The Fish Market is both an Alabama legacy and landmark restaurant
The Fish Market is a Magic City favorite. (Susan Swagler / Alabama News Center)
The Fish Market Restaurant & Oyster Bar on Birmingham’s Southside has served Gulf-fresh seafood, traditional Greek foods and Southern dishes to generations of customers, and now the next generation in the Sarris family is helping make sure this beloved business continues to thrive.
The restaurant and seafood market have been around since 1983 when owner George Sarris opened his first version of The Fish Market in a tiny cinderblock building ideally located near UAB’s medical complex. George, like many other Greeks in Birmingham, came from a tiny village called Tsitalia in the mountains of the Peloponnese. He was 17 in 1969 when he arrived on the second-to-last passenger ship ferrying immigrants to the United States from Europe. Once in Birmingham, most of these Greek immigrants opened small cafes or even simple hot dog stands, and our local tradition of “Greek and three” restaurants and places like The Fish Market are the delicious, direct results of their hard work and perseverance. Three of the oldest restaurants in our area – the Bright Star Restaurant, Niki’s West and The Fish Market – all share a Greek heritage.
RELATED: Opa! and Okra: The Greek Connection
“People tell me it’s different,” George says of The Fish Market. “It’s a big place, but it feels homey, it feels comfortable. … We welcome everybody. You can see all races, all nationalities and languages – from the help in the kitchen to the front (of the house) to the customers. That’s what we wanted from day one. … I think it’s the only place in Birmingham you see the police chief, and, at the next table, you see somebody he arrested yesterday. It’s happened before! He just got out on bond, and they are smiling to each other. This really is all walks of life. You see extremely wealthy people and you see people they just have a hard time to pay the bills, but yet they like one meal out and The Fish Market is where they come.”
All George’s children – Dorothy, Dino and Yorgo – worked at The Fish Market while growing up, but Dino, now 37, has been on the payroll since he was 9. He started out washing dishes, peeling shrimp and wrapping potatoes, but he’s had jobs everywhere – from the kitchen to the market to the bar. Today, he works alongside his father as a co-owner and general manager.
“We are a family-owned restaurant, first of all,” Dino says. “We are a Greek restaurant, but we also have a lot of Southern influence and a lot of Cajun-Creole influence. … And we are a seafood place; we focus on the blue-collar dining, but we also have really high end.”
However you look at it, The Fish Market Southside is a culinary landmark.
That was the case even when it was in its original location with just eight seats in the beginning and all the ambiance of a Styrofoam box. Like that box, it was always more remarkable for what was inside – crowds of people sharing tables. Black, white, young, old, wealthy and not, from here and from elsewhere, all gathered for fresh seafood with a Southern-Greek accent.
His crowds followed George when, in 2005, he moved the business across the parking lot to a huge warehouse space – dating to the early 1900s – with aspirational seating for 375.
It’s a beautiful and interesting place with centuries-old, reclaimed timbers; Greek fishing boats filled with imported goods; artsy black-and-white photos of George’s homeland and his relatives; and antique urns as décor. The market, at the back of the restaurant, remains important and features fresh fish and shellfish from up and down the East Coast, from the Gulf Coast and all over the world. You’ll also find dried oregano from the mountains of Greece, George’s own brand of imported olive oil, and fresh Greek feta and olives next to stone-ground grits from McEwen & Sons in Wilsonville, Zatarain’s crab boil, and John’s Famous slaw and salad dressing.
An oyster bar shaped like the bow of a boat anchors the main dining room. Ceiling lights cast a lovely cerulean glow on tables for two or four or crowds. Some tables are marble-topped; some are wooden; others are clad in beautiful, time-burnished copper. There’s an airy patio strung with lights and shielded from the parking lot by mature evergreens and rows of beautiful urns for sale. A second dining room features dozens more tables and a vibrant marketplace with gift-worthy, new and antique imported items, including Turkish copper cooking and serving pieces and even sinks; beautiful, hand-painted ceramics from Greece; antique urns and handwoven rugs and pillows.
