Current Charcoal Grill

On any visit to Current Charcoal Grill in the historic Railroad Park neighborhood of Birmingham, you’ll want to make a point to arrive early in order to savor the experience that lies ahead.

Open since April 2024, the restaurant comes from chefs Adam Evans (a 2022 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef: South) and Luke Joseph, who are copartners, sharing the reins in a manner devoid of ego. The partnership in this new space is an evolution that began at Automatic Seafood & Oysters in the nearby Lakeview District and delves into the two chefs’ passion for Asian cuisine.

Settling into one of the Shibori-dyed sofas in the generous lounge area gives one a great vantage point to observe the entire dining room. The interior design was conceived by Evans’ wife, Suzanne Humphries Evans, who first cut her teeth on restaurant design at Automatic. Inside Current, she’s woven in moody azure-teal tile, evocative of ocean waves, and in a spacious lounge area, clad in Grant Trick-upholstered seating, guests can peruse cookbooks that have inspired the chefs, like Japanese Soul Cooking (Ten Speed Press, 2013) and Japanese Hot Pots (Ten Speed Press, 2009), both by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat. Expansive booths, a 70-foot-long banquette, and patio seating provide ample space for culinary conviviality.

The seeds of the Current menu can be traced back to the development of Automatic’s weekend brunch menu, which Joseph was instrumental in elevating, zhuzhing things up with roasted black grouper, short rib shakshuka, and an eggs benedict with yuzu hollandaise.

What fellow Birmingham restaurateur chef Frank Stitt did with Southern ingredients in Italian and French cuisine at Bottega and Chez FonFon, Evans and Joseph do with Asian cuisine at Current Charcoal Grill. Seasonal and locally sourced ingredients like melons, squash blossoms, and plums underpin the more traditional elements of miso, soy, kimchi, and furikake. Spear-caught fish from Florida’s DreadKnot Charters meets farmer-delivered stone fruit, while the vegetable clay pot teems with crispy eggplants, shiitake mushrooms, and sesame tare. The result is at once familiar but transportive.

This confluence of ingredients is transformed with the cooking technique that employs a combination of Japanese and Thai binchotan charcoal, dating back to the Edo period of the 17th century. Also known as “white charcoal,” binchotan burns hotter and cleaner than traditional charcoal. “When any oil or liquid drops onto the charcoal, it vaporizes instantly, emitting near-zero smoke,” Joseph says. “And because it burns so hot, basically the light that comes off of it bounces onto the protein you’re cooking, acting like an infrared light, cooking it from the inside
as well.”

Given the team’s dedication to sustainability, the charcoal has the added benefit of being reusable; simply soak it in water, let it dry in the sun, and it is ready to be a culinary workhorse again. The team uses the charcoal method on everything from Japanese chicken skewers to scallops, strip loin steaks, half-chicken dishes, and even dessert.

“That charcoal grill box really is the hearth and heart of this restaurant,” Joseph says.