El Barrio and Paramount, two of Birmingham’s most successful downtown restaurants, are showing the strength of their respective offerings with second locations bookending each other in a new development in West Homewood.
The traditional take on Mexican food has made El Barrio one of the mainstays on the Magic City restaurant scene. Paramount’s fun takes on burgers and hot dogs exemplify the merriment found in its bar and arcade games, and it grew to be a place where singles and families go to have good food and entertainment.
When the developer approached the restaurants’ owners about duplicating the two concepts in a new mixed-use West Row development on the site of the former Econo Lodge hotel, there was much to like about the idea.
(Paramount Bham/Facebook)
“It’s something we have thought about for a while,” said Neville Baay, chef and co-owner of the restaurants. “We wanted to be really careful about where we did it and who we did it with. We wanted to be quite conscious of ‘Where do we go and why do we go there?’”
Baay, a New Zealand native who moved to Birmingham to become a private chef, owns the restaurants with Geoff Lockert, Brian Somershield and Ben Smith. Baay and Smith joined Lockert and Somershield (offshoots of the chef Frank Stitt tree of restaurateurs) with the original El Barrio.
While some of the success of the original El Barrio and Paramount was organic, much of it was also intentional, such as the décor, the vibe and certainly the food.
Baay said he hopes the new locations will have their own organic qualities while also maintaining some of the more critical elements that make El Barrio El Barrio and Paramount Paramount.
“This part of Homewood is starting to develop and kind of fit what we tried to do downtown, which was go somewhere where people weren’t and try to do something that was cool and could withstand the fact that not a lot of people were around and see what happened,” Baay said.
It helped that the developer was so open to what the restaurateurs wanted, such as larger kitchens than what was possible with the original locations, which had to fit into existing, renovated space. A long hallway connecting the restaurants allowed for the arcade games for Paramount.
New, bigger spaces (each restaurant seats close to 100) allowed for some design changes; the newer El Barrio has a room for private gatherings, while there are more big-screen televisions and outdoor seating in the case of Paramount.
But much of the color schemes and décor are very familiar and recall the original restaurants.
“We wanted to bring elements, I think, of things that make Paramount and El Barrio kind of cool and unique,” Baay said. “We wanted to sort of have a connection but not have it be a rubber stamp of ‘oh, we did this again. We tried to make it familiar but different.’”
The auto shop theme of Paramount is repeated at the new location. The wall of El Barrio’s new restaurant is adorned with a mural, painted by an artist who is a former server at the original restaurant.
(El Barrio Restaurante/Facebook)
The menus are the same, but El Barrio does a Sunday brunch at the new location and Paramount adds dinner specials not available at the other location.
Having the existing locations actually helped to staff the new restaurants. New employees were hired ahead of time and trained at the downtown locations as they prepared to open.
While they tried to think through everything, Baay said something they did not expect was sometimes customers on the Paramount side want El Barrio chips and queso and customers on the El Barrio side may want a burger. Baay said the leadership of the two restaurants are able to work through such requests to accommodate customers.
What does Baay eat when he’s on the Paramount side?
“The Three Hander almost every time.”
That’s made with Niman Ranch corned beef, fries, tomato, jalapeños, creamy slaw, Dijonnaise and mozzarella on sourdough.
On the El Barrio side?
“I think our salads are awesome. I really love our guacamole.” But here lately it’s the veggie tacos made with jackfruit tinga, pepitas, rajas, corn-jalapeño relish and pipián that Baay enjoys.
With both places, Baay hopes customers walk away believing they got a great meal at a good price with service and atmosphere beyond what they expected from the casual setting.
“Everybody who has come through has been really complimentary,” Baay said. “I think it’s going really well so far.”
El Barrio Homewood
195 Oxmoor Road
Homewood, Alabama 35209
205-202-3429
Hours:
Monday-Saturday
11 a.m.-9 p.m.
Sunday brunch
11 a.m.-2 p.m.
Sunday snacks and drinks only
2 p.m.-4 p.m.
Sunday dinner
4 p.m.-9 p.m.
Paramount Homewood
195 Oxmoor Road
Homewood, Alabama 35209
205-202-3450
Bar hours:
Monday-Thursday
11 a.m.-9 p.m.
Friday-Saturday
11 a.m. -10 p.m.
Sunday
11 a.m.-9 p.m.
Kitchen hours:
Monday-Sunday
11 a.m.-9 p.m.
This story first appeared on Alabama News Center.