While the place can accommodate hundreds, it’s not overwhelming. There are private dining spaces available throughout the restaurant; thanks to a clever system of rods and curtains, they can accommodate groups from eight to 80 in either dining room and on the patio, too.
That said, it’s good to know how ordering here works, because The Fish Market is a smart combination of fast-casual and finer dining.
You can come in, get a menu, order at the counter, take a number, find a seat and someone will bring your food to you. Or the hostess can seat you for friendly, full-service dining. In this way, Dino says, they can appeal to casual diners and those who want a more high-end experience with “table service and an $80 bottle of wine.” He adds: “There are a lot of experiences you can have here, and I think most of our first-time customers are surprised by that. They see a seafood market. They see an oyster bar. They see people walking in and ordering to-goes or going up and doing a fast-casual. They see this nicer, full-service thing, and then we have this store selling antiques in the back. They probably don’t know what to make of us, honestly, but that’s our charm.”
It’s also brilliant in the way it can accommodate large parties with people arriving at different times and all wanting separate checks.
Navigating the menu, though, is up to you. It’s big.
That’s because of the deeply diverse – and deeply loyal – customer base. Dino says when he was regularly working at the bar, “There was a guy who came in every day, and he was a garbage truck driver and he would sit next to a federal judge. That’s our customer base. It’s everybody everybody – and I don’t know who’s got a more diverse clientele than us.”
That makes it hard to mess with the menu or make any other kinds of significant changes.
“I feel very, very defensive about that,” Dino says. “If we’re going to make a change in what we’re doing, we need to consider every single customer that’s walking in here.” No one will be marginalized. “Our menu is way too big,” he admits. “It’s the first thing anybody says when they come in here, but that’s why. You’ve got to have something for everybody. … And it’s somebody’s favorite dish, one of those ones way down there (on the menu). You’re gonna say, ‘Who orders that?’ and I’ll say, ‘Three people who come in here all the time order it.’”
So, start with what’s popular like the perfectly fried green tomatoes or crab claws (sautéed or lightly fried). Dino’s garlicky Greek-style baked oysters on the half shell are delicious. There’s a brand-new version, too – Sophia’s spanakopita baked oysters, which feature George’s sister’s homemade spanakopita filling melted onto the oysters with feta and sprinkled with panko breadcrumbs.
As far as entrees, the VIP snapper, baked in an iron skillet with potatoes, red onions and tomatoes, is the most popular dish. The Athenian snapper, grilled with olives, tomatoes and onions and topped with feta, dates to the 1990s and was an important part of the restaurant’s transition from mostly fried to mostly grilled and sautéed dishes. “That was (George’s) first specialty dish,” Dino says, “and it’s still right at the top of our specials. … It was a good way to get some people over to that new way of eating seafood.”
Shrimp comes all sorts of ways: fried, steamed, sautéed, grilled or boiled, with Cajun spice, Greek seasonings or Buffalo sauce. The shrimp and cheese grits with bacon and mushrooms in a creamy white wine sauce is a top seller. There generally are three different kinds of fresh oysters and a fast, sure shucker behind the bar. Any fresh fish over a large Greek salad is always a good choice.
Southern favorites include collards, crispy hushpuppies, regional catfish and salmon cakes with a creamy dill sauce. Cajun dishes like crawfish étouffée, jambalaya with Andouille sausage and shrimp, a regionally famous seafood gumbo, alligator sausage and po-boys spice up the menu.
Greek and Southern and Cajun are the headliners, but there are flavors here from around the country and around the world. Whole branzino (Mediterranean Sea bass) is flown in from Greece. There’s Spanish paella, fish tacos with feta and homemade pico de gallo, Maryland-style crabcakes with corn and caper relish, a vinegary West Indies salad full of lump crabmeat and cioppino (Italian-American fisherman’s stew).
Fish – snapper, grouper, flounder, catfish, North Carolina rainbow trout and much more – are grilled with a bit of Cajun spice and a lemon-butter sauce or fried (with or without seasoning). Shellfish choices are many, and there’s a thoughtful kids’ menu with shrimp, fish, chicken fingers and Alfredo pasta.
But the food is just part of why people have been coming here for generations. The customer connections are key.
