark became a destination for visiting NASCAR drivers and their fans on race weeks at the Talladega track.
The Ark is famous for its fried catfish and butterfly shrimp, which have been featured on the Alabama Tourism Department’s list of “100 Dishes to Eat in Alabama Before You Die.”(Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
A tried-and-true menu
In 1997, the Catfish Institute named The Ark one of the Top 10 restaurants in America to eat catfish, and more recently, the restaurant was a finalist in the 2018 Bama’s Best Catfish Restaurant Challenge sponsored by the Alabama Catfish Producers.
The Ark’s catfish and shrimp have also been included on the Alabama Tourism Department’s list of “100 Dishes to Eat in Alabama Before You Die.”
When he took over The Ark two years ago, Ostermeyer was wise not to tinker with the menu or the recipes – although he was tempted.
“I’d rather put green onions in the hush puppies, but you don’t reinvent the wheel,” he says. “It’s working. It doesn’t matter what I like. It matters what the customers like.
“I’m not changing anything,” he adds. “Our coleslaw is four simple ingredients, and we’ve been doing it that way forever. I’m not about to change it.”
In addition to its famous catfish and shrimp, The Ark menu includes a ribeye, a hamburger steak, chicken tenders, chicken livers, po’ boys, a burger and a Philly cheesesteak, along with a selection of appetizers, salads, sides and desserts.
The Ark restaurant began in Riverside in 1930, and current owner Kyle Ostermeyer opened a second location in this building in downtown Springville in April 2024. (Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
A second home
Last summer, Ostermeyer reached out to another one of his old clients from his food rep days, Top Notch Catering owner Tommy Jones, who had opened a lunch spot to go along with his catering business in the old Springville Café location.
They got to talking, and when Jones expressed an interest in selling the building, Ostermeyer told him he might want to buy it as a second home for The Ark.
As he did when he bought the Riverside Ark, Ostermeyer felt a connection to the building and the town.
“I know what that building means to the community,” he says. “I remember it being the Springville Café and Tina (Baran) owning it, and I remember calling on Tina. I had a good feeling about what this would do here.”
Ostermeyer closed on the building last fall and spent the next few months giving it a total makeover — knocking out an interior dividing wall to open the dining room, replacing the ceiling with black vinyl tiles, staining and sealing the concrete floors, painting the exterior charcoal gray and installing corrugated tin awnings over the entrance.
“We essentially bought a shell of a building, and we redid everything,” he says. “There were a lot of tears because we did a lot of that on our own.”
The restaurant, which seats 116 guests, opened in early April.
“We’re doing well,” Ostermeyer says. “It’s good to see those new people coming in the door. . . . Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday after church are our biggest days.”
Ostermeyer and his wife, Amanda, live nearby in Trussville, and he splits his time between the old Ark in Riverside and the new location in Springville.
“I don’t have off days,” he says. “I’m three days at Riverside and four days here.”
The new-look Ark in the old Springville Cafe features black tile ceilings and polished concrete floors. (Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
The next chapter
After buying the old restaurant and opening a new one, it’s Ostermeyer’s turn to write the next chapter in The Ark’s history.
“I’m the fourth owner in 94 years of The Ark,” he says. “I was the food rep for the previous two owners, so I’ve been part of The Ark in some form or fashion for a while.
“We try to do a good job,” he adds. “Shirley (Abts) did the same thing before me, and Sylvia (Cornett) did the same thing before her. . . . .
“That’s the scariest thing, is to make sure that it succeeds to the next owner.”
The Springville location of The Ark is at 6204 Main Street. The phone is 205-467-0252. Hours are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
The Riverside location of The Ark is at 13030 U.S. 78. The phone is 205-338-7420. Hours are 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
For more information, go here.
