It’s hard to tell with the always-enthusiastic Guy Fieri, but the host of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” seemed to particularly enjoy his latest visit to Mobile, singing the praises not just of a restaurant but of the neighborhood surrounding it.

And you can add Jim Smith to the list of local chefs who say they were personally impressed by Fieri and the crews who film “DDD” for the Food Network.

The Hummingbird Way Oyster Bar, Smith’s restaurant in the Oakleigh neighborhood in midtown Mobile, was featured in a new episode of the show that aired Friday. It was the third of six Mobile-area restaurants that Fieri is showcasing this season, after The Noble South and Southwood Kitchen. (Coming up on Friday, Nov. 17, “DDD” will showcase Roosters on Dauphin Street.)

“I’m here in Mobile, Alabama, in the Oakleigh Garden District,” Fieri says early in the episode. “I mean, look at this neighborhood. So quaint, so quiet. And in the middle of it, there’s a restaurant!” (And yes, that was Fieri’s pal “Panini Pete” Blohme cruising past on a bicycle, in a slick cameo.)

Later, after sampling the food, Fieri muses: “You’re driving along, it’s house, house house, and then restaurant. I mean, just to be able to roll right out of your house [and go dine there], I’d go broke here. … If you get lucky enough to live close to Hummingbird Way Oyster Bar, you’re gonna love it.”

As with the previous two Mobile-area spots, The Hummingbird Way is a classier joint than the show’s title might lead one to expect. And no wonder: Smith’s credentials include a stint as the state’s executive chef. He’s been a Top 10 competitor on “Top Chef,” he was the first Alabama chef to win the Great American Seafood Cook-Off and he’s prominent in the Alabama Seafood Marketing Commission.

The show featured a couple of mouth-watering dishes including fried flounder topped with clams in a curry sauce and Creole braised rabbit with grits. The latter recipe was shared on the show’s website, revealing it to be massively labor intensive: Aside from cooking the actual rabbit, it involves making homemade chicken stock, roasting tomatoes, whipping up a black roux and blackening seasoning from scratch, and putting together a pickled cabbage chow chow. Cooking the rabbit starts with making a second, lighter roux.

You get a good sense of that complexity in the episode, and Fieri seems to get a kick out of the complexity of flavors Smith puts into his dishes. “You wild man you,” he teases as Smith keeps throwing things into the flounder entree. “This is just getting weirder as we go.” (He later says the curry is worthy of a Thai or Vietnamese restaurant.)

Smith revealed that it’s no accident that such a preparation-heavy entrées were selected.

“I will tell you that they were definitely looking for recipes that are prep intensive so that they can really walk the viewers through the recipes and really sort of see all of the detail and preparation,” Smith said.

He added that the complexity of the braised rabbit “really is indicative of all of the dishes that are on our menu.”

“I think that people, a lot of times, they come in and they see something like, ‘oh, yeah, this dish has like three things written on the menu describing what it is,’” he said. “But in reality, there are recipes and sub-recipes and different parts of the dish that come together at the end to make it one composed plate. And so the rabbit is a good example of kind of what we do here every day. You know, there’s always stock being made. There’s always something to be done, always something to be done.”

In such an environment, a chef might not want a camera crew in the kitchen, let alone a celebrity chef and his opinions. But Smith said the professionalism of the production crew made it easy.

“I thought the filming was great,” he said. “‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives’ is definitely a very well-organized machine. Like, they know exactly what they need and they know what they need from you to get there and they are very punctual and organized and excited about it. And so those, things made me feel better.”

Fieri put him at ease too, he said.

“You just sort of understand that he has a very high knowledge of what goes into making good food and he understands all those things,” Smith said. “And it’s oftentimes really nice for someone to come in and say they understand all that work that’s being put into it and then really give you the platform to shine. And I really feel like that’s what was happening there.”

If you like the look of that rabbit dish, you’re in luck.

“We have been running the rabbit as pot pie, but we will go back this weekend to serving the dish that we make on the show,” Smith said. “We’ll probably keep pot pie [for] the winter time, but it’ll be chicken.”

If you want to try it all, you’re not alone. “I’d like to stick around and do the whole menu,” Fieri says at one point in the episode. That’s high praise indeed.

The new episode premiering on Nov. 17 is titled “Wrapped, Pied and Fried.” The network blurb says that in Mobile, “a funky Latin joint is serving craveable carnitas and a surf-and-turf burrito.”

The Food Network has confirmed that the restaurant featured is Roosters, a downtown venue on Dauphin Street. The episode will air at 8 p.m. Central time and again at 11 p.m. Central time on Friday. Another Mobile restaurant will be featured in an episode airing Dec. 8.

“Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” can be seen via cable and streaming providers that carry the Food Network, and via www.foodnetwork.com. Streaming services that carry Food Network programming include Philo and FuboTV.