Fairhope’s Little Bird just joined a list of restaurants across the country to earn a spot on The New York Times’ America’s Best Restaurants 2026, a milestone that says as much about the town’s food scene as it does about the restaurant itself.
The Times unveiled its list of the country’s 50 favorite places to eat right now on Tuesday, the result of a cross-country tour that sent 16 reporters and editors to 538 restaurants before it was narrowed down. Little Bird, the coastal Southern restaurant helmed by five-time James Beard semifinalist Chef Bill Briand, made the cut.
Writing for the Times, critic Ryan Sutton praised the restaurant’s confident, technique-driven approach to coastal Southern food, singling out Briand’s West Indies crab salad—brightened with preserved lemon—and his boudin-stuffed quail, finished with candied jalapeños. He also called out the restaurant’s buttermilk pie, best enjoyed, in his telling, in the courtyard with a bacon fat old fashioned in hand.
(Little Bird/Contributed)
A Restaurant Built on Memory
For anyone who’s eaten at Little Bird, the recognition won’t come as a surprise. Chef Briand has described nostalgia as his favorite word, and it shows in nearly every detail of the restaurant — from the family photos and old recipes lining the walls to the individual dining rooms, each named for a chapter in the life of his late mother, Virginia Eileen Briand…