Niki's West

233 Finley Ave, West, Birmingham, AL - (205) 252-5751

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Posted By Michael Stern on November 23, 2007 8:41 PM

Although vegetables are big at Niki’s, a quaint country greenmarket it is not. All around it, trucks rumble past serving warehouses where produce is loaded and shipped. The truckers eat at Niki’s, but it’s no typical truck stop diner. In fact, Niki’s does not quite fit any genre of restaurant. It is a low-slung banquet hall with signs in its vestibule warning customers: “No Tank Tops, No Bare Feet, No Rollers on Head” and furthermore, “Smoking is not encouraged but accepted.” If you can live with the rules, you enter a cool, commodious space with a nautical/Aegean theme (fish nets, scenic pictures, mounted fish) and a cafeteria line where servers sell the food with the speed and enthusiasm of an auctioneer: “Have yourself a nice little seeded roll! … Look at these smooth mashed potatoes … Don’t those beef ribs look big and fine?”

Families, blue-collar and white-collar workers, bargain-hunters, and big eaters wind through the fast-moving line piling trays with plates and bowls of food. Seafood abounds – baked fish Creole, broiled mackerel, grilled amberjack – and there is always delicious baked Greek chicken, but it’s vegetables that set appetite awhirl. We counted more than three dozen vegetables in the cornucopic array, including yellow squash casserole, fried green tomatoes, black-eyed peas, and three different kinds of seasoned greens (turnip, collard, and spinach), all guaranteed by one impassioned server to be “ninety-eight percent fresh, except for some dried peas we use.” Some lovely items from the market are austere enough to please any fatphobe, such as sliced tomatoes, raw vegetable vinaigrette, and baby lima beans, but most of Niki’s produce is prepared according to the more voluptuous southern-café tradition. Broccoli is mixed with cheese and rice in a crazy-rich melange; tomatoes are stewed with sugar and shreds of torn white bread until they become as sweet as cobbler; bright orange yams are infused with sugar; crunchy-fresh okra is sheathed in a deep-fried crust.

Among the dessert selection, we were less impressed with Niki’s cream pies than with banana pudding, a baby-food bowl of custard and softened vanilla wafers. Curiously, the take-out menu lists pudding along with apple and peach cobbler – as a vegetable!

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Posted By Anita Brueck on March 24, 2011 8:41 AM

The variety and the quality of comfort food, home cooking, and Southern delicacies is awesome and consistent. I think I'll drive the hour-and-a-half for lunch today, just from thinking about it. Their carrot and raisin salad, yeast rolls, greens, veggies; their broad assortment of Southern-style meats: I just wish I lived closer!

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macaroni and cheese

Coconut Cream Pie

Squash Casserole

Fried Green Tomatoes

Yeast rolls

banana pudding

Fried Okra

greens

beans

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