When God Sends You to Alabama

French Bistros, Local Brews, and Botanical Gardens in Birmingham

by

Man plans; God laughs. This past summer He got some particularly good giggles out of my attempts to make travel plans: my boyfriend and I arranged to go to the Netherlands, canceled the reservations because of the Delta variant, planned to go on a North Alabama road trip as a consolation prize, canceled the Alabama road trip when my boyfriend needed his tonsils out, evacuated New Orleans for Hurricane Ida two days after Frankie’s surgery, and wound up in an AirBnB in Birmingham anyway. But even if our plans make the Almighty laugh, it’s not always at our expense: we had so much fun in North Alabama we priced apartments. The pretty steel city in the hills where the Appalachians peter out was a perfect home away from home and made the evacuation almost restful. We stayed in the Five Points South neighborhood near the University of Alabama at Birmingham and had plenty to do; late in the trip, we went to eat and drink in Avondale, where we might have been able to occupy another week—a good excuse to return.

Where to Eat in Birmingham

Birmingham deserves a reputation as a food city. The worst meal I had here was merely good, and the best restaurants we tried could easily go head-to-head with their counterparts in New Orleans. 

I took Frankie for an early birthday at Ocean, an upscale seafood spot in the Five Points district. The catch of the day is displayed fresh on ice next to the expansive raw bar, whetting your appetite as soon as you enter. We started with a house cocktail called the Ocean Martini—we thought we were ordering a joke drink (in our defense, it had blue curacao in it), but were put in our place by a balanced drink that matched the seafood well. We ordered a flight of East Coast oysters: smaller and lighter than their Gulf sisters, they were varied enough to inspire conversation (and fantasies about a trip to Nova Scotia). After a round of exquisite oysters Bienville, our mains arrived: halibut over ricotta dumplings with chanterelles and peas for him; grouper over a fennel and quinoa salad for me—perfectly-cooked fish in both dishes, with accompaniments good enough to compete but not overpower. Dessert was a lemon-lavender pound cake with fresh strawberries and baklava ice cream: baked Alaska’s Levantine cousin, with ice cream wrapped in phyllo, flash-fried and drizzled with honey. We fought to lick the plates.

A friend had recommended Chez Fonfon, a French bistro a block from Ocean. The name is the only funny thing about this flawless restaurant. We ordered small plates: a summery and glorious heirloom tomato salad, a country paté with an unusually light and herbal seasoning profile, the best chicken-liver mousse of my organ-meat-tasting career, and a half-dozen sumptuous escargots. Dessert was a summer berry trifle fat with fruit and a Basque cake, in effect a fancy pound cake served with vanilla crème anglaise and figs. The excellent coffee was a respite after a week of K-cups.

During ordinary time, start the day at The Original Pancake House, which offers a vast diner menu of breakfast specialties—if you have the time, it’s worth waiting for a made-to-order Dutch baby, a custardy pastry rich with butter and powdered sugar, brightened with lemon. Next door, Filter Coffee Parlor offers excellent quick eats (homemade cinnamon rolls!) and creative drinks like a hibiscus rose-espresso concoction I delighted in. Have lunch at Golden Temple, a vegetarian café attached to a New Age store that’s been around since 1973. Generous portions and rich flavors mean you won’t miss the meat—we had the lasagna special and froze our leftovers for the pleasure of looking forward to them. 

For an adventurous dinner, give Yummefy a whirl. The Nepalese restaurant, decorated with Christmas lights and bold prints of Himalayan scenes, offers dishes familiar from the famous cuisines of Nepal’s neighbors India and China as well as a slate of Nepalese specialties—expect richly-flavored, spicy meat and noodles that would keep you warm and cozy in the Himalayas. Saw’s Soul Kitchen, in the Avondale neighborhood, is billed as a soul food restaurant and should be considered a pilgrimage site for anyone devoted to Southern food. The boiled peanuts are made in pot liquor, and the fried green tomatoes deserve another book. Tea-brined fried chicken, pitch-perfect pulled pork, and turnip greens fit for Olympians (either the athletes or the gods) ensure you’ll be reaching across the table to steal bites even as you defend your own plate.

