ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – “It’s just like eating at mama’s house,” Gilda Green of Gulf Shores said after a meal at Ya Ya’s Country Café. “If your mama cooked up good food that is.”

Ya Ya’s is one of a string of restaurants newly opened or in the planning stages on Pleasure Island. The Islander is going to profile one of the restaurants every Friday until we run out of new restaurants to tell you about.

Ya Ya’s is easily one of the most unique of the recently opened.

There is no pondering over the menu. There’s no “I don’t know what I want” at Ya Ya’s.

It’s outside on a dry erase board and it’s what you are eating for lunch if you’re eating at Ya Ya’s.

“One lady came in and said ‘I didn’t order this, but this is what I wanted,’” co-owner Stephany Kizer Byers said. “A friend of ours was helping us on our first day and told her ‘you can order all you want, but this is what you’re getting.’”

Take for instance Thursday. You’re having turkey and dressing, black-eyed peas, creamed corn, cornbread and peach cobbler for dessert. (It was still warm in the dish.)

You walk in, self serve your tea or soda or water and have a seat. Directly someone comes out of the kitchen and sits a plate of steaming food in front of you.

Byers and fellow “ball park” mom Tori Harrison had been mulling over the idea for the café for a few years and it finally came to fruition on July 12.

“Stephany wanted to originally do it years ago and I wouldn’t,” Harrison said. “She had an idea from a place in Georgia.”

“It’s called Mrs. Wilson’s out of Savannah, Ga., it’s an old establishment there,” Byers said. “That was more like a community table. You come in, sit down, you might be sitting next to someone from Iowa or wherever. And it’s a big bowl you get your food out of.”

Harrison said that wasn’t feasible for the working crowd they are attracting in less than two weeks of doing business.

“It wasn’t real cost effective to do that down here because that ran about $24.99 a plate,” she said.

They wanted fresh, fast and affordable. And mostly just plain good.

“I’ve known two ladies that had places like this is small towns, we simplified and used that concept,” Harrison said. “The whole meat and potatoes behind it was to have fresh vegetables, always. Cooked like your granma would cook it and a place where the business people can get in and out in 30 minutes.”

Word of mouth and some small advertising cards have the place packed every day for lunch. One day they ran out of food at 1:15 p.m. The cards, which have menus on one side and a hearty welcome on the other, say the restaurant is open from 10:30 a.m.-3ish.

“We wanted home-cooking meals,” Harrison said. “We have had nothing but rave reviews. We’re meeting our short, low-scale goals and some days almost meeting our highest-scale goals.”

“It’s extra work,” adds Byers, “but you can taste it. I’m originally from Atmore and we’ve now had four different sets of people drive in from Atmore just to try us.”

The family feel permeates the place. Eating solo? Pull up a chair at the community table in the back and make some friends.

“It’s still just like family,” Harrison said. “We know most of the people that come in here.”

Byers says she is the nervous one, but that Harrison keeps her cool no matter how crowded the place gets.

“She’ll see somebody standing and say, ‘honey, come on over here and sit with these people, they don’t mind at all,’” she said.

The pair says despite all the hard work they have a good time and the schedule allows them to work but continue to be ball park moms like they were when they met.

“We laugh a lot, we fight a lot, we have fun a lot,” Harrison says, laughing. “We are so much more like sisters than anything.”

“Our kids are in and out working,” Byers says. “It’s just a family place. Two single moms working hard.”

Byers says the community response has been incredible and wanted to give thanks for all the support.

“I knew it would do well but I’m just overwhelmed,” she said.