This Alabama Restaurant Lets You Eat Inside A Former Jail

When dining out, some folks focus on the food, others go for ambiance, and some relish the local lore. If you lean toward the latter category, there's a place in the Deep South that fits the bill. With a name like Main Street Cafe, it's easy to assume this eatery in Madison, Alabama, sits in the heart of the city's historic downtown district. It does. But what's much harder to imagine is the actual building it occupies — and who inhabited the space before it started doling out Southern comfort fare to hungry locals.

When pulling chair to table at this spot, you can actually dine where prisoners once gobbled their grub behind iron bars, doing penance for untold crimes. The building is the former City Hall, and the cafe now serves much more palatable fare inside preserved jail cells. The eatery spans a larger space for everyday dining, while the two former jail cells are now private dining rooms where stories still get told and history writes itself anew.

The primary dining area, once the police chief's office, is spacious and casual, but tabletops still wear crisp, white cloths, framed by large drapery-clad windows and soaring ceilings with industrial-style beams. A charming patio offers more eating space with wrought-iron tables and an actual white-picket fence. But yesteryear lives within inside the cinderblock walls of the separate jail cages — where the ambiance takes a slight turn.

In a structure once teaming with energy from mayor and police duties, plus singing sirens of the volunteer fire department, the cafe now settles into a daily groove, serving folks with no urgent crisis at hand. But it's hard to overlook the lingering lore tucked within the jail-cell dining spaces.

Where the wheels of justice once turned, rooms are now sparsely decorated with white and murky-brown paint, a decorative-relief panel, and a dangling old-school chandelier. Narrow iron-bar windows present a looming reminder of previous misfortune, punctuated by eerily dangling, old-style handcuffs. Similar to the Jailhouse Pizza in Kentucky, diners relish a chance to occupy the past in such a physical way.

It seems ironic that a former jail offers "comfort" food, but that's exactly what you get here. The menu features a revolving list of daily specials, ranging widely from Reuben Bombs to fried grouper, Mexican lasagna, and Cajun cream linguini with andouille sausage, and squash casserole. That varied lineup also includes a parade of fried appetizers: fried green tomatoes, pickles, cauliflower, green beans, mushrooms, and corn nuggets. Favorites on the main menu include the Poulet de Normandie with cornbread stuffing and the Georgia Chicken with hot peach sauce and pecans. Desserts lean strongly Southern, with the likes of Coca Cola cake, Mississippi mud brownie, peanut butter pie, and lemon icebox pie.