OKALOOSA ISLAND, FL - For the first two months it opened in late 2000, Helen Back Café didn't even have a name. Since then, it's developed into something that's become one of Esquire Magazine's "Best Bars in America."
   
The feature runs in the June issue and puts Fort Walton Beach in the same league as Boston, Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco.
   
"When I saw the advance copy, I was thrilled," Helen Back owner Chris Sehman said. "You don't expect to get that type of promotion. It's a tribute to our staff and the customers we have, really."
   
Neely Harris, a magazine editor from Birmingham, Ala., wrote the review for Esquire. It reads:
   
"There's something particularly gratifying about boating to a bar - especially when it's high season on the Florida Panhandle. Because after a day battling the Gulf's bristly waters, the last thing you want to do is join the crowd bottlenecking into Destin Harbor for another souvenir-glass daiquiri and a popcorn shrimp po' boy. No, you want to go to Helen Back. You want to head west to Fort Walton - fast - until you feel the jarring waves of the channel taper into the calm of the Intracoastal. After you idle into one of Helen Back's dock slips, you want to sit on the giant deck and watch the fishing boats come in, while you wrap your hands around a tall pint and eat the best pizza you've ever shoved in your sunburned face."
   
Harris found the bar at 114 Amberjack Drive by way of her fiancé, Lars Lohmann. He's a Birmingham lawyer whose parents have kept a condo at the El Matador for most of the past decade.
   
"It's always been his favorite place," Harris said. "A couple of years ago I did a piece on the best bars in Alabama. And then one night we were at Helen Back, and I thought, ‘I bet the guys at Esquire would like something on this.' I knew they were always looking for unique places."
   
Sehman arrived here from Maryland's Eastern Shore in the early 1990s with a car full of belongings. He was here to see his uncle, who was about to retire from the Air Force. He was involved with running two bars before Helen Back.
   
Recalling those earliest days, Sehman said the inspiration for the name "Helen Back" came in the wee hours of a morning at the end of an 18-hour work day.
   
"Man, I was exhausted, and I thought to myself, "I've really been to hell and back with this place." Then not five minutes later, I heard someone on the radio interview Lance Armstrong, who has just won the Tour de France after coming back from testicular cancer. And he said, ‘I feel like I've been to hell and back.'
   
"Well that pretty much did it. I called my wife from the car phone and told her I had the name. Well, it was 5:30 in the morning and she hung up on me. But the next day I started using the name and it stuck."
   
The Greater Fort Walton Chamber of Commerce in January honored Sehman and Helen Back as the Small Business of the Year.
   
Last year, he branched out with Helen Back, Too in Florosa and Helen Back, Again in Crestview. He's paid to have the name franchised and said this week that he's got interested parties locally and from as far away as Jacksonville.