José Medina Camacho was sound asleep that Wednesday morning, having worked late the night before at his downtown Birmingham cocktail bar Adiõs.

His cell phone started buzzing shortly after 9.

Then his roommate, wine sales rep Alex Correa, called to tell him to check his messages.

“He called me a couple of times, and I finally picked up,” Medina Camacho recalls. “And he was like, ‘Hey, have you checked your phone?’”

Then Correa told his roommate the news: Medina Camacho had just been named a semifinalist for a prestigious James Beard Award in the category of Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service.

“The crazy thing was, we had talked about it the night before,” Medina Camacho says. “(Correa) was like, ‘What do you think? Who’s gonna get nominated?’

“And I was just filling out some names, you know, some people in the industry that I thought would probably get a nod,” he adds. “And waking up the next morning to find out that I was on that list was pretty surreal.”

Medina Camacho is one of three Alabama food and beverage professionals who made the list of semifinalists for what is widely known as “the Oscars of the food world.”

Joining him are chef David Bancroft of Acre in Auburn, a five-time semifinalist, and chef Arwen Rice of Red or White in Mobile, a semifinalist for the second year in a row. Bancroft and Rice are up for Best Chef: South.

The finalists will be revealed on April 2, and the winners will be announced at the 2025 James Beard Foundation Awards ceremony on June 16 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

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For Medina Camacho, the James Beard recognition is personal validation that he chose the right career path.

Born in Michoacán, Mexico, Medina Camacho immigrated to the United States with his family in 1993, and one of his first jobs here was in a Chinese restaurant, where he wrote down orders and made deliveries.

After graduating from Clay-Chalkville High School in 2008, he worked as a server for Alex Castro at Sol y Luna in Lakeview and subsequently drove and cooked on the Cantina on Wheels food truck.

“As an immigrant in this country, my parents wanted me to do something different,” he recalls. “They didn’t really quite understand why I was choosing the F&B industry.

“So it’s pretty neat to be able to show them, ‘Hey, look, this (James Beard recognition) is a pretty big deal. It’s not just anything.’

“I enjoy what I do,” he adds. “I cherish all my guests — good and bad — because you learn something from them. I also love my team and what they do. Even when I’m not there, they try to keep the standards that I have.

“So yeah, I’m just very grateful and honored to be listed amongst all those other professionals in the industry.”

‘I really want to bartend’

Medina Camacho credits Nick Pihakis and Joshua Gentry of the Pihakis Restaurant Group for opening his eyes to a new world of food and beverage service when he worked for them at Little Donkey restaurant in Homewood.

“They’re the people that gave me a chance,” he says. “I had worked for them at Little Donkey for maybe three weeks, and I was like, ‘Look, I hate serving; I really want to bartend.’

“And they said, ‘You’re doing really well. You’re making great money.’

“I was like, ‘It’s not about the money.’”

The next day, Medina Camacho remembers, Gentry put him behind the bar at Little Donkey and started training him to be a bartender.

“They also were the ones that introduced me to the finer things in the food and beverage industry,” Medina Camacho continues. “They flew me out to the Charleston Wine + Food festival, and I got to work alongside (revered Atlanta mixologist) Greg Best at a dinner, and he kind of showed me around.

“That was like the cherry on top. I already liked the food and beverage industry, but that sold it.”

‘To me, family is everything’

Medina Camacho and his business partners Jesús Méndez and Vinh Tran opened Adiõs in downtown Birmingham in 2022, and two years later, the Spirited Awards named it one of the best cocktail bars in America. Last fall, Medina Camacho and Méndez opened Salud Taqueria down the street from Adiõs.

Last month, soon after word of Medina Camacho’s James Beard recognition got around, among the first to call to congratulate him was Birmingham chef Adam Evans.

“He called me and (asked), ‘How do you feel?’” Medina Camacho recalls. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know how to feel.’ Again, it’s an honor, but I was just shocked.”

Evans, who won a 2022 James Beard Award for Best Chef: South, hired Medina Camacho to helm the beverage program at Automatic Seafood and Oysters when Evans opened the restaurant in 2019.

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Birmingham restaurateurs Frank and Pardis Stitt, whose Highlands Bar and Grill won the 2018 James Beard Award as the country’s Most Outstanding Restaurant, also sent Medina Camacho their well wishes.

“They were like, ‘Congratulations. You deserve it. You worked really hard at this,’” he says. “I think everybody sees what I do in the industry, so that’s super neat.”

It’s especially neat hearing it from his family, though.

“I plan on celebrating with my family first and foremost,” Medina Camacho says. “To me, family is everything.”