Current Charcoal Grill — a new Asian-American restaurant from James Beard Award-winning chef Adam Evans of Automatic Seafood and Oysters — opens for dinner service tonight, April 22, in Birmingham’s Parkside District.

Evans, a Muscle Shoals native and an Auburn University graduate, has partnered with his brunch chef at Automatic, New Zealand-born chef Luke Joseph, and with Birmingham businessman Raymond J. Harbert to open his second restaurant, which is at 1625 Second Ave. South, adjoining the Red Mountain Theatre campus.

The “Current” in the restaurant’s name references the nearly 2,000-mile Kuroshio Current, a major ocean current in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, and “Charcoal Grill” alludes to a centuries-old Japanese grilling tradition using slow-burning Binchotan charcoal.

The restaurant’s Asian-inspired menu features spear-caught fish, Wagyu beef, whole roasted duck, Cantonese-style crispy pork belly, tempura farm vegetables and other dishes influenced by the ingredients, flavors and techniques of Asian cuisine.

Dinner hours are 5 to 10 p.m. daily, and the restaurant plans to open for weekday lunch service soon. For reservations, go here.

Below, Suzanne Humphries Evans, Adam’s wife and the project designer for Current Charcoal Grill, gives guests a preview of what to expect when they walk into the restaurant for the first time.

Meet the mascots

As they walk through the front doors of the restaurant, guests will notice a depiction of three cormorants — aquatic birds known for their fishing prowess — etched into the sidewalk, kind of like a permanent welcome mat.

One of the birds is eating, another is drinking, and the other is fishing.

“These are our mascots,” Suzanne Evans says of the cormorants. “At Automatic, we really had fun having the pelican be our branding tool because Adam said a long time ago that we didn’t want to use any fish in our branding.

“We landed on the cormorant birds as our mascot here because, like at Automatic, we didn’t want a mascot that we were going to eat, right? We wanted something that represented eating the food or serving the food, not being the food that we were serving.

“These birds have been used for centuries in several Asian cultures as fishing assistants,” she adds. “They’re trained to go out and catch the fish and bring them back, which is pretty cool.”

New purpose for an antique altar

After they walk through the vestibule and step inside the restaurant, the host stand is one of the first things guests will see, and the 200-something-year-old antique has quite a history behind it.

“This is my prize antique for the space,” Suzanne says. “It’s an altar from China, from a Buddhist temple, that I found from an Asian antique dealer in LA. We had the back cut out, so it serves as our host stand.

“You walk in, there’s so much to look at,” she adds. “But I think that this is something that maybe once people walk in and slow down to look over, they (may) say, ‘Oh, wait, that’s cool. That’s not just a table. It’s not just a host stand.’”

Adorning the host stand are two brass Japanese lamps that once belonged to Evans’ grandparents.

“They were in my grandmother and grandfather’s house in Oxford, Miss., forever,” she says. “Her brother and sister brought them back from a trip to Japan.”

Copper elements everywhere

Suzanne loved how the copper gas lines in the kitchen popped out against the deep blue tile backdrop, so she incorporated copper elements throughout the space, including the raw bar countertop, the mini table lamps and the serving pitchers.

“Copper is not something that aesthetically I have ever been that much a fan of, but when the copper gas lines went in against that tile, I just thought it was so beautiful,” she says. “I wanted to pull it out of the kitchen and make that a consistent design feature throughout.

“So, out of utility came this jumping-off point in the design,” she adds. “We did the copper bar top, and then we used it throughout the dining room. I think it’s appropriate in this warehouse space because it is a utilitarian metal, but it’s also beautiful and shiny.”

Also, the wood trim around the booths and along some of the walls utilizes an ancient Japanese technique called Shou Sugi Ban, which preserves the wood by charring it with fire.

“It’s something that can be done on almost all woods,” Suzanne says. “It’s completely charred and then sealed, and it preserves the wood from moisture damage and that sort of thing.”

Not only is it functional and visually appealing, but it also ties in with the restaurant’s theme.

“We’re a charcoal grill, right?” Suzanne says. “So this is kind of like charcoal wood.”

Lots of seating options

Seating options include spacious booths that accommodate up to six guests, a row of two-seat tables along the 70-foot banquette, and about 20 or so single stools along the two cocktail bars and the raw bar between them.

