Chef Rob McDaniel built a reputation – and earned six James Beard Award nominations – cooking big meats on open flames and planchas at SpringHouse in Alexander City or more recently with his own restaurant, Helen, in Birmingham.

But earlier this year, McDaniel and his wife, Emily, decided to add to Helen’s success with Bayonet, a new seafood and raw bar they opened next door.

“Things have been great,” chef McDaniel said. “You know, we opened Bayonet to pay homage to the ocean and fish and when we opened, we did not have the intent to only do seafood. We were going to have other proteins on the menu, and it just kind of went in that direction – that it’s all seafood – and we’ve stuck with that.”

So, instead of a hamburger, Bayonet diners can have a tuna burger without feeling like they’re compromising anything.

“When you eat it, you feel like you’re eating a big, nice, juicy burger,” he said. “It’s delicious.”

Unlike other seafood restaurants in the state, McDaniel casts a wide net for Bayonet.

“One of the things that we’ve really tried to dial in on is utilizing everything that we get – getting the best product that we possibly can, utilizing the Gulf as much as possible, but also not limiting ourselves to the Gulf,” he said.

McDaniel said for the 25 years he’s been in the restaurant business, the focus has primarily been on Gulf Coast seafood, which is fine because the Gulf produces great seafood.

“But there’s a much bigger fishery out there, and so we’re trying to bring some of those things and highlight those,” he said.

That includes the beloved oyster, a centerpiece of Bayonet’s menu.

“We try to have between 15 and 20 oysters on the menu at any given time,” McDaniel said.

Those oysters may be from Alabama or Florida. But they might also be from Texas, Massachusetts, Prince Edward Island or even Washington state.

“One thing that we wanted to do with our oyster program was to make sure that we had a wide variety – East Coast, Gulf, Panhandle of Florida and West Coast,” McDaniel said. “A lot of people here have never been exposed to a West Coast oyster. We had someone that came in just the other day with one of our bartenders and they said they never had oysters since having a bad experience and they had them here and absolutely loved them.”

Most Alabamians grew up with large, wild oysters that are tasty, especially on a cracker with some hot sauce or cocktail sauce and maybe a squeeze of lemon. Those are great when pounding down a few beers in the backyard.

McDaniel suspects some unpleasant experiences with wild oysters in the hot summer months is what has contributed to the old wives’ tale of not eating oysters during a month without an “R” in it.

“That’s kind of out the door with farm raised oysters because they monitor it so closely,” he said. “These oysters are farmed, and they go directly into a walk-in cooler. They stay ice cold; they come to us ice cold. We keep them on ice and serve them as cold as we possibly can.”

McDaniel said Bayonet is trying to offer a different oyster experience than you can get in your backyard.

At Bayonet, oysters come with a lemon wedge, some shaved horseradish, dropper bottles of house-made hot sauce and mignonette sauce. The idea is to let the oysters shine and showcase how different the experience can be from the wild oysters of the past.

But McDaniel said they do have crackers and cocktail sauce available on request for those who can’t part with tradition.

Just like the oyster program is different from other restaurants, so, too is the atmosphere.

Bayonet has a fine-dining and coastal chic atmosphere but not stuffy or pretentious.

“We’re a seafood restaurant, so a lot of folks imagine that we’re going to have seafood towers and stuff,” McDaniel said. “We took a little different approach, and we do it like a platter of seafood. So, you kind of get a sampling the same way you would with a tower, but it’s presented in a different way.”

Bayonet originally opened for just dinner, but the restaurant now opens at 11 a.m. for lunch and stays open through dinner service. That encourages patrons to stop by for an after-work drink and some oysters or take advantage of the “Two Buck Shuck” happy hour from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. where oysters and Alabama light beers are $2 each.

McDaniel said the restaurant and its new lunch service is getting a good reception, driven by the food.

Evans Meats and Seafood is the main provider of proteins and oysters. Fairhope Fish House is another in-state provider. Bayonet sources seafood from other purveyors around the country.

“You know, 20 years ago, when I first started this, I’ll never forget the first time I saw a flounder that you could hold by the tail and it just stayed straight and it was still in rigor mortis, that’s how fresh it was,” McDaniel said. “The fish you don’t see as frequently are the ones that are fresh like that. We reached out to people and said, ‘This is what we’re looking for.’ And that call has been answered. So, we’re getting fish that’s in rigor or pre-rigor even sometimes.”

All of the fish come in whole and are broken down in the restaurant.

Tuna and swordfish are known commodities in both the kitchen and on the plate. What about Spanish mackerel? Sardines?

At Bayonet, they take mackerel, butterfly it and cook it over charcoal. Sardines get a light smoke and are used to top a potato pie bake with some horseradish crème fresh.

With all of the seafood talk, one of the most popular things on the menu has been the egg salad sandwich, which is enhanced with Japanese mayonnaise, chives and caviar.

In addition to oysters, the egg salad sandwich and the tuna burger, Bayonet showcases other specialties like swordfish schnitzel, a shrimp bahn mi sandwich, lobster or whatever is fresh.

“Lately we’ve gotten these huge tiger prawns and that’s been very popular,” McDaniel said.

Getting to put his chef skills to work in seafood has been refreshing for McDaniel, but he also likes seeing the imagination and creativity of his team come to life.

“What’s been fun about it is working with them,” he said. “I will not take credit for all the things that both restaurants have done and accomplished because it’s a team effort. I’m there for moral support. I’m there to give ideas. But to see a team run with the ideas or have their own ideas and allowing them the space to run with those is very rewarding. Yes, I can come in and write the menu and everything on there, ‘This is what we’re going to do, and this is how it needs to be.’ But I feel like it’s a lot more engaging with our staff that they feel like they play a hand in that and they are able to be creative as well, and so I find a lot of pleasure in that. That’s been a very rewarding thing for us as well.”

McDaniel said having Bayonet directly next door to Helen has created a synergy between the two restaurants.

“We see guests that will come here to have a cocktail and some oysters before going to dinner over there or vice versa,” he said. “I was talking to some friends the other day that had dinner here, and they went to the bar at Helen and had dessert over there. It’s been great them being right next to each other. It’s been convenient from a business owner standpoint because I can easily get from one to the other. It’s been a really good addition to have it next door.”

McDaniel said he is not just a chef and owner, but he’s also a husband and a father and he has to be able to have balance.

“My goal is always to build a good team,” he said. “Although my wife and I, we run two restaurants, I also have to be a father also and so I can’t do that without having good teams in place. That allows me to be at the things that I need to be at with my kids. My top five is my relationship with Christ, my relationship with my wife, my kids, my family and then the restaurants and the people inside of the restaurants. And so, we really wanted to take an approach with Helen and then also with Bayonet of creating a sustainable work environment; we try to keep everyone under 50 hours a week, really trying to get around 45. When we first opened Helen, we were working 60-65 hours. It was not sustainable.”

Originally, they were looking at naming the restaurant Bayonet after the weapon. Then they considered Pea Crab until learning the pea crab is a parasite and maybe not the best name for a restaurant.

Revisiting the name “Bayonet” led them to the Spanish bayonet plant.

Just like most people associate “bayonet” with one thing and then learn it can mean something else, McDaniel said they kind of hope that’s what customers experience when they visit the restaurant.

“The idea was always that when people came to Bayonet, it would be a different experience than Helen and unexpected coming from myself,” he said. “We wanted to do something that was different.”

Bayonet

2015 Second Ave. North | Birmingham, Alabama 35203 | 205-829-1899

Hours: Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

https://bayonetbham.com/ | Instagram | Facebook | RESY

This story first appeared on Alabama News Center.