The publishers of the Michelin Guide – the influential restaurant travel guides sponsored by the French tiremaker Michelin – made big news a couple of weeks ago with the announcement they will debut a guide devoted to the American South later this year.

Michelin published its first guide in France in 1900 to increase tire sales by encouraging French motorists to hit the road, and more than a century later, in 2005, Michelin published its first North American Guide for New York City.

Subsequent Michelin Guides have featured such urban dining destinations as Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, as well as statewide guides to California, Florida and Texas.

Now comes the regional guide to the American South, which will include Alabama and five other Southern states — Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee – plus the pre-existing Atlanta guide.

“We are excited to embark on this new journey for the Michelin Guide as this will be the first time since the guide’s North American debut in 2005 that we are launching a regional selection,” Gwendal Poullennec, the international director of the Michelin Guides, said in the announcement.

The Michelin Guide’s anonymous inspectors are already making the rounds, and the 2025 restaurant selections for the American South guide will be revealed sometime later this year.

The Michelin inspectors follow five guidelines in picking the restaurants that make the guides: quality products, harmony of flavors, mastery of cooking techniques, voice and personality of the chef as reflected in the cuisine, and consistency between each visit and throughout the menu. Each restaurant is inspected several times a year.

Restaurants that make the guide are awarded one to three stars, with one being “a very good restaurant in its category,” two signifying “excellent cooking, worth a detour,” and three recognizing “exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.”

Earning three Michelin stars is a rare accomplishment, with only 146 three-star restaurants worldwide and just 10 in the United States as of 2024.

(Still, as last year’s Texas guide illustrates, it is not all white-tablecloths and tasting menus. The Lone Star State’s list included its fair share of barbecue joints and strip-mall restaurants.)

In addition to its star system, the Michelin Guide also includes a special award, the Bib Gourmand, to recognize those restaurants that offer “a simpler style of cooking, which is recognizable and easy-to-eat . . . (and) leave you with a sense of satisfaction at having eaten so well at such a reasonable price.”

With all that in mind, here are 12 Birmingham restaurants, representing a variety of cuisines and price points, that we encourage the Michelin inspectors to pay a visit to – if they have not already done so.

We realize that not all 12 will make the American South guide, but we will circle back later this year to see how many of them did.

Automatic Seafood and Oysters

Alabama chef Adam Evans and his wife, Suzanne Humphries Evans, have made quite a splash on the Birmingham dining scene since opening their coastal-inspired Automatic Seafood and Oysters six years ago. Automatic was a James Beard Award finalist for Best New Restaurant in America in 2020, and in 2022, Evans won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: South. At Automatic, Evans puts his creative spin on such dishes as spice-crusted yellowfin tuna, duck-fat-poached swordfish, and the restaurant’s signature appetizer, the crispy fish collar.

2824 Fifth Ave. South, Birmingham. automaticseafood.com.

Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q

Van Sykes was all of 12 years old when he started working the pit at the legendary Bessemer barbecue joint that his father, Bob Sykes, started in 1957. Now approaching 70 and one of the elder statesmen of Alabama barbecue, Sykes still does things the way his daddy taught him — cooking pork shoulders, ribs and chickens over hickory coals in an open pit that you see (and smell) the moment you walk into the restaurant. While Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q remains defiantly old-school, it has evolved with the times, serving tacos on Tuesdays, brisket on Wednesdays and loaded potatoes every day of the week.

1724 Ninth Ave. North, Bessemer. bobsykes.com.

Bottega

Open since 1988 in the stately Bottega Favorita building on Birmingham’s historic Highland Avenue, this Southern-flavored, Italian-influenced jewel from James Beard Award-winning restaurateurs Frank and Pardis Stitt has maintained a standard of excellence by which all other Birmingham restaurants are measured. (And while the Stitts’ flagship restaurant, Highlands Bar and Grill, has remained closed indefinitely since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a reservation at Bottega has become the hottest ticket in town.) The service is rarely short of exceptional, and the menu – from the beef carpaccio and the parmesan soufflé to the risotto with lobster and the pappardelle with braised duck – is both familiar and out of this world.

2240 Highland Ave. South, Birmingham. www.bottegarestaurant.com.

Bright Star

Recognized as an America’s Classic by the James Beard Foundation in 2010, Bessemer’s Bright Star is the oldest family-owned restaurant in Alabama. These days, Andreas Anastassakis and his cousin Nicky Koikos continue the family tradition that Tom Bonduris began in 1907, not long after he immigrated here from Greece. Classic dishes include seafood gumbo, Greek-style beef tenderloin, fried snapper throats and baklava cheesecake.

