The wait is almost over for the opening of Nashville chef Sean Brock’s first Birmingham restaurant.

Brock will open another location of his East Nashville fast-food restaurant Joyland in the former Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ space at 3719 Third Ave. South in Avondale on Thursday, Aug. 15.

It will be Brock’s first Joyland restaurant outside of the original location that he opened in the Music City in 2020.

The fast-food concept – which features burgers, biscuits, chicken, shakes and soft-serve – will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week.

Brock, who has partnered with Nick Pihakis of the Birmingham-based Pihakis Restaurant Group to open Joyland here, tells AL.com that Birmingham is one of those cities that he wants to be a part of.

It will be the first of several additional Joyland locations he and Pihakis hope to open over the next couple of years.

“Selfishly, for me, I want to put them in cities that I love hanging out in and want to spend time in and want to learn more about and want to contribute to,” Brock says. “Birmingham is a region and a city that I haven’t had a chance to contribute to.”

One of the South’s most innovative chefs, Brock, a Virginia native, won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast in 2010, when he was the executive chef at the Charleston, S.C., fine-dining restaurant McCrady’s. His first cookbook, “Heritage,” also won a James Beard Award in the American Cooking category in 2015.

He is formerly the founding chef and culinary advisor at Husk, which he started in Charleston in 2010 and subsequently opened locations in Nashville, Savannah and Greenville, S.C.

In addition to Joyland, Brock’s other Nashville restaurants include Audrey, a Southern restaurant inspired by and named after his maternal grandmother, and June, a modern, intimate, tasting-menu restaurant.

The Joyland menu features Brock’s inspired takes on such American classics as cheeseburgers, buttermilk biscuits, fried chicken, milkshakes and hand pies.

The star of the menu is Brock’s signature “CrustBurger,” a griddled Bear Creek Farm beef patty served with melted American cheese on a crispy potato bun that is pressed flat as a pancake.

Connecting over a catfish BLT

Pihakis — whose Pihakis Restaurant Group portfolio includes not only Rodney Scott’s BBQ but also Hero Doughnuts & Buns, Little Donkey, Tasty Town Greek Restaurant, Luca Lagotto and the new Magnolia Point — first met Brock at a Southern Foodways Alliance event in Nashville several years ago.

“I walked up to this table, and Sean was making a catfish BLT,” Pihakis recalls. “He handed it to me and I ate it, and it was like the best thing I’d ever eaten.

“So, we instantly connected through food, which is what people in our industry should do,” Pihakis adds. “If they don’t, there’s something wrong because that’s what we’re in this business for. And we just stay connected.”

Brock reached out to Pihakis last fall about helping him grow the Joyland concept beyond Nashville.

“When people said, ‘We really, really like Joyland; you should open another one somewhere,’ my brain immediately went to approaching Nick for help,” Brock recalls.

“I invited him to Audrey and told him I had something I wanted to ask him,” Brock adds. “We sat down and had dinner, and I asked if he’d be interested in helping me refine it and expand it, and the rest is history.”

The Pihakis Restaurant Group closed the Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ in Avondale in November 2023 but continues to operate two other Birmingham-area locations in Homewood and Trussville.

With that Avondale space available, Pihakis told Brock he had the ideal spot for Joyland.

“It wasn’t very hard to convince me to do this,” Pihakis says. “I want to keep this property, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with it.

“So when Sean reached out to me . . . it was pretty easy for me to go back to Sean and say, ‘I’ve got the perfect place.’”

Joyland is scheduled to open on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024, at 3719 Third Ave. South in Birmingham, Ala. Hours will be 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. For more information, go here.