We’ve watched Birmingham evolve into one of the South’s culinary gems, a foodie destination with numerous James Beard Award-winning chefs and a diverse and vibrant restaurant scene.

But before all that happened, another generation of chefs and restaurant owners had already turned the Magic City into a culinary melting pot, serving everything from hot dogs to barbecue, seafood to soul food, Greek dishes to Asian cuisine.

We have enough long-gone-but-never-forgotten favorite restaurants to fill a phone book (remember them?), but here are the five old Birmingham restaurants we miss the most.

Joy Young Restaurant

Known for its spring rolls and chop suey, as well as American dishes like chicken and baked crabmeat, Joy Young’s restaurant was a downtown institution for about 60 years, and many Birmingham residents celebrated a birthday, graduation or anniversary in one of the restaurant’s curtained booths.

Mansion Joe, who came to America from China, started the business in 1920 when he and three partners opened what was then called King Joy on Third Avenue North in downtown Birmingham. It was considered the first Chinese restaurant in the Magic City.

Joe and his partners later renamed their restaurant the Joy Young Restaurant and eventually moved a few blocks to 20th Street North, across from Birmingham’s old Tutwiler Hotel, where the restaurant remained for another 55 years.

After the downtown location closed in 1980, grandson Henry Joe moved with Joy Young to the ground floor of the parking deck of Brookwood Medical Center in suburban Homewood. That, too, closed a few years later.

John’s Restaurant

Greek restaurateur John Proferis opened John’s Restaurant on 21st Street North – now Richard Arrington Jr. Boulevard North – in 1944, and for more than half a century, John’s was downtown Birmingham’s premier destination for a casual three-course meat lunch. And for a chic dinner with white tablecloths.

In the early 1970s, Proferis sold John’s to his nephews Phil and George Hontzas, who eventually moved the restaurant to a new, larger building down the block and brought in a third brother, Jimmy Hontzas, to help. After first Phil and then Jimmy died in the mid-1980s, George Hontzas continued to run John’s with the help of his sons Tom and Pete. The restaurant was later sold and became John’s City Diner, which closed in 2023 after 19 years in business.

In the heyday of John’s Restaurant, a long line of customers streaming out the front door and stretching onto the sidewalk was a common sight as the restaurant served up to 1,500 guests a day.

Menu favorites included trout with almonds, grilled Greek snapper and flounder stuffed with crabmeat, but no visit to John’s was complete without a basket of these crispy-on-the-outside, pillowy-soft-on-the-inside cornbread sticks and a side of this shredded angel hair cabbage served with the restaurant’s signature house-made dressing, a recipe Proferis perfected.

Although John’s Restaurant is long gone, the spicy coleslaw dressing – marketed by Tom Hontzas, who grew up mixing and bottling the dressing in his father’s restaurant – is still available in grocery stores and restaurants across Alabama.

RELATED: The story behind John’s famous coleslaw dressing

Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs

We’re old enough to remember that in downtown Birmingham there was a hot dog stand on almost every street – some even had two.

Tony’s great hot dogs on Second Avenue North.

Lyric Hot Dogs & Grill on Third Avenue North.

And Jimmy’s Hot Dogs on Fourth Avenue North.

None, however, was more popular than Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs, the 7-foot-wide cubbyhole on Second Avenue North where the dour Constantine “Gus” Koutroulakis held court seven days a week – every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas – for sixty-three Years.

A trip to Pete’s Famous for some dogs and a telling off from Gus was a rite of passage for anyone who ever grew up or worked in Birmingham. And after that initiation, we kept going back for more.

Gus took over the business from his uncle Pete Koutroulakis in 1948 and worked until his death on April 5, 2011. And when he left us at the age of 83, a piece of downtown Birmingham was lost.

Oh, what we would give for a “special” dog and a gentle scolding from Gus.

RELATED: The best hot dogs in Birmingham: Our top 5

Photo by : Browdy’s

Victor Browdy opened the original Browdy’s delicatessen in downtown Birmingham in 1913, and it remained in his family for three generations and 96 years – the last 65 of which were in neighboring Mountain Brook.

Famous for its corned beef sandwiches and crispy chicken, the deli also included a butcher shop selling kosher salami and hand-cut steaks, and a bakery offering rye bread and cheese blintzes.

Browdy’s moved to Mountain Brook in 1944 and moved into its last location next to the old Western Supermarket on Culver Road in the early 1990s.

Siblings Stan Browdy and Marilyn Browdy Leonard — Victor Browdy’s grandchildren — owned the deli when it closed in 2009. The business wasn’t what it once was, they said, and it was time for them to move on.

Turning off the lights on that final evening was still an emotional moment for the Browdy siblings.

“It was just sad – just a terrible time,” Stan Browdy told AL.com in 2009. “I just couldn’t believe it was really happening. We had talked about it over and over, but I just couldn’t believe we were actually doing it.”

The space later served as home to Ollie Irene restaurant before eventually being demolished to make way for Mountain Brook’s new Lane Parke restaurant and retail building.

RELATED: Shedding tears at memories of Browdy’s Deli

Cobb Lane Restaurant

On a picture-perfect day in Birmingham – or even a slightly overcast day – there is nothing better than sitting in the shade of the oak trees at Cobb Lane Restaurant, sipping a cup of the restaurant’s signature shed crab soup and/or enjoying a slice of the famous chocolate roulage.

In 1948, Birmingham promoter and businesswoman Virginia Jemison Cobb opened a clothing store on the brick alley between 19th and 20th Streets and 13th and 14th Avenues South in Birmingham’s Five Points South neighborhood, serving sandwiches with tea to her customers. Over time, her food became so popular that the clothing store evolved into a full-service restaurant.

Cobb ran the restaurant well into her eighties, and after a revitalization project in 1982, the lane was renamed “Cobb Lane” in her honor.

The restaurant changed hands several times after her, but many of her dishes remained on the menu long after her death in 1987. Her recipes are still searched for and shared on Pinterest, and some of them are preserved in the 1996 book “A Stroll Down Cobb Lane: In the Kitchen With a Southern Lady.”

The Cobb Lane restaurant served its last customers in 2009, closing after 61 years due to an economic downturn that crippled business, then-owner Jeff Stykowski told AL.com at the time.

“A lot of people have a lot of memories of the restaurant,” Stykowski said. “There are a lot of people who have a real personal connection to it.”

RELATED: Farewell to Birmingham’s Cobb Lane Restaurant