Altogether, the restaurant will seat about 120 guests inside, plus another 25 to 30 on the patio.

“With us being downtown and next to the theater, we thought it was important to have a lot of quick-turn single or two-top seating,” Suzanne says. “We hope that anyone will feel like they can pop in, that it doesn’t have to be a long, leisurely dining experience but it can be. So we have a pick-your-own experience thing happening here.”

For larger groups who want to make a night of it, two family-style tables with lazy Susans in the middle anchor opposite ends of the dining room.

“A lot of this food is meant to be shared, and I think that going to dinner with a group of friends at a table that has a lazy Susan is one of the best ways to spend an evening,” Suzanne says. “Then it’s just so easy to share without interrupting conversation.”

On the menu

The Current Charcoal Grill menu, which will change frequently depending on the freshness and availability of the proteins and produce, is divided into small bites, sides, larger dishes, wok dishes and dishes from the charcoal grill box. There is also a separate raw bar menu.

Among the small bites are pork and shitake potstickers with peanut chili crisp; koji fried quail with a five-spice barbecue rub; and shrimp katsu with lemongrass and a sweet chili sauce.

Sides include smashed cucumber with black garlic and vinegar; steamed Japanese short grain rice with furikake; and tempura Okinawa sweet potatoes with yellow curry mayo.

The larger dishes include Cantonese-style crispy pork belly with mustard greens, ginger and scallion relish, hot mustard and steamed rice; Cantonese-style roasted duck with scallion salad, cucumber, hoisin sauce and steamed rice; and a vegetable rice clay pot with shitake mushroom, tempura sweet potato, eggplant, short grain rice, sesame miso tare and ginger and scallion relish.

Among the wok items are blistered sugar snap peas with toasted nori and sesame; kimchi fried rice with pork belly and a soft egg; and wok-tossed greens with shitake mushroom, soy and ginger.

Selections from the charcoal grill box include a chicken thigh skewer with ginger and soy tare and sesame scallions; whole gulf shrimp with miso butter, sesame and chive; and Wagyu striploin with tempura wild garlic and spice tare Bordelaise.

An homage to Joy Young and a tribute to Bob Dylan

A painting of Joy Young Restaurant, the beloved Chinese restaurant that was a downtown Birmingham institution for more than 60 years, hangs on one of the walls leading to the restrooms.

The painting, by Birmingham artist Dirk Walker, belongs to Raymond Harbert, the chief financial backer behind Current Charcoal Grill.

“He had this in his office, and we’re really excited to have it here,” Suzanne says. “It’s amazing that it just happens to perfectly match the color palette (of the restaurant). But it also pays homage to Asian food in Birmingham.”

Her husband is a huge Bob Dylan fan — Adam says he’s seen Dylan in concert about 30 times, including his performance at the Brooklyn Bowl Nashville in late March — and one of his prized finds is a limited-edition print of Dylan’s art.

The piece, from Dylan’s The Asia Series, also hangs on a wall near the restrooms.

“It’s a series he did in Asia during a period when he was traveling Japan, China, Vietnam, Korea,” Adam says. “So, yeah, it turns out he’s an incredible artist.”

Sit and stay while

One of Suzanne’s favorite things about the new restaurant — and one that she plans to use herself — is the seating area to the left of the vestibule.

She envisions it as a place where guests not only sit and chat while they wait for their table but also as a spot that, during the day, people will drop in and hang out.

“We wanted to have like a hotel lobby, where, if you’re coming in at any point in the day, by yourself or to meet a friend, there was somewhere to sit and have a drink or have a coffee or have a tea,” she says.

“As I’ve transitioned to working mostly from home during the day, it’s really important to have somewhere to go that’s not in your house,” she adds. “So, if nothing else, I’ll be working here, drinking coffee or tea.”

The sofa and chairs in the lobby area are covered with a dyed fabric that utilizes an ancient Japanese technique known as shibori, a method of tie-dyeing that dates to the 8th century. The shibori style is also visible on the backs of the bar stools, on the banquette and in the curtains.

Current Charcoal Grill is at 1625 Second Ave. South in Birmingham, Ala. Dinner hours are 5 to 10 p.m. daily. For reservations and more information, go here.