Birmingham, Adam Evans, restaurants — Adam Evans to open Automatic Seafood and Oysters in Birmingham. Photo via Adam Evans on Twitter

Big news Birmingham foodies! A new restaurant is headed Birmingham’s Lakeview District. Get ready for Automatic Seafood and Oysters.

The new restaurant is the venture of Chef Adam Evans—formerly of Ford Fry’s The Optimist. Evans is an Alabama native who recently moved to back to the state with his wife, Suzanne Humphries. You may remember her from a recent feature from Bham Now about her interior design company—Suzanne Humphries Design.

Not only is Humphries an amazing interior designer, but she will be working alongside Evans to design Automatic Seafood and Oysters.

The Location

It’s all about location, right? Well, Automatic Seafood and Oysters will be situated in a great spot—on 5^th Ave South in Birmingham’s Lakeview District, which is home to many new restaurants, bars and new housing options. It will take the space once occupied by Automatic Sprinkler Company. (Ahem! That’s where the “automatic” in Automatic Seafood and Oysters comes from.)

The now windowless, 1940s warehouse will be turned from drab to fab and delicious in late January 2019. The restaurant is expected to seat 160 people.

Automatic Seafood and Oyster will be located in downtown Birmingham.

The Automatic Menu

Now, on to that menu!

Evans’ approach to his soon-to-be Southern seafood restaurant can be summed up in three words: fresh, clean and fun. That means lots of—you guess it!—fresh fish! He even plans to include fresh caught sardines and seasonal bycatch—fish caught unintentionally in nets while fishing for other species.

“You can go to a lot of restaurants in the South and get grouper or snapper, but there’s way more out there in the Gulf than overfishing those two fish,” Evans said. “I want to showcase the Gulf’s variety.”

What kind of variety? According to Evans, “octopus and spiny lobsters.”

But there is more on the menu than just seafood. You will also be able to find other options such as steak and vegetables.

For a Sneak Peek

Hoping for a sneak peek of the restaurant? If you take a drive down 5^th Ave S., you’ll see that renovations for Automatic Seafood and Oysters are already underway. As of now, windows have been installed along the front and sides of the building, and by the looks of it, Automatic is shaping up to be “comfortable, elegant and classic” just as Evans had planned.