The Bright Star restaurant in the blue-collar town of Bessemer has been a dining destination of Alabama football fans for generations. Aside from the 119-year-old restaurant’s famous broiled snapper and Greek-style tenderloin the main attraction for Tide fans is the private booth where the legendary “Bear” Bryant dined when he visited the Bright Star on his frequent trips to Birmingham.
A reservation at the houndstooth-draped table is as hot as a pair of tickets to an Alabama-LSU game.
“Basically every day, somebody requests to sit in the Coach Bryant booth,” Bright Star owner and executive chef Andreas Anastassakis says. “And it’s just known that, if you’re sitting at that table, you may get interrupted by somebody wanting to come and see the Coach Bryant booth.”
The Bright Star’s connections to Alabama football run deep.
Jimmy Koikos, who ran the family-owned Greek restaurant from 1960 until he died in 2019, was a founding member and former president of the Red Elephant Club, the Bama booster club that met at the Bright Star for decades.
Over those years, Koikos also became a familiar face at Tide football practices, where he usually arrived bearing an armful of the restaurant’s famous icebox pies for the coaches and their secretaries.
“He made all these relationships with all these coaches over the years,” Anastassakis, Koikos’ cousin, recalls. “He just created this relationship that was synonymous between Alabama football and The Bright Star. It’s almost like the two don't exist without each other in our world.
“Jimmy, he loved Alabama. He loved Coach Bryant. He loved having Coach Bryant in the restaurant, and he loved Alabama to be affiliated with the Bright Star,” Anastassakis continues. “It was his two loves: the Bright Star and Alabama football.”
Koikos started working for his father, Bill Koikos, at the Bright Star as a teenager, and after graduating from Bessemer High School, he enrolled as a freshman at the University of Alabama in 1958, Bryant’s first season as the Tide’s head coach. He was in the stands for Bryant’s inaugural Bama game at Ladd Stadium in Mobile that year, and he attended Bryant’s last game in the Liberty Bowl in 1982.
The famous coach and the affable restaurateur struck up a friendship over those many years. When Bryant dropped by the Bright Star for a plate of broiled seafood, Koikos sat him in a secluded booth back near the kitchen and away from the hustle and bustle of the main dining room.
“What I was told by Jimmy was that Coach Bryant liked to sit there because after the Legion Field games, he would come, and if there was a big victory, he'd like to walk through the dining room and get a standing ovation as he walked back to his table,” Anastassakis says.
“And, you know, (he) obviously didn't lose very often, but if he lost, he wanted to get snuck in through the kitchen where nobody would know he was here.”
Nicky Koikos, Jimmy’s younger brother, recalls one particular weeknight when Bryant arrived unannounced and started watching a football game on TV.
“Coach Bryant had come in and requested that the television be turned on where he could hear it, and it was loud,” Nicky remembers. “And Jimmy wasn't there, but then he walked in, and he said, ‘Why is this television so loud?’
“And I said, ‘Well, Coach Bryant is here, and he wants the television on.’ So Jimmy said, ‘Well, that's OK then. That's quite all right.’”
After Bryant died in January 1983, Jimmy dedicated the booth in honor of his favorite coach. A photograph of Bryant hangs on the dark-paneled wall, along with a commemorative plaque, while a houndstooth cloth adorns the table.
“That was Jimmy’s idea,” his brother says. “And people just love to go in and look at that room. It’s just a good memory for all of us, I think, with Coach Bryant.”
Every Tide football coach since Bryant – from Ray Perkins to Kalen DeBoer -- has dined at the Bessemer restaurant at least once, and a few became regulars, Anastassakis says.
“You’re not officially hired at Alabama as a coach until you’ve eaten at the Bright Star,” he says.
“Coach (Gene) Stallings really came here often, and he publicized us and gave us a lot of business,” Nicky Koikos adds.
Tide basketball coach Nate Oats discovered the Bright Star soon after he was hired in 2019, and he rarely comes to Birmingham without slipping into the Bright Star for a plate of broiled snapper throats.
“The first night when he was here, I cooked him snapper throats, and I got to know what he likes,” Anastassakis says. “He's a very healthy eater. He doesn't like fried food. I made him some broiled snapper throats, and he fell in love with them, and he's been eating them ever since.”
Seven years ago, another legendary Alabama football coach came to eat at the Bright Star with his family.
Instead of seating him at Coach Bryant’s table, though, Jimmy Koikos put Nick Saban and his wife, Terry, and their son, Nicholas, in another private booth in the restaurant’s 1907 Room, which is named for the year Greek immigrant Tom Bonduris opened the Bright Star.
Anastassakis remembers the Sabans’ visit well.
“After Coach Saban was done, Jimmy said, ‘Coach, I'd like to show you the Coach Bryant booth,’” Anastassakis says. “And he walked him over there, and there was a family of four and they're celebrating the mother's birthday.
“So Jimmy said, ‘Excuse me, I got somebody that wants to see the Coach Bryant booth.’ And these people looked up and saw Coach Saban staring at them. I mean, they turned white. It was a moment I'll never forget. They were so shocked to see Coach Saban staring at them.”
Not one to miss a marketing opportunity, Koikos soon after dedicated the booth where the Sabans sat as the Nick Saban booth.
It, too, has become a must-do on the bucket list of Bama fans.
“It was really a genius move by Jimmy because now people call and they say, ‘We'll sit in the Coach Bryant booth or the Coach Saban booth,” Anastassakis says. “So it gives us a little more leeway as far as taking reservations and satisfying people on where they get to sit.”
Just as Jimmy Koikos honored Coach Bryant’s memory, the University of Alabama has made sure Koikos won’t be forgotten, either.
A couple of months before Koikos died from cancer in November 2019, the university dedicated the “grab 'n’ go” section in the athletic dining hall in honor of the beloved, 81-year-old restaurateur.
Nick Saban also surprised him with an Alabama football jersey with the name “Koikos” and the number 1 on the back. The framed jersey now hangs on a wall near the Nick Saban booth.
That day holds a special memory for everybody at the Bright Star, Anastassakis says.
“I never seen Jimmy with a bigger smile in his whole life than I saw him with that day,” he says.
