Automatic Seafood
BIRMINGHAM | ALABAMA
These Are the Restaurants That Put Birmingham on the Map
Birmingham’s best restaurants are the proof behind the hype.
By Rebecca Thompson | Feb. 18, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Rebecca Thompson has held many jobs over the years, from daily newspaper writer to middle-school math teacher. As a restaurant critic, she’s reviewed Michelin-starred fine-dining to gas station barbecue.
During the summers I spent at my grandmother’s house on the outskirts of Birmingham as a kid, I thought going out to dinner here meant dusty old Southern places with laminated menus and lots of cherries in their Shirley Temples. Memaw would call every server “baby,” and she’d have a sweet tea waiting for her sometimes before she sat down.
Now when I come back, Birmingham feels like the city’s dining scene grew up alongside me. The chefs have names known far beyond the city limits, the cafés have the kind of polish and caffeine competency that could slide into any big city, and the best meals no longer come with the feeling that time stopped in the parking lot.
These are the restaurants that explain what the city tastes like today. These are the best restaurants in Birmingham right now.
Automatic Seafood and Oysters
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Chef Adam Evans runs the kind of seafood restaurant that coastal cities would kill for and Birmingham accidentally lucked into. The snapper crudo is so bright, with its cara cara orange and herb oil, that it makes you wonder if you’ve been eating fish wrong your whole life. If you’re like me and appreciate a chef who worships ingredients, nobody in town does it better than Evans.
Best for: Crudo, whole fish, and a serious oyster program
Bayleaf Modern Indian Cuisine
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Bayleaf does something nobody else in Birmingham even attempts: modern Indian that’s plated like a tasting menu and still packs enough heat to matter. Chef Pritam Zarapkar’s lamb chops are reason enough to come, but everything here is an example of what happens when you take a centuries-old cuisine and sharpen it into something new.
Best for: Modern Indian that feels like an occasion
Bayonet
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Rob and Emily McDaniel run Bayonet next to their darling spot Helen (more to come on this list). The raw bar anchors the room, but the menu gets its personality from the details, including seafood charcuterie like wahoo salami and cobia sausage and a Gulf crab plate finished with corn remoulade and tomato. The coconut cream pie is already the closer people talk about, which is usually a sign a restaurant is running the whole meal, not just the middle.
Best for: A dinner built lovingly around Gulf seafood
Bottega
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Frank Stitt’s Bottega doesn’t just coast on its reputation — it keeps tightening the screws. There’s a reason why the house-made pasta comes out in perfect coils and the veal scallopini tastes like it got finished with a prayer. This is a restaurant where nothing is accidental, and Bottega has been that kind of place since before Birmingham even knew what al dente meant.
Best for: Frank Stitt classics done with precision
Chez Fonfon
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There’s nothing showy about Chez Fonfon — which is exactly the point. You sit at a tiny, tilting table, order steak frites and a glass of something French, and then you get walloped by a kind of effortless cooking. Another Frank Stitt restaurant, Chez Fonfon exists as proof that consistency over decades, and there are few things that show a restaurant’s mettle more than a kitchen that consistently nails it.
Best for: Steak frites and a French bistro mood
Current Charcoal Grill
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I will admit that I might have initially dismissed Current Charcoal Grill as just another place lighting stuff on fire for Instagram likes. But Luke Joseph and Adam Evans are actually doing something better: grilling everything within an inch of its life and still pulling out bright, layered flavors. The Korean short rib bossam tastes like the beef gods finally answered a prayer.
Best for: Live-fire cooking with range and restraint
El Barrio
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El Barrio is loud, chaotic, and has a mural the size of a two-story building inside, which might make you think it’s more of a scene than a serious restaurant. But then I tasted the slow-simmered chicken escabeche, the deeply flavorful chile relleno, and the crunchy-topped strawberry tres leches and realized the kitchen is playing a different game.
Best for: Big flavors and a downtown buzz
Helen
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Rob McDaniel’s Helen is a coal-fired cathedral to Southern cooking, where the lamb porterhouse tastes like it was carved out of the inside of a campfire, in a good way. There’s a confidence to the food, because this is the kind of place that bets it all on a blistered crust and still wins.
Best for: Coal-fired Southern cooking that leans ambitious
Hot and Hot Fish Club
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There’s a version of Birmingham where Hot and Hot Fish Club is the only restaurant that matters. Chris Hastings has been quietly doing Michelin-level cooking for years: tomato salad that tastes like July got bottled, venison tenderloin so delicate you rethink hunting laws. Some of the best restaurants have chefs who are great without being loud about it, and Hastings is basically the definition.
Best for: Birmingham’s old-guard standard-bearer meal
La Fête
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La Fête is the wine bar version of that friend who studied abroad in Paris and somehow came back even cooler. Kristen Hall’s small plates — beef cheek au poivre, potato pavé that somehow deserves caviar — are sharp, compact, and almost casually perfect. This isn’t a place that’s begging for attention with over-the-top service, more a restaurant you’ll wish you could have in your neighborhood.
Best for: Wine-forward nights and sharp plates
Little Betty Steak Bar
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Most steakhouses think tossing a prime ribeye on a plate and charging $80 is enough. Atlanta native Kyle Biddy, executive chef at Little Betty, actually tries: dry-aged steaks crusted like a geological formation, razor-sharp cocktails, servers who know how to read a table. Yes, this is a steakhouse, but it’s also a restaurant with a helping serving of happy vibes.
Best for: Dry-aged steak and cocktails with swagger
OvenBird
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At OvenBird, Chris Hastings basically turned live-fire cooking into a personal religion, minus the annoying parts. You get wood-roasted oysters, ember-cooked beef, and vegetables that somehow taste more alive after being charred half to death. This is technical cooking that doesn’t scream for attention.
Best for: Wood-roasted oysters and the city’s best live-fire cooking
Pizza Grace
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Pizza Grace was already the city’s sourdough-pizza obsession. Then Ryan O’Hara and Geri-Martha O’Hara took it over, and now the menu has the confidence of people who have made a career out of turning “simple” into “sharp.” The naturally leavened pies still do the heavy lifting, but don’t skip the newer moves—like the Italian sausage pie with Swiss chard, provolone, parmigiano, and a bagna cauda finish—and the meatballs that make a strong case for ordering something that is not pizza at a pizzeria. Dessert is treated like a full member of the band, with things like Meyer lemon cheesecake and pistachio tiramisu that land with the same intention as the first slice.
Best for: A pizza night that should definitely end with dessert
Rêve
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If you're looking for the place that's quietly making Birmingham into a tasting-menu city, it’s Rêve. Jacob M. Stull runs a six- or 10-course set menu that feels French in spirit but Alabama in soul — coq au vin reimagined, truffle beignets that hit you like a left hook. Sure, this is fine dining, but it’s also bravery, because Rêve isn't playing it safe.
Best for: A tasting-menu night that stays grounded in Alabama
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