Photo by Karim Shamsi-Basha.
The Olive Branch has been a staple in Cahaba Heights for 21 years.
The first thing you notice at The Olive Branch is that you can see the cooking. The dining room opens onto the kitchen, so lunch comes with a floor show — meat turning on the vertical spit, falafel dropping into oil, pita coming off the heat while somebody calls out an order behind you.
That transparency is more or less the point. Since opening in February 2005, the family-run Mediterranean restaurant at 3236 Cahaba Heights Road has built its reputation on cooking each plate after it's ordered rather than holding it under a lamp.
The restaurant sits in the middle of Cahaba Heights, a short hop behind the Summit, in a stretch that has turned over considerably in two decades while The Olive Branch has stayed put. Regulars come for the gyros, the falafel, the kabobs and a hummus that turns up in a good share of the online reviews. Baklava closes most tables out. Diners who want the weather instead of the show can take the patio.
The menu runs the familiar Levantine and Greek repertoire — hummus, tzatziki, gyros, falafel, kabobs, grilled fish and salmon, pita with everything — but the kitchen's argument is about sourcing and timing rather than novelty. Fresh produce, whole cuts of meat and fish, nothing pre-assembled. It's the sort of claim every restaurant makes, and a much smaller number will let you stand there and watch.
For a certain kind of Birmingham diner, the place also functions as a landmark. Twenty-one years is a long run in a market where restaurants routinely last 18 months and long enough that the customers who came in as college students now bring children of their own.
Lunch is the busiest stretch, and the counter moves quickly. The kitchen closes at 8 p.m. most nights and 9 p.m. on Fridays.
The Olive Branch Mediterranean Cuisine is located at 3236 Cahaba Heights Road. The restaurant opens at 11 a.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, call 205-967-4600 or visit theolivebranchbham.com.