George says, “You know, I like people and I like what I do. And I think so, I don’t do anything best, but … I genuinely like people.” It’s all about connections, he says. “Because we’ve been a family restaurant and because we’re being personal with customers – we get to know them, get to know their families, know the kids and the grandkids. … And I hope my son, after I’m leaving this world, will do the same thing.”
Dino already gets that.
“Tons of people come in here,” he says, “and we know those people. And it’s not an ‘I-know-the-owner’ kind of situation. We are just friends with these people. I tell my staff, when a new person comes on, ‘The customers are going to know more about this restaurant than you, and they are going to have an ownership that’s going to make you a little uncomfortable. They’re going to tell you how it is.’ We invite it, and we want it.” It’s part of their quality control, he says. “We have families that come in, where I knew the parents and I’m the same age as their kids and now I see them have kids and they’re coming in. This is the cycle. And part of that ‘legacy’ component is you make people feel like this place is theirs as well.”
George and Dino work well together, although their styles differ.
“Dino, he operates different,” George says. “He’s more logical, he’s more (about) numbers, more measured with his words. Myself, I’m a loose cannon. … I operate more by the seat of my pants and my heart in my relationships with everybody. The way he operates is more by-the-book, and it’s good. Any discipline is good. What I do works for me, but he has to do it his own way.”
Dino has learned a lot at The Fish Market, and one of the most important lessons goes back to early childhood.
“There was a guy who worked here in the kitchen,” he says. “And my sister and I would come and kind of work. I was 9. She was 11. And there’s a guy whose nickname was Worm. That’s what everybody called him. Worm. Dorothy and I just thought that was the funniest thing. So, we’d come in and say, ‘Hey, Worm.’ And my dad stopped us. He said, ‘It’s ‘Mr. Worm.’
“So, he had this way of conveying the importance of respecting people, that he has respect for people. And a lot of times, especially when you’re the boss or you work with so many people – I mean, the staff now is 94 people – it’s easy to get lost in thinking that everybody’s a cog in the machine. He is very quick to remind me – or anybody – that people deserve respect. That was a constant lesson.”
Dino is mindful of the responsibilities of steering this ship into the next generation and beyond.
“I feel like I’ve got this baseline, this foundation of confidence, that I know what’s going on here,” Dino says. “And I’m now 25 years into working with my dad.” He says they joke about WWGD bracelets. What Would George Do? But in a lot of ways, he’s absorbed this knowledge already. “When it’s mine and he’s not here,” Dino says, “I don’t think I’ll feel that way. I think I’ll feel like he is still here.”
Dino says he loves “being a part of this place, being a part of the story of this place. … The legacy of my dad’s restaurant and what he’s created and his whole identity being ‘Fish Market,’ we’re all a bit in the shadow of that. But some of us, and I include a bunch of people around here, are part of the story. We’re little colors of that. It doesn’t just have to be a shadow-type situation, and I feel very proud of that – that I have an ingrained history here.”
George says, “To be honest, I’m not proud. I’m happy. I’m content. And I’m humbled by the customers.” A lot of them, he says, have impacted his life in hugely positive ways, and he hopes he has done the same for them. Having a place like The Fish Market is one way to do that, he says. “I tell my son … the place can be (here) another 45, 60 years … if he stays on top of the same principles as when we started.”
As for the future, George says: “For me, I want to work another 30 years, about 30 to 40 hours a week, and Dino to take over and follow up with his style but with the same heart as when this place opened. … I’ve been blessed,” George adds. “More than I deserve. And the other thing: I’ve made many, many, many friends. Birmingham has been good to me.”
The Fish Market Restaurant & Oyster Bar
The Fish Market is an iconic Birmingham restaurant. (Susan Swagler / Alabama News Center)
612 22nd St. S.
Birmingham, Alabama 35233
205-322-3330
https://www.thefishmarket.net/
Hours:
Monday through Thursday: 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Friday & Saturday: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Sunday: Closed.
Seafood market hours:
Tuesday through Saturday: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Reservations are not necessary, but they are recommended for groups of more than eight people.
