Alabama chef and six-time James Beard Award semifinalist Rob McDaniel and his wife, Emily, are opening a seafood-focused restaurant and raw bar next door to their first restaurant, Helen, in downtown Birmingham.

Their new restaurant, Bayonet, is expected to open in the first quarter of 2025 in the Berry Building at 2015 Second Ave. North.

The name Bayonet refers not to the steel blade affixed to the end of a combat rifle but to the Spanish plant, a resilient evergreen with white, bell-shaped flowers and long, sharp-tipped leaves.

“Most people think of a sword when they first hear (bayonet),” Rob McDaniel tells AL.com. “It’s actually named after the Spanish bayonet plant, which symbolizes strength, protection, endurance, growth and resilience . . . a lot of things that we represent as a restaurant.

“It’s the unexpected part of that name that I really like,” he adds. “Our goal is to deliver an experience that people aren’t expecting to get.”

The Bayonet menu will feature fish and oysters not just from the Gulf of Mexico but also from the Atlantic and Pacific, McDaniel says.

“Raw oysters will play a large role,” he says. “We hope to have 10 to 12 varieties of oysters. I mean, it’s the focal point. . . .

“But there’s also a ton of stuff out there that I want to work with,” he adds. “I want to get lobsters in. I want to get Dungeness crab in.

“There’s just a lot of diversity out there — from the East Coast, the West Coast, Canada and the Gulf Coast — and we’re excited to experiment with it.”

Bayonet will be open for lunch and dinner, with some dishes available on both menus, McDaniel says.

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The restaurant, on the ground level of Birmingham’s historic four-story Berry Building, will seat 54 guests, including 10 seats at the raw bar and 12 at the cocktail bar. Guests also may mingle in an adjoining parlor.

“I think that’ll be a fun place to have cocktails, whether you’re waiting on a table for here (at Helen) or waiting on a table there (at Bayonet),” McDaniel says of the parlor. “Or maybe you just want to stop by there and get a cocktail.”

The McDaniels worked with Carter Hughes and his brother, Scott Hughes — principals at H2 Real Estate, which owns, and has its offices in, the Berry Building — to develop the Bayonet space. H2 also owns the two-story, 1920-era building that is home to Helen.

“It was vacant for a long time, and they just didn’t really have any bites,” Emily McDaniel says of the Bayonet space. “It worked out perfectly for us to open something next door and work with H2 again.”

Charlie Norton of Harbert Realty Services helped the McDaniels with the leasing process for both Helen and Bayonet.

The new Bayonet space features 17-foot ceilings, a custom-built raw bar, subway tile trim, and commissioned art from a local artist.

Ivy Schuster of Hatcher Schuster Interiors designed the interiors. Schuster also designed the interiors for Helen.

“The adjectives that we’re using are, it’s vibrant, it’s fun, it’s lively,” Emily McDaniel says of the Bayonet design. “We’ve got lots of color. It’s seafood but not beachy.”

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Some members of the Helen kitchen and service staff will transition to the new restaurant, the McDaniels say.

Daniel Goslin, the general manager at Helen since 2020, will be the general manager at Bayonet.

“When we started (Helen), our goal was to try to build a different work environment, promote from within, and hold on to people as much as we could,” Rob McDaniel says. “For us to do that, we’ve got to grow, and part of that growth is promoting folks.”

A Haleyville native and Auburn University graduate, McDaniel attended the New England Culinary Institute and worked under Chris Hastings at Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham and Drew Robinson at Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q before becoming the founding executive chef at SpringHouse restaurant near Lake Martin in 2009.

After a decade at SpringHouse, McDaniel and his wife wanted a restaurant of their own, so they moved to the Birmingham metro area to open Helen in August 2020. Emily is the restaurant’s hospitality director and co-owner.

During his time at SpringHouse, McDaniel was a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: South for five consecutive years.

Earlier this year, as the executive chef at Helen, he was selected as a James Beard semifinalist for the sixth time.