The Top 31 Places to Eat Near Adiós Bar

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service · Jose Medina Camacho
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

Wahoo salami and cobia sausage are the calling card at this airy raw bar and seafood lunch spot in downtown Birmingham. The team behind the neighboring restaurant Helen runs it with the same eye for Gulf Coast ingredients and seasonality, turning a raw bar into something closer to a feast. The New York Times put it on their restaurant list, and the Michelin Guide awarded a Bib Gourmand. Come hungry enough for small plates and dessert.

1. The New York Times Watermelon Icebox · The 14 Best Restaurant Desserts We Ate Across the U.S.
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
3. Wine Enthusiast Top 50 New Restaurants

Sourdough crusts fired in a hot electric oven, topped with combinations like chorizo, romesco, and Castelvetrano olives, are the organizing principle at this maximalist pizzeria inside Mercantile on Morris. The warehouse bones and exposed brick give it a casual, stylish feel, but the kitchen is serious. Meatballs and desserts pull their weight too. A Michelin Bib Gourmand and a James Beard semifinalist nod for Best New Restaurant add some context to the hype.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best New Restaurant
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: South · Geri-Martha O'Hara and Ryan O'Hara

Tile floors, wine bottles lining the cabinets, quaint little tables: La Fête is a French bistro that commits to the bit without making you feel underdressed for it. A partnership with sister bakery Bandit means anything involving pastry earns its place on the table. The menu runs from boudin blanc to a dry-aged cheeseburger, which is either a betrayal of the theme or the whole point. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: South · Kristen Hall

An indoor grill sits at the center of this Southern New American restaurant in downtown Birmingham, and pretty much everything on the concise menu passes over it at some point. The chef, a James Beard semifinalist, built the place around his grandmother's tradition of cooking for family, which gives the food a specific gravity that farm-to-table concepts usually just borrow. Angel biscuits arrive warm with whipped cane syrup butter, which is the kind of move that makes you forget the rest of the menu exists.

1. Esquire #3 · The Best New Restaurants in America
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

The name comes from the sprinkler company that occupied the space before, which is either a great origin story or a reminder that Birmingham contains multitudes. Adam Evans, a James Beard Award winner, runs this seafood restaurant out of a 5,000-square-foot room in Lakeview, with a raw bar up front and a menu built around regional fin fish, Southern sides, and the kind of collard greens that make you reconsider every other collard green you've had.

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Winner · Best Chef: South · Adam Evans
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

1. AAA Four Diamonds

Chris and Idie Hastings have been cooking in Birmingham long enough that the city has essentially grown up around them, and now their New American restaurant anchors the Pepper Place market district with a curved chef's counter and a menu that moves with the seasons. The heirloom tomato salad in summer is the kind of thing regulars plan around. The Michelin Guide has it listed.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

1. Wine Enthusiast Top 50 New Restaurants

1. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

The sweet smoke from two wood-burning ovens hits you before you reach the door. Inside, chef Chris Hastings runs a Spanish-inflected tapas spot with a sun-drenched dining room and a spacious patio that feels more backyard cookout than restaurant. Much of the food comes out of cast-iron skillets, the menu is built for sharing, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand keeps the crowd coming. Bring people you like enough to fight over the last empanada.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Sharply dressed guests line up outside a Beaux-Arts building in Southside before the doors even open, which tells you something about how this place operates. Bottega is an upscale Italian-Mediterranean restaurant where dark wood walls and high ceilings set a polished tone, and the servers are warm enough to soften the formality. A Michelin Selected pick and a James Beard Nominee for Outstanding Hospitality, it's been the city's grown-up dining room for longer than anyone's counting.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Outstanding Hospitality
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tucked into a corner of the Pizitz Food Hall, Rêve is a modern French tasting menu restaurant dressed in blues and whites that feels more composed than its food hall address might suggest. The chef runs à la carte at the bar and a fuller tasting menu in the booths, with French classics alongside things like ribeye marinated in banana vadouvan miso. The range is wide enough to keep you guessing which direction dinner will go next.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

The ceilings in this cavernous warehouse dining room are tall enough to humble most airport terminals. It's a full-service Asian grill restaurant where the kitchen runs hot and the menu pulls freely from Thai, Korean, and Chinese traditions, with charcoal doing most of the persuasion. Portions land large, so come with backup or accept your fate before dessert. The cocktails follow the same pan-Asian logic, which is a nice touch.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Emerging Chef · Chanah Willis

A grilled baguette with a jar of chicken liver mousse, aspic gleaming on top, sets the tone at this French bistro in Five Points South. The menu runs exactly as far as steak frites and trout amandine, and not one step further, which is entirely the point. Frank Stitt's room draws a polished Birmingham crowd that dresses for dinner and means it, and the kitchen meets them with the kind of seriousness that makes classic French food feel like a commitment.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

1. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

1. AAA Four Diamonds

1. World Culinary Awards 2025 · Nominee · United States' Best Hotel Restaurant

1. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

1. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

1. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

1. The World's 100 Best Coffee Shops #66 · Top 100 Coffee Shops

1. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Best Chef: South · Timothy Hontzas
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Best Chef: South · Timothy Hontzas
3. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Hospitality

1. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

1. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

1. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program

1. Eater The 16 Best Restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama