The Depot Sat Empty For Three And A Half Years. This Fall, You Can't Get A Table.

Walk down S. Eton Street on a Thursday night now and you'll see valets working the sidewalk in front of the old Grand Trunk Western Railroad Depot, the parking lot full, laughter spilling out past the doors. For three and a half years, that same building sat dark. The contrast is the whole story of what's happened to Birmingham's restaurant scene over the past two years, and it's worth understanding before you pick where to eat this month.

Birmingham has always had a strong food scene. What's different now is the range of who's betting on it, and the fact that a genuinely local event, not a press release, gives you a reason to try most of it in the same thirty-one days this October.

The building that came back

Big Rock Chophouse ran out of that depot for nearly 40 years before it closed for good in December 2021. The building itself had a longer history than that. It started as an actual train station, then in 1984 was converted into Norman's Eton Street Station by Norman and Bonnie LePage before eventually becoming the chophouse Birmingham knew for decades. When it closed, the space stayed empty at 245 S. Eton St., through 2022, 2023, and most of 2024, while a new concept was announced, delayed, and re-announced.

Once a working train depot, then Norman's Eton Street Station, then Big Rock Chophouse for nearly forty years. Now Big Rock Italian Chophouse.

The new owners, Cameron Mitchell Restaurants out of Columbus along with Detroit-based investors Tom Celani and Dario Bergamo, originally penciled in a summer 2024 opening as part of a $10 million renovation. It slipped a full year. Big Rock Italian Chophouse finally opened in July 2025, and the scale of the bet is visible the second you walk in: 375 seats including more than 100 outdoors, three bars, multiple private dining rooms, and a members-only cigar club with its own entrance and terrace. The menu leans into the building's history rather than away from it, with a dining room designed to feel like a restored train car, USDA prime steaks and chops alongside handmade pastas, veal parmesan, and branzino. A building that sat vacant for three and a half years is now one of the harder reservations to get on a weekend in Birmingham.

Down the block, a different kind of swing

A few blocks away, the space that used to hold Mad Hatter Bistro at 185 N. Old Woodward Ave went through its own transformation, on a faster timeline. Bell Bistro opened there in November 2024, backed by Cicero Hospitality Group, the team behind Detroit's Adelina. The 3,000-square-foot space was redesigned by Ann Arbor-based Bowers + Associates and now seats roughly 96 people across a main dining room, a lower level, and a private room.

The kitchen is run by Gabriel Botezan, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef who still cooks at Adelina alongside chef Marco Dalla Fontana, splitting his attention between two dining rooms in two different cities. His wife, Gabriela Botezan, oversees the dessert program, which includes Papanași, a Parliament Walnut Cake, an olive oil cake bar, and a raspberry chocolate tart. Where Big Rock leaned into scale and history, Bell Bistro is a bet on a single chef's reputation carrying a smaller room.

The newcomers who didn't need an old address

Not every new name in Birmingham needed a landmark building to make an entrance. A handful of restaurants have opened in the past year and a half with no prior identity to live up to or shake off:

Eid, who also runs Phoenicia, Forest, and Leila, built Wilder's around the feeling of a supper club that no longer exists anywhere else in the region. Kenney, who has built a national reputation around plant-based fine dining, chose Birmingham for Besos rather than a bigger metro market. Teuta is the plainest story on the list: a family serving breakfast and lunch, no investment group behind it, no design firm credit. And RH's rooftop restaurant, with its skylight ceilings and olive trees, is a reminder that even a home furnishings retailer sees enough foot traffic in downtown Birmingham to build a full dining room on top of its showroom.

Four different kinds of money are making four different kinds of bets on the same six or seven blocks: a national restaurant group reviving a landmark, a Detroit hospitality group backing a chef's reputation, an independent restaurateur building something nostalgic, and a furniture retailer adding a rooftop kitchen almost as an afterthought to a much larger real estate play. That range is not something you'd guess from a single new opening. It only becomes visible once you look at the last year and a half as one stretch.

The one month you can taste most of it

Downtown Birmingham runs a genuinely fun event every October called BirminghamBURGER. It's organized by the Birmingham Shopping District, and it works like this: participating restaurants each create a signature burger, available only during October, priced starting around $15. Diners visit as many spots as they want, order the featured burger, and vote online at thebhamburger.com for their favorite based on presentation, creativity, and taste. At the end of the month, one restaurant walks away with the Birmingham's Best Burger trophy.

Confirmed participants from recent years include Adachi, Bell Bistro, Birmingham Pub, Casa Pernoi, Elie's Mediterranean Grill & Bar, Employee Meal, Hazel's, La Strada Italian Kitchen and Bar, Luxe Bar & Grill, Market North End, and Social, with the field typically climbing close to 20 restaurants. Adachi won the inaugural year with a burger called "Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover," built around a dry-aged wagyu blend, miso brioche, and braised pork belly, and followed it the next year with an entry titled "Oops I Did It Again." The Birmingham Shopping District's leadership has described the event as building real buzz both in the community and among the participating kitchens, and that tracks: it's the rare food event that rewards you for trying somewhere you'd never normally pick, since the whole format is designed around comparison rather than loyalty to one place.

If you want a lower-key version of the same instinct, the Sunday Farmers Market on Old Woodward keeps running through October 25, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., so there's still a full month and a half of produce, baked goods, and market stalls left before it wraps for the season.

What this adds up to

None of this is really about any single restaurant. It's about what happens when a city's oldest landmark, its most talked-about celebrity chef import, and its most modest family-run breakfast counter all open within the same short window. Birmingham isn't choosing between nostalgia and ambition this fall. It's getting both at once, on the same handful of blocks, and the only real decision left is which one you walk into first.

If you already call Birmingham home, October is as good a month as any to remember why. And if watching a neighborhood's restaurant scene shift like this makes you curious about what else is changing here, from what's for sale to what a home in this pocket of Oakland County is actually worth, Closing and Toasting is Megan Prieur's door into that conversation whenever you're ready to open it.