More than 86 years after it first started serving up its hamburger steak with gravy and onions, Lloyd’s Restaurant is about to offer its signature menu in another part of Alabama.

Long a mainstay of U.S. 280, Lloyd’s will open a second location up the same road in Sylacauga sometime in March, said Eli Stevens, the grandson of the restaurant’s longtime owner who shares his name.

“A lot of work has gone into getting us to this point,” Eli said.

And there hangs the tale. Lloyd’s — now one of the Birmingham area’s oldest restaurants — began in Chelsea in 1937.

The Stevens’ family entered the picture in the late sixties, when Eli’s grandfather was delivering bread. The restaurant was on his route, and he eventually told its owner, Lloyd Chesser, that he wanted first crack at buying the eatery if he ever sold it.

A few years later, Eli was running the place and did so for the next 49 years through various health problems, and with the help of family, until his death in 2020. In 1978, after the first phase of the U.S. 280 corridor was finished, Stevens moved Lloyd’s from its original location to its current spot near the intersection of U.S. 280 and Alabama 119.

By that time, untold numbers of people had sampled the restaurant’s barbecue, fried catfish and famous onion rings. Including a lot of people who drove down from Sylacauga.

Eli’s son Bogue, who now owns Lloyd’s, saw an existing restaurant property in Sylacauga a few years ago. Bogue’s son Eli said they acquired the property and have been working toward an opening for two years.

The Sylacauga restaurant seats 190 outside and inside, counting a side porch. They will use the same menu as the Inverness original.