304 19th St. North, Bessemer. www.thebrightstar.com

Eagle’s Restaurant

A venerable soul food restaurant in the shadows of the ACIPCO plant in North Birmingham, Eagle’s Restaurant has been around since 1951. More than 70 years later, Eagle’s continues to soar, as customers line up outside the tiny, cinder-block café for huge helpings of collard greens, candied yams, black-eyed peas, oxtails and neck bones prepared by Delores Banks and served by her son, Jamal Rucker.

2610 16th St. North, Birmingham. eaglesrestaurant.com.

El Barrio Restaurante Y Bar

El Barrio is Spanish for “the neighborhood,” and the menu at this Mexican-inspired restaurant and bar in downtown Birmingham’s Second Avenue North neighborhood features such dishes as plantain nachos, grilled chorizo meatloaf, masa roasted trout and Gulf Shrimp quesadillas.

2211 Second Ave. North, Birmingham. elbarriobirmingham.com

Helen

Chef Rob McDaniel has indelible memories of watching his maternal grandmother, Helen Frutiger, cook over hardwood coals on her indoor grill, so when Rob and his wife, Emily, opened their contemporary Southern grill in downtown Birmingham in 2020, they named their restaurant in honor of the woman who inspired it. The menu features prime meats and fresh seafood, including an oak-fired Kansas City strip, a smoked Joyce Farms half-chicken and a whole Gulf snapper a la plancha – all prepared in an open kitchen with a custom grill and smoker. While the proteins are the main attraction, the warm angel biscuits with whipped cane syrup butter make an impressive opening act.

2013 Second Ave. North, Birmingham. helenbham.com.

Hot and Hot Fish Club

Now in its 30th year – and its fifth year in its new location at Pepper Place — James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Hastings’ Hot and Hot Fish Club remains one of Birmingham’s premier fine-dining destinations. The menu, which evolves with the seasons, features Alabama Gulf seafood, farm-raised pork and chicken, and locally grown vegetables. The signature dish, available from late spring through the end of summer, is the Hot and Hot Tomato Salad, a towering stack of sliced tomatoes dressed with field peas, corn, bacon and fried okra.

2901 Second Ave. South, Birmingham. www.hotandhotfishclub.com

Johnny’s Restaurant

Chef and owner Timothy Hontzas named his popular Homewood “Greek and three” in honor of his grandfather, Jackson, Miss., restaurateur Johnny Hontzopolous, and the food Hontzas painstakingly prepares at Johnny’s Restaurant is a wonderful marriage of his Greek heritage and his Southern upbringing. Keftedes (Greek meatballs) and fasolakia (stewed green beans and tomatoes) share space on the menu board with chicken pot pie and turnip greens. The creamy parmesan grit cake, one of Hontzas’ many specialties, is phenomenal.

2902 18th St. South, Homewood. www.johnnyshomewood.com

Niki’s West

The mothership of Magic City meat-and-three restaurants, Niki’s West has fed Birmingham since 1957, moving 1,000 or more diners a day through its cafeteria line with Disney World-like efficiency. The portions are generous and the choices numerous, with more than a half-dozen entrees and a couple of dozen sides available daily. If you leave hungry, it’s your own fault.

233 Finley Ave. West, Birmingham. www.nikiswest.com

Saigon Noodle House

The inspiring story of the extended Vietnamese family who immigrated to America and eventually settled in Birmingham is every bit as remarkable as the food they serve at Saigon Noodle House. In addition to spring rolls and phở noodle bowls, the menu features seven bánh mì sandwiches — including roasted pork, fried tofu, charbroiled chicken and spicy lemongrass shrimp — all of which are served on a buttered baguette dressed with cilantro, cucumbers, jalapenos, pickled carrots and a dash or two of soy sauce.

4606 U.S. 280, Suite 108, Birmingham. saigonnoodlehouse280.com.

Taj India

Alabama’s oldest Indian restaurant, Taj India has served Birmingham since 1986, and two years ago, the restaurant moved into its new location in the former Bogue’s Restaurant space on Clairmont Avenue. The menu features such traditional Indian dishes as tandoori chicken, lamb tikka masala and vegetable Badami, as well as a generous lunch buffet.

3028 Clairmont Ave., Birmingham. tajindia.net.