Sean Brock’s career has included James Beard Foundation awards, a turn on Netflix’s “Chef’s Table,” and upscale restaurants like McCrady’s and Husk in Charleston, S.C. and then Audrey and June in Nashville. But one of his favorite and most promising concepts is Joyland, a fast-casual restaurant serving biscuits, burgers, and fried chicken. The first location opened in Nashville in 2020, and in mid-August of this year, a second store opened in Birmingham, Ala.

Joyland is a partnership between Brock, Pihakis Restaurant Group CEO Nick Pihakis, who’s also a partner in Rodney Scott’s BBQ, and Southall Farm & Inn founder Paul Mishkin, who was involved in the development of Audrey and June.

Together, the trio has created a concept and a space inspired by the fast-food restaurants of yesteryear, before a handful of big names dominated the category.

The smashed-flat Crustburger is one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes. Photo credit: Emily Dorio

“Joyland started as an exciting passion project and a restaurant that my kids could also enjoy, but it turned into so much more,” Brock said. “Following overwhelming support from our Nashville neighbors, it became clear that the kid inside all of us wants to have fun when eating, too.”

The Birmingham restaurant is located in the city’s Avondale neighborhood and seats 84 guests inside and another 49 on the patio. The space was designed by Angie Mosier and is meant to evoke childhood nostalgia, with bright pops of reds, blues and yellows set against white walls and wood tables.

The restaurant opens at 8 a.m. and serves breakfasts consisting of fresh biscuits served with sausage gravy or jam, breakfast burritos stuffed with eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns, and an assortment of biscuit sandwiches. 

Once lunch and dinner roll around, guests flock to the Crustburger, for which cooks smash both the patty and the bun until the bun is flat, crisp and toasted. There’s also a fried chicken sandwich, a Chicago-style hot dog, fries, rotating seasonal hand pies and made-to-order milkshakes. The shakes also can be made boozy with a dose or bourbon or rum.

Organic chicken is sourced from a family farm in Georgia. Photo credit: Mick Jacob

There’s more to the menu than meets the eye. The average patron doesn’t need to know about some of the global or chef-led influences driving select dishes, but Brock has put a lot of thought into them, meticulously testing ingredients and iterations.

The Joystick dish, for example, looks like a simple fried chicken on a stick served with a choice of dipping sauces, but it’s really a cross between Japanese kushikatsu (deep-fried and skewered meat or vegetables) and Mississippi’s tradition of fried chicken on a stick.

That chicken is organic and sourced from family-owned Springer Mountain Farm in Georgia, and the burgers are made with a proprietary beef blend from Bear Creek Farm, a sustainable and all-natural cattle and heritage hog farm in Tennessee.

Joyland’s Birmingham opening signals an era of growth for the brand. The team isn’t sharing specific details yet, but they say it will be the first of several new Joyland locations to open across the South in the coming months. So it’s clearly a concept worth watching.