Ted’s Restaurant

Ted’s Restaurant has been feeding downtown Birmingham workers and UAB neighbors since 1973, a longevity that puts it among the older independent restaurants still operating in the city. The restaurant blends Southern cooking with a Greek hospitality influence, a combination common among Birmingham’s longest-running family restaurants, and it built its reputation on farm-fresh vegetables and meats prepared simply and well, long before farm-to-table became a marketing phrase.

The restaurant runs on two distinct schedules that reward planning. On weekdays, Ted’s serves lunch only, a straightforward Southern plate lunch format built around fresh vegetables and simply prepared meats. On Saturdays, the kitchen shifts entirely to brunch, and that is when the menu opens up into a wider range of dishes built for a leisurely weekend morning rather than a quick weekday meal.

The Saturday brunch menu is where Ted’s really shows its range. Hot chicken and waffles and a farmer’s market omelette sit alongside a Greek burger, a nod to the restaurant’s Greek hospitality roots, and build-your-own breakfast bowls give diners room to customize. Southern fried green tomatoes appear as a starter or side, and the omelette, pancake, and waffle sections give the kitchen room to run through a full diner-style breakfast menu without losing the restaurant’s Southern identity.

Ted’s has also built relationships with other small Birmingham businesses, sourcing coffee from Domestique Coffee and bread from Breadworks, two locally known suppliers that reflect the restaurant’s preference for working with other independent operators around the city rather than defaulting to broad-line distributors. That approach fits a restaurant that has served everyone from construction workers to downtown professionals over its five decades in business, a genuinely mixed clientele that keeps the dining room feeling like a real neighborhood spot rather than a tourist stop.

The restaurant sits on 12th Street South, close to the UAB campus and Birmingham’s medical district, a location that has helped it build a loyal lunch crowd from the hospitals and offices nearby over the decades. That proximity to UAB also means the restaurant sees a steady mix of students, staff, and longtime Birmingham residents who have been coming since long before the surrounding blocks filled in with newer development.

The neighborhood around Ted’s has changed a great deal since 1973, as UAB has grown into one of the state’s largest employers and the surrounding blocks have filled in with new apartments and offices, yet the restaurant itself has kept its focus narrow and consistent. That steadiness, serving two meals a day on a fixed schedule rather than chasing an all-day menu, is part of what has allowed a single family restaurant to remain relevant across five decades of change in downtown Birmingham.

Visitors who plan around the restaurant’s limited hours are rewarded with a menu that still feels handmade rather than standardized, built on the same farm-to-table instincts the restaurant had decades before that phrase became common in restaurant marketing. Whether the visit is a quick weekday lunch or a leisurely Saturday brunch, Ted’s offers a genuine, unhurried alternative to the newer, trendier brunch spots that have opened around Birmingham in recent years.

The restaurant’s longevity, more than fifty years in the same general part of Birmingham, has made it something of an institution for people who work near downtown or around the UAB medical campus. Regulars tend to have a standing order, whether that is a weekday plate lunch built around whatever vegetables are freshest that day or a Saturday brunch built around the hot chicken and waffles. That kind of loyalty is hard to manufacture, and it reflects a restaurant that has spent decades getting the basics right rather than chasing whatever is trending in Birmingham’s newer restaurant scene.

Visitors should plan carefully around the schedule: Ted’s serves lunch only, from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Friday, and brunch only, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., on Saturday, with the restaurant closed on Sunday. Arriving outside those windows means missing the meal entirely, so it is worth checking the clock before making the trip.