There isn’t a lot between Altanta and Birmingham proper. The biggest city you’ll pass on the way in to Birmingham is Anniston, which has some decent chain restaurants. I’m not terribly familiar with any local restaurants there.
In Birmingham itself, it’s an entirely different story. There are a number of truly excellent restaurants in the city and suburbs, and several of them are located in a fairly small area (Southside, specifically Five Points South).
The best, in my opinion, is Highlands Bar & Grill. Don’t let the name fool you - Frank Stitt is an internatioanlly recognized chef who combines French cooking techniques with Southern cuisine. Reservations are strongly recommended, and it usually books up a couple of weeks in advance.
Also in the Five Points area is Hot & Hot Fish Cluband Ocean. As you might imagine, both feature seafood prominently in their menus. Birmingham is just four hours from the Gulf Coast, and many restaurants here get daily shipments of fresh seafood.
There’s one other restaurant that I’d recommend in the Southside area - Bottega. It’s another Frank Stitt-owned restaurant, and you’ll see similarities in the menus between it and Highlands.
There’s another restaurant that’s about 30 miles outside of Birmingham, in a little podunk town called Maylene. If you go there, you will immediately doubt any of the advice I’ve given you, because this restaurant is - I swear I’m not making this up - connected to a gas station and convenience store. It’s also - I swear I’m not making this up, either - one of the best restaurants in the Birmingham area. They don’t have a website, but you can see a menu here. They’re known for their “steak and cake,” which features a grilled filet mignon paired with a crab cake. Again, the seafood on the menu is fresh.
The Bright Staris a historic restaurant in Bessmer that features a fairly extensive menu. My mother-in-law absolutely loves this place, and will choose it immediately when we say we’re taking them out to dinner and ask for places they’d like to go.
Coming down the gustatory ladder a bit, there are a multitude of really good places to eat that aren’t quite as highbrow as those I just mentioned. Barbecue, of course, is an art form in Alabama, and a couple of the best options there include Dreamland and Jim & Nick’s. Both of these are in Southside, although Jim & Nick’s has locations around the Birmingham area.
If you want great fresh seafood without paying for atmosphere, The Fish Marketis an excellent choice. They get the same fresh seafood as the high-end places, and cook it just as well, but they’re not as hoity-toity as the other places. Their website lists two locations, one in Hoover (about 20 minutes from downtown) and one in Greystone (about 20 minutes, as well, but in a different direction). There used to be one downtown, but I guess it’s closed.
Mexican cuisine is well-represented here, with a wide variety of really good places to choose from. One I just tried this week which impressed me was The Little Donkeyin Homewood, just outside of Birmingham (about 10 minutes from Southside). Mexico Lindois near the Birmingham Zoo, so you could combine a zoo trip with a nice Mexican meal if you wanted.
I’m not as well-versed on good Italian places in Birmingham, but there’s one my wife really likes - Joe’s Italian. It’s about 20 miles outside downtown Birmingham. I’m not an expert on Italian food, but I can tell you this place is absolutely slammed on weekend nights. I CAN attest to the quality of their desserts; their strawberry cake is amazingly good.
As far as nice chain restaurants, there are places like Shula’s, Ruth’s Cris, and others, and of course we have a wide variety of mid-level options as well.
In my ideal world, I’ll just eat my weight in BBQ and soul food over the week, then have to buy two plane seats coming back. Alright, maybe not that ridiculously, but you get where I’m coming from.