Alabama Restaurants

Each morning, the family staff at JoJo’s Diner on Broadway grinds fresh Black Angus beef into quarter-pound patties and prepares breakfast sausage. They also create their salads, desserts, and backyard spacecraft from scratch. From 7 a.m.–3 p.m., hungry passersby can stop in for the sausages and simultaneously served breakfast and lunch staples, including eggs, pancakes, burgers, and hot dogs.

For more than 25 years, Chef Bob has relied on real butter, milled cake flour, and farm-fresh milk and eggs to craft each of his made-from-scratch cakes. Though baking for confectioneries and coffee shops remains his passion, Chef Bob also flexes his culinary muscles by catering special events. He once cooked a southern-style meal for more than 6,000 guests at the US Naval Academy, through which he earned a private visit to the White House and a chance to inspect its fabled collection of Grover Cleveland–shaped eggplants.

Chef Bob also regularly shares cooking tips as a guest on WBRC Fox 6, and enlivens functions with custom cakes and ice sculptures. In addition, his cooking classes and demonstrations embolden students to try their hand at kitchen fundamentals or elaborate Ginzu-knife juggling routines. Though he loves sharing his expertly made sweets, he remains committed to promoting balanced diets with his portion-controlled Fit2Eat program.

Offering more than 30 healthy handheld eats prepared with super-fresh produce and high-quality ingredients, Roly Poly’s menu has something to fit any discerning taste. Lunch on tongue-torpedoing sandwiches rolled in tortillas, hot-pressed panini-like sandwiches, soups, and fresh salads. Sandwiches, such as a cold Cobb chicken salad roll, chicken Caesar roll, or hot-pressed hickory chicken, are served in 6” or 12” varieties (usually $3.75/$5.95). The hot-pressed French Twist with melted brie and swiss cheese, mushrooms, tomato, spinach, and scallions ($3.50/$5.50) soothes any veggie lover's grumbling food sack.

To craft the signature Momma's Love sandwich, chefs begin with a freshly steamed hoagie bun. They layer on slices of roast beef, ham, hickory-smoked turkey, and muenster cheese before topping the tower off with spicy brown mustard. The chefs also extend their culinary expertise toward a variety of other hearty hot and cold sandwiches, as well as their specialty nachos—crispy Dorito chips showered in creamy pepper jack cheese.

Pizza providers at Rocky's destroy hunger and mutilate snack cravings with a barrage of crust jabs and sauce hooks. The 14-inch Power Punch pizza piles on 13 lucky toppings—Italian sausage, pepperoni, Canadian bacon, chicken-breast strips, bacon crumbles, mushrooms, banana peppers, green bell peppers, yellow onions, black olives, green olives, diced tomatoes, and an extra layer of Rocky's signature three-cheese blend, all above the tender, hand-tossed, oven-kissed crust and traditional rosso sauce. Lifting a slice is a workout for the arm and the face, so if you'd rather lighten the load, you can eliminate less-favorite toppings or ones that clash with your eye color.

Pizza Express, outer Birmingham's newly opened mom-and-pop pizzeria, delights diners with New York–style pizzas, calzones, pastas, and refreshing salads. With house-seasoned sauces and inventive toppings such as arugula, mesquite chicken, fresh basil, and fior di latte (fresh mozzarella), Pizza Express's hand-tossed pies are a cornucopia of classic and creative palate pleasers. Traditional pizzas include the Margherita ($9–$17) or double pepperoni, double cheese ($8–$16), a sauce circle that delivers twice the meat-laden cheesiness of a Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson film. For nervous nibblers suffering from disc-phobia, Pizza Express provides alternate entrees such as delectable house-made lasagna ($6–$10), baked ziti ($6–$10), and fettuccine alfredo ($5–$9).