Maya Mexican Restaurant

On 1st Street Southwest in Alabaster, Maya Mexican Restaurant occupies a building with a long history in the local dining scene, the former home of Del Toro Mexican Restaurant, which had served the area for roughly three decades before closing at the end of 2019. Maya opened in early 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, as the second location for a trio of partners who had spent nearly two decades working together at La Fiesta in Hoover before deciding to open a restaurant of their own.

The restaurant is owned and run by brothers Marco and Juan Perez alongside their longtime friend Jose Carbajal, who serves as head chef while the Perez brothers manage the front of house, marketing, and day-to-day operations. Their first location opened near the Palisades Shopping Center in Homewood in 2018, and the Alabaster restaurant followed two years later, giving the group a second Shelby County area outpost while keeping the business fully independent and family-run.

The menu runs through the expected range of a full-service Mexican kitchen, tacos, burritos, fajitas, enchiladas, and a taco salad, along with a house-made guacamole prepared tableside in a molcajete for tables that want the fuller presentation. Street-style tacos sit alongside heartier plates like beef burritos loaded with rice and beans and chicken and steak fajitas served sizzling, giving the kitchen room to serve both a quick lunch crowd and a slower dinner table in the same dining room. The restaurant describes its overall style as Tex-Mex rather than strictly interior Mexican, marketing its food as bold flavors served in a welcoming atmosphere.

The bar program has become a draw in its own right, with a rotating lineup of handcrafted margaritas that includes kiwi, dragon fruit, and strawberry versions alongside more classic lime margaritas, plus premium tequila flights for guests who want to taste through the bar’s selection. The combination of a serious margarita program and a full Mexican kitchen has helped the restaurant build a following well beyond a typical weeknight taco order, drawing groups in for birthdays and weekend dinners as much as quick lunches.

Maya is open seven days a week, with hours that stretch a little later on Friday and Saturday nights to cover the weekend crowd, and the restaurant offers dine-in seating, online ordering, and reservations. A dedicated lunch menu and a kids menu round out the offering, making it a workable stop for a fast weekday lunch as easily as a full family dinner on a weekend evening. Catering is handled through a request form rather than a fixed package menu, guests submit a preferred pickup date, time, and headcount, and the restaurant follows up directly to build out the order, an approach the business brands as bold flavor delivered.

A Become a VIP membership program also runs alongside the regular menu, giving repeat guests at both the Homewood and Alabaster locations a standing reason to sign up beyond a single visit, and the restaurant’s events and specials page promises, in its own words, something new every visit, a signal that limited-time dishes and drink specials rotate outside the standing menu rather than staying static year-round.

What sets Maya apart from a typical strip-mall Mexican restaurant is the story behind the ownership. Marco Perez has described opening a restaurant with his brother and a close friend as a longtime dream, one built on years of experience working in someone else’s kitchen before striking out on their own. That family ownership, carried across two Shelby County area locations in Homewood and Alabaster, gives the restaurant a rootedness that shows up in both the consistency of the food and the way the space is run, from the tableside guacamole cart to the handcrafted margarita list that anchors the bar.