What to Drink in Birmingham

Like any city with a young, hip contingent—a demographic I’m relieved to be aging out of—Birmingham and its environs host a number of small breweries. Many of these offer the familiar on-site taprooms and beer gardens, but unlike certain nearby states, Alabama seems to make it relatively easy for breweries to sell their products off-site, which meant we could also do a lot of sampling from the wonderfully stocked bodega near our rented apartment. We especially enjoyed brews by Avondale Brewing Co., Cahaba Brewing Co., and TrimTab Brewing Co., but the profusion is such that we didn’t get to try all we wanted.

What to Do in Birmingham

The most distinctive aspect of the Birmingham skyline is the cast-iron statue (supposedly the world’s largest) of the metalworking god Vulcan, staged in gratitude for the steel industry crucial to the city’s development. Head up to the statue for a walk in the adjacent park, with gorgeous views of the city and kudzu-strewn hillsides. $6 gets you admission to the small but well-executed local history museum and permission to go up to the viewing tower at the top of the statue’s pedestal, with even more impressive views, including the oft-photographed gigantic cast-iron fanny Vulcan presents to points south.

The Birmingham Botanical Gardens are the best I’ve ever seen, jam-packed with flowers even in September and with a wide assortment of sub-gardens within it, offering a Japanese garden, formal rose garden, and bog habitat (complete with reticent copperhead). There is a cactus greenhouse and beds of local favorites azaleas and camellias, among many others. The gardens are next to Birmingham Zoo, which in addition to a red panda (apex of the animal kingdom) offers wide collections of animals, with a particularly generous collection of lovely and unusual birds. (I happened to go with a friend who’d recently completed a doctorate in bird anatomy, which was a mixed blessing.)

Birmingham is a short drive from other attractions in North Alabama. DeSoto Caverns offers a small theme park, with an uncomfortable Hernando de Soto-heavy design: it’s taken the American zeal for advertising to draw a zany, fun-loving conquistador. Nevertheless, we had fun in the mazes: one a standard find-the-goal maze and one a squirt gun maze of cover spots from which to drench you friends. Unlike many caves open to the public, DeSoto Cavern has seen heavy human activity: it was a sacred site to the Coosa people and, in its further reaches, the resting place of many of their ancestors. The cave later hosted a Confederate gunpowder works and a bootlegger’s saloon called “The Bloody Bucket”. As a result, the formations bear a certain amount of scar and char, but the stories make up for it; the laser light show that concludes the tour is surprisingly effective. The attraction in general is overpriced, but the workers are unfailingly pleasant and it’s a fun afternoon.

[Read more travel stories from Chris Turner-Neal, here: A Guide to the Local's Marigny, 90 Miles Down 90]

Noccalula Falls offers more bang for the buck. The falls are named after a legendary Native American woman who flung herself from the falls rather than marry the man her father had chosen. (A statue of the bride pre-leap stands at the head of the falls.) Sensible people can access the falls via a mostly-paved trail; we misread the map and went on a strenuous (for us) two-hour hike the long way around through the beautiful wooded land around the falls. The park around the falls also offers gardens, animals (you can feed the alpaca), and for an additional $2, miniature golf.

Cheaha State Park hosts Mount Cheaha, the highest point in Alabama. The peak is crowned with a stone tower (bring quarters for the telescopes); next door is the building from which free educational television was beamed to Alabama children during the New Deal. The park also offers camping, a small hotel, a restaurant with a small menu but stunning views (and an antler chandelier), and the tiny but very full Walt Farr Native American Museum, funded by the Lurleen Wallace administration. The drive up is beautiful and easy to make dovetail with other day-trip destinations.

I knew I’d have fun in Birmingham—I love a road trip, and like the rest of the country I had a lot of pent-up wanderlust. I was surprised by how much fun I had and what a respite the outing proved to be. It sounds eccentric, almost perverse to say you were refreshed by an evacuation, but that’s a testament to the topsy-turviness of the past few years—and the many charms of Birmingham. visitbirmingham.com