Valentine’s Day is one of my least-favorite evenings to dine out. Restaurants everywhere are overwhelmed. Often, we get stuck with like-it-or-lump-it fixed menus that lack courses for vegetarians—like my wife. Instead, we prefer to stay home. For Valentine’s, we’ve become quite fond of fondue.

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, which means it’s time to start planning something special for the lucky guy or gal in your life. This year, skip the tired old dinner reservation and surprise your sweetie with a completely unique date idea. Here are 10 great Alabama date ideas guaranteed to sweep your partner off their feet. 

Coffee lovers know the best cup is made with recently roasted beans—the fresher the better. Buying from a local roastery, especially one in the neighborhood, guarantees that freshness.  Although Birmingham’s regional giants Royal Cup and Red Diamond are more than a century old, today’s modern coffee culture traces to 1993 when O’Henry’s Coffee opened in Homewood selling beans that were roasted in-house. Today, dozens of small-batch producers can be found throughout the metro area. Their coffee beans are available in groceries and upscale markets, served in restaurants, sold online, and stocked in the roasteries’ own cafes.

It’s an unusually cold night in downtown Birmingham, but the chilly temperatures haven’t deterred the small groups of people trickling into Hi-Wire Brewing. The city’s newest brewery has only been open for a couple months, but it’s already built a reputation for itself thanks to its excellent craft beer selection, expansive space, and fun selection of games. Tonight happens to be a biweekly puzzle night, and the turnout is impressive. Small groups huddle around 500-piece jigsaw puzzles. Dogs laze around on the floor, and folks mill up to the bar to grab a pint every couple of minutes. 

Biscuits are a way of life in the South. From fast food favorites to family heirloom recipes, there’s not a meal that can’t be made better by a hot, buttery biscuit. In December, Birmingham added another biscuit purveyor with the opening of Nashville-based, family-run breakfast and lunch spot Biscuit Love.

Anthony Ricciardone charted his current entrepreneurial course as a gardener. Today, he’s a farmer. Oysters are his crop, boutique bivalves that he and partner Chris Head grow in water off Fort Morgan where the salty Gulf of Mexico meets more subtly brackish Bon Secour Bay.

As the Chinese New Year arrives on January 22, families are gathered to enjoy a homecoming, honor their ancestors, and— above all—eat. It’s the new year on the lunar calendar, which uses moon phases to segment the year. In China and other countries that traditionally follow it, the new year starts on the second new moon after the Winter Solstice‚between January 21 and February 20 on solar-based Western calendars.

You won’t need to ride a “White Limozeen” all the way to Nashville to celebrate Dolly Parton’s birthday this month. One is cruising to downtown Birmingham on January 19 to mark the big day with a pop-up at Adios Bar.

Auburn University’s new Rane Center is cooking up an exclusive, food-focused getaway called the Epicurean Experience, bringing in guest chefs and sommeliers, and capping the weekend with a special nine-course dinner at the center’s 1856 Restaurant.

When Jose Medina Camacho was growing up, the last thing he wanted to do was work in the hospitality industry. After immigrating from Michoacán, Mexico with his mother and brother at the age of 3, he spent many of his adolescent years working in his uncles’ restaurants in Tuscaloosa, Jasper, and beyond. “My grandfather was a dishwasher at the restaurant,” he says. “All my uncles were cooks. It was kind of like a family affair.”

Chefs across central Alabama will make sure no one is hungry when 2022 ends, with special New Year’s Eve menus at some of the region’s finest restaurants. There will be multi-course menus in Montgomery, at Lake Martin, and in Auburn. Nibble on mini lobster rolls and enjoy oysters on the half-shell at a jazz lounge. In Tuscaloosa, an evening of food drink and music culminates in a midnight toast. Here are some places to celebrate the great meals of 2022, and set the stage for more to come in 2023.

Baking cookies is an integral part of the holiday season, don’t you think? Cookies for Santa, cookie swap parties, cookie boxes for neighbors and friends; the list of reasons to bake cookies during the holidays goes on and on. I, personally, reach for cookie recipes no matter what season it is, simply because I love to bake cookies. Like most human beings, I too have swooned, drooled, and marveled over the chewy, sometimes gooey, flavorful bliss of a cookie fresh from the oven, but in all honesty, it’s the simple, familiar, and comforting process of baking cookies that really does it for me. Baking cookies, particularly during the holiday season, is comfort in its purest form; and I believe it’s a comfort we should share. 

