Alabama chef Rob McDaniel opening new restaurant
Bayonet — a new seafood restaurant and raw bar from Alabama chef and six-time James Beard Award semifinalist Rob McDaniel and his wife, Emily McDaniel — will open March 10 in downtown Birmingham, the McDaniels have announced.
The restaurant will be in the Berry Building at 2015 Second Ave. North, next door to the McDaniels’ first restaurant, Helen.
Initially, Bayonet will open from 3 to 9 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, but after a few weeks, the restaurant will open for lunch starting at 11 a.m. and remain open until 9 p.m.
The Bayonet menu will feature triggerfish, swordfish, yellowtail snapper and other sustainably sourced seafood from the Alabama Gulf Coast, along with Nantucket Bay scallops, Japanese day boat fish, and eventually, Alaskan king crab, Rob McDaniel says.
The raw bar will highlight oysters from Alabama oyster farmers, as well as from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
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“We’re going to do no animal proteins, with the exception of eggs, milk, cream, butter and stuff like that,” McDaniel tells AL.com. “It’s all going to be seafood.
“We’ve been working with (purveyor) Evans Meats & Seafood to source bycatch and other fish from the Gulf,” he adds. “Most of the time, the fish coming from the Gulf are snapper and grouper, and while we love snapper and grouper, we want to be able to do some other things as well.”
Those other things will include a swordfish Reuben and a variation on a seafood tower, with oysters, clams, mussels, scallops and caviar.
“We’ll be broiling fish, steaming fish, poaching fish, sauteing fish — just utilizing some cooking techniques that we don’t use every day,” McDaniel says.
“Next door (at Helen), we’re grill-forward, and we have a plancha, or flat top, that we cook our fish on,” he adds. “But (at Bayonet), we want to use some different cooking techniques that you don’t see much when we’re preparing these fish.”
Bayonet, which is in the Berry Building next door to Helen, will accommodate 54 guests. (Photo by Art Meripol; used with permission from the Sprouthouse Agency)
The story behind the name
The restaurant’s name refers not to the steel blade affixed to the end of a combat rifle but to the Spanish bayonet plant, a resilient evergreen with white, bell-shaped flowers and long, sharp-tipped leaves.
The bayonet plant “symbolizes strength, protection, endurance, growth and resilience . . . a lot of things that we represent as a restaurant,” Rob McDaniel said in an earlier interview with AL.com.
“It’s the unexpected part of that name that I really like,” he added in that interview. “Our goal is to deliver an experience that people aren’t expecting to get.”
The Bayonet space boasts 17-foot ceilings, a custom-built raw bar, subway tile trim, and commissioned artwork from Birmingham chef and artist Roscoe Hall.
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The McDaniels worked with Clement Architecture & Design and Prier Construction, as well as metalwork artist John Howell, to develop the Bayonet space. Ivy Schuster of Hatcher Schuster Interiors designed the interiors.
“It’s beyond what I could have imagined,” McDaniel says. “It’s a beautiful space and knowing where it came from to what it is now, it’s amazing. I mean, I love walking into the space. It’s bright. It’s welcoming.”
Bayonet will accommodate 54 guests, including 10 seats at the raw bar and another 12 at the cocktail bar. Parlor seating is also available.
In addition to the McDaniels, the Bayonet team includes general manager Daniel Goslin, sous chefs Jesse Legg and Taylor Harris, and pastry chef Candace Foster.
Rob and Emily McDaniel are the co-owners of Helen, which opened in August 2020, and Bayonet, which opens in March 2025. (Photo by Art Meripol; used with permission from the Sprouthouse Agency)
Six-time James Beard semifinalist
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 McDaniel is the hospitality director and co-owner for both Helen and Bayonet.
During his time at SpringHouse, McDaniel was a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: South for five consecutive years.
Last year, as the executive chef at Helen, he was selected as a James Beard semifinalist for the sixth time.
Bayonet will open Monday, March 10, at 2015 Second Ave. North in Birmingham, Ala. For updates and more information, go here.