My mother shares a June birth date with her long-time friend Ruth in Tuscaloosa. In years past, when my parents were living in Tuscaloosa, Mom and Ruth would have a lunch to celebrate around birthday time. They renewed the tradition last year, with Ruth driving up from Tuscaloosa to meet Mother at Bessemer’s venerable Bright Star, a Birmingham-area institution since 1907 (History | Bright Star Restaurant (thebrightstar.com). They had to delay this year’s celebration, which was a landmark birthday for my mother, but they met at Bright Star not long ago.

It is my habit to drive Mother to the luncheon, send her and Ruth to a booth in the main dining room, and take a table away from them to have lunch on my own. I am not always the best company for my mother, I think, and she and Ruth always have a fine old time. So I stay away and let them celebrate as long as they like. As I sat in a small booth, enjoying one of Bright Star’s specialty seafood dishes, I was once again moved by the history and tradition of the place. Bessemer is a small city about fifteen minutes from downtown Birmingham and, when most of the heavy industrial plants, including a Pullman railroad car plant, left town, a good chunk of the economy left with it.

Through it all, the Bright Star has stayed strong since opening as a 12-seat bar in 1907. It is now a sprawling restaurant in the heart of downtown Bessemer which serves as a meat-and-three by day and shifts to a more fine-dining oriented menu in the evening. The Bright Star is the kind of place one goes to for special occasions – a birthday, before a wedding, after a funeral, an anniversary. It runs a brisk business before or after Alabama football games. Coach Bear Bryant’s favorite booth is in the back, close to the kitchen, and Coach Nick Saban’s booth in the 1907 Room has been added to the seating options. A friend and I were having dinner there on a Sunday night in the ’80s when it seemed like every priest in the metro was passing our table on the way to a private room in the back.  Jimmy  Koikos, one of the owners, on one of his passes,  said, “They come  most Sundays.”  Actor Sandra Bullock brought her dad, who had Alabama roots, there for Father’s Day one time. 

Members of the same Greek-American family have owned the Bright Star since the beginning. It was honored with a James Beard American Classics Award in 2010. In my years going there it has mostly been run by brothers Jimmy and Nick Koikos. “Mr. Jimmy,” who greeted guests and is featured in many of the photos that line the lobby, passed away a few years ago and now the restaurant is owned by Nick, his niece manager Stacey Craig, and cousin Executive Chef Andreas Anastassakis. The Greek heritage is reflected on the menu, as are Southern staples. They serve great steaks but I usually have a Greek-style seafood entrée.

In the main dining room, landscape murals line the upper walls above the wainscotting. These were painted by itinerant German painters in 1915. I have never heard names for these painters but I have always wanted to know more about their story. For most of my life, the murals were glazed a deep golden brown. The restaurant did a restoration of the murals in the early-2000s and the transformation was startling. The brown tint was the result of decades of tobacco smoke in the earlier days before smoking restrictions were in force. The subtle shades of the restored murals cast a much lighter ambiance to the room.

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Sitting separately from my mom and Ruth, old friends with many stories to share, I would occasionally hear the pleasant sound of laughter from the back of the room. I have never been one for chitchat and don’t seem to have the ability to make my mother laugh that much, so it was good to hear her celebrating her birthday with someone who can always make her laugh.

My mother’s favorite Bright Star dessert is their decadent lemon icebox pie. I had two slices sent back to the table to top off an extended and celebratory lunch date. While they were visiting, a thunderstorm and windswept rain had come and gone and the city streets were glistening wet in sunlight when we emerged.

The two friends looked out at the wet street in surprise. “It rained?” they asked. The Bright Star had worked its magic one more time.