It’s not hard to find a good meal along Alabama’s coast. So, it should be no surprise that chefs in Orange Beach and Gulf Shores have extra-special plans for New Year’s Eve. Fish from the Gulf of Mexico covered in Gulf crab at Villagio Grille and Coast Restaurant. Lobster and dick prosciutto gnocchi at Cobalt the Restaurant. The eating is good for New Year’s Eve. Evergreen celebrates Alabama’s most famous sausage with its second Conecuh brand New Year’s Eve Sausage Drop, while Tacky Jack’s restaurant and tavern will toast the occasion with a beachy favorite, the Bushwacker. Here are some options to ring in the new year at the beach with a full and satisfied belly. 

Yes, fireworks and countdowns are the stars of New Year’s Eve, but the party doesn’t have to begin there. A final great meal for 2022 sets the course for great food to come in 2023. At many Birmingham restaurants, New Year’s Eve isn’t just one more Saturday night. Chefs in one of the country’s best culinary mid-tier cities are creating special menus to celebrate with their food-loving fans. For some diners, it’s an opportunity to ring in the new year early and get home before things get too crazy. Or it can be the starter course for a long and memorable New Year’s Eve. Here are a few Birmingham restaurants hosting special New Year’s Eve events. This list is far from exhaustive, so check in with your favorite spot to see what they might have. 

Restaurants across north Alabama will party all night on New Year’s Eve, with special menus and midnight toasts. Sip champagne and watch the fireworks from a tower high above Florence at the 360 Grille. Enjoy music with your meal in Mentone at the Wildflower Café.  In Huntsville, celebrate birthdays for both 2023 and The Poppy and Parliament. Or if you’re staying at Lake Guntersville State Park for its big New Year’s Celebration, round out your experience by indulging in the multi-course special menu at the nearby Rock House Eatery. Here are five fun New Year’s Eve food events to attend:

Shopping is extra-sweet in Mobile for those making this month’s Cocoa Crawl through downtown’s LoDa Arts and Entertainment District. Organized by the Downtown Mobile Association in the vein of similar promotions in other cities, the crawl is designed to attract shoppers to shop and eat in the historic district. Through December 31, participating merchants, cafes, and bars will offer special chocolate drinks either soft or hard, and treats like fudge and hot chocolate pound cake.

In the prepared-food industry, like so many others, winning awards at prestigious competitions and drawing kudos from influential fans like Oprah Winfrey creates a buzz that money can’t buy. Harpersville-based Stone Hollow Farmstead is earning compounded interest on that account. It recently retained a place on the list of “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” won a top prize from the Specialty Food Association’s annual Sofi contest, and was named a runner-up in the Made in the South Awards by the Southern tastemaker “Garden and Gun” magazine. 

Eggnog, hot buttered rum, and cranberry spritzes galore! Nothing says festivity like a Christmas cocktail. From holiday-themed takeovers at our favorite craft cocktail bars to special menus and a one-of-a-kind igloo experience, there are the best places to celebrate with spirited spirits this holiday season. 

Does everyone know what cookie butter is? I have to ask because I, too, at one point in my life was unaware of the heavenly spread that is cookie butter. I remember trying cookie butter for the first time when my husband and I, newlyweds at the time, lived in Nashville, Tennessee. I picked up a jar at Trader Joe’s after reading a label that essentially said “here’s some delicious, creamy peanut-butter-esque spread, but we swapped the peanuts for cookies. Try it!” So I did. And do you know what I found? Bliss. For those of you who don’t know, cookie butter is a sweet, creamy spread made from pulverized spiced cookies—think those Biscoff cookies you get on an airplane. Its flavor is reminiscent of gingerbread, which makes it perfect for holiday baking. 

These chocolate pecan pie bars are a simpler, more delicious take on a classic! Full of deep flavors like browned butter, chocolate, and bourbon, these pecan pie bars are not only simple to make but great for feeding a crowd!

It’s a new dawn at Belle Chevre, which has been making nationally- and internationally-recognized artisanal goat cheese in north Alabama for three decades.