Craving a half-pound Mugshots burger with a side of beer-battered fries?

Starting Monday, you won't have to drive to Tuscaloosa to get your fix.

That's when Mugshots Grill & Bar opens its first Birmingham location -- and its second in Alabama -- in the former New Orleans Food & Spirits spot in the Vestavia Hills City Center.

The Tuscaloosa Mugshots, which opened in the fall of 2005 on Greensboro Avenue downtown, has become a favorite of University of Alabama students and Crimson Tide fans.

Co-founders and college buddies Ron Savell and Chris McDonald opened their first Mugshots in Hattiesburg, Miss., seven years ago, and including the new location here, have since opened six others in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.

"It started out from a little kitchen the size of a broom closet," McDonald says. "We kept growing and it kept evolving from our local college-town grill and bar into more of a family-oriented restaurant."

For the past four years, Mississippi magazine has named Mugshots that state's best burger.

The Mugshots menu features 16 different gourmet hamburgers -- including a mushroom burger, a steak burger, a peanut-butter burger and a black-bean burger -- but the customer favorite is the McDonald ($8.29), which is named after its co-founder.

It features a seasoned beef patty topped with strips of hickory-smoked bacon, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, red onion, ranch dressing and barbecue sauce, served on a toasted sourdough bun with a side of fries.

"I thought it would be a good burger, but I never thought it would be our top seller," McDonald says of his namesake hamburger. "Over the years, though, that has been our most popular by far."

In addition to chicken salad, roast beef, tuna steak, ham and pepper jack cheese, a club and a Cuban, the signature sandwiches are the Briscoe Inferno ($7.99), a fried chicken breast tenderloin with Buffalo Jack's "wang" sauce, Swiss cheese, ranch dressing, lettuce and tomato; the Picou ($7.99), a boneless, skinless grilled chicken breast with Swiss cheese, hickory-smoked bacon, honey mustard, lettuce and tomato; and Howard's Steak Sandwich ($7.99), which comes with slices of marinated steak grilled with onions and peppers and is topped with melted pepper jack cheese. All of the sandwiches are served with fries or another side item.

Entrees, which come with two sides and a dinner roll, include grilled ahi tuna ($10.99), fried Southwest chicken ($8.99), grilled chicken breast ($8.99), hamburger steak ($8.99) and country-fried steak ($8.99)

Hours will be 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week.

Mugshots Grill & Bar is at 1919 Kentucky Ave., Suite 101, across from the Rave Motions Pictures theater. The phone is 824-9030.