Hot and Hot Fish Club Chef and James Beard Winner Chris Hastings.

Breaking a streak of nominations but no wins, and a drought for Birmingham, Hot & Hot Fish Club Chef Chris Hastings won a James Beard Award for Best Chef in the South.

Accepting the award, Hastings thanked all those in Birmingham and Alabama who have supported him and his restaurant.

“We live down south, we love what we do,” Hastings said.

Hastings had been a finalist four times in the previous five years.

Highlands Bar and Grill was a finalist  for Most Outstanding Restaurant, but Boulevard went home with that award.

Last night, Main Street Birmingham and Avondale Brewing Co. announced the winner of their contest: Freshfully!

Freshfully connects farmers with customers that want fresh local food. Customers order Freshfully’s seasonal fruit and vegetable boxes or other farm and gulf-fresh products and pick them up at various locations around town or at the Pepper Place Farmer’s Market. And that’s it.

Until now. Mandy Shunnarah at Magic City Post reports that Freshfully will use its new space at 200 41st St. South to open a market to sell their goods.

Read much more at Magic City Post.

The author as swine. Photo by Bradford Daly.

Souse is a liquid, typically salted, used for pickling, especially a pig’s head. It’s also an old-fashioned word for binge or bender, which is what I rather intend to go on come Sunday, March 25, at the fourth annual “Swine and Wine” at Old Car Heaven. I don’t mean I plan to drink to excess (although I’m delighted to belly up to any bar that Steva Casey, Little Savannah bar manager and mixologist extraordinaire, presides over). I mean I plan to pig out. That’s the point of the annual Southern pig roast, after all. Little Savannah proprietors Clif and Maureen Holt started the party back in 2008, intending it as a celebration of the infinite possibilities pork presents. The first one was held at Jones Valley Urban Farm and my memories of it are fuzzy and funny — chitterlings, cabernet, dirt beneath my fingernails. Tom Robey was shouting at Kyle Whitmire and I wound up wearing a pig mask.

Anyway, for this year’s festival, the first trick is getting there. Mapquest and BING are apparently the only services that currently give directions to Old Car Heaven. Google, cell phone and in-car GPS will direct guests to the top of the 35th Street Bridge.

Whatever route you take, go hungry — Clif Holt has been curing pancetta all week and he’ll soon be smoking two pigs that weigh 180-lbs. apiece, plus he and Maureen have choreographed a mess schedule that feature 15 other local and national chefs, representing Cochon in New Orleans, David Burke’s Primehouse in Chicago, and Espuma and Porcini House, both in Rehoboth Beach, Del., plus Veranda on Highland, Rusty’s Bar-B-Q, Satterfield’s, Stones Throw Bar & Grill, daniel george, Ollie Irene, Whole Foods, Shindigs Catering & Food Truck and SpringHouse of Alexander City.

The meaty menu highlights include:

pork rillette with whole grain mustard
hickory-smoked pulled pork
“pig roasted in hay”
“suckling pig under a brick”
roast pork with chimichurri
Cajun-style pig
pork belly buns with sesame and shiso hoisin

Some of the finest-sounding sides are:

deviled eggs with tasso ham
ham-hock braised collards
spring pea salad
dirty rice
spicy pineapple collards and broken rice salad

Dessert offerings include bacon-and-goat-cheese brownies made with Stone Hollow Farmstead goat cheese and strawberry shortcake made with rosemary biscuits.

Steva Casey, bar manager of Little Savannah. Photo by David Garrett.

The wine part of “Swine and Wine” will include numerous selections from the Bouchaine Vineyards in Napa Valley. Elsewise in the libation department, Steva Casey will make peach margaritas and a selection of signature cocktails. Avondale Brewery, Good People Brewery and Birmingham Budweiser have all donated beer to be sold throughout the event.

For the past three years, Jones Valley Urban Farm has received the proceeds from Swine and Wine. “We raised about $20,000 in year three, which board members indicated to us was the second-largest cash donation the farm had ever received,” Clif says.

This year, 100 percent of the proceeds from Swine and Wine will benefit the Druid City Garden Project, a community-based nonprofit in Tuscaloosa, Ala., working to increase access to fresh locally grown produce through garden building and educational programs.

“Druid City is dedicated to educating children — the next generation — on where food comes from and how to live better,” says Clif Holt. “They are helping perpetuate a vision that we feel strongly about.”

Clif contends that educating children about nutrition and access is even more important than sharing the same message with adults.

“I can’t change you,” he says. “I can’t change your eating habits. I can’t change the damage that’s already been done across this country with the production and consumption of processed foods. But we all can work to change the eating habits and the buying habits and the choices of our kids. The ultimate goal is to raise kids that have aspirations to be farmers or chefs instead of white-collar workers in finance or law. I would love to hear a story of a kid in the first grade asked what he wants to be when he grows up who said, ‘A farmer!’ or ‘A chef!’

“Andy and Rashmi Grace [founders of the Druid City Garden Project, whose blog-inspired Eating Alabama film recently premiered at SXSW] have shown complete commitment to working with inner city school kids and we want to support that,” Clif says. “When you work in the restaurant industry, you get asked every day to contribute to charity events and charitable organizations. You pick one and you have to say no to 10. Doing this gives us a chance to support a food and farming effort that’s really meaningful to us all.”

Of course, there’s the social aspect, too. Although all of the participants showcase some pork project or another, Swine and Wine isn’t any kind of cooking competition.

Maureen and Clif Holt, proprietors of Little Savannah. Photo by David Garrett.

“Instead, it’s a labor of love — and of time, sweat equity and sore back,” Clif says. “Everyone’s doing something unique and special. There’s a lot of camraderie — a lot of, ‘Hey, man, what are you doing with your pig?’

“None of us are strangers in each other’s kitchens any time,” Clif says. “If I have a problem on a Saturday night and wind up a man down, I’ll call Daniel Briggs of danielgeorge and he’ll send somebody to me, and he knows I’d do the same for him. This week I called up Haller Magee, who’s the chef at Satterfield’s, and I said, ‘Hey, I need to borrow two square feet of storage space.’ He said, ‘Come on.’ This is part of what makes our local restaurant community so special all the time. You add to that: Swine and Wine has got a ‘Sunday afternoon social’ aspect in which we come together, work our asses off and have a good time doing it.”

Swine and Wine runs 5-10 p.m. on Sunday, March 25. Tickets for adults cost $50, children ages 13-20, $20; children under 12, free; VIP passes $75. Buy them in advance at www.druidcitygardenproject.org.

I mention all this because I want to convince you how much I know about the menu at Taj. I had myself convinced. I thought I had sampled every entrée and appetizer. So imagine my surprise when I saw something called “Chicken 65” on the menu. I had never noticed it, even during the truncated poultry period of my menu exploration. And I thought that “tender chicken morsels marinated in a unique blend of crushed roasted spices and baked in the tandoor, tossed with mustard seeds and curry” sounded appealing enough that my guy would have happily set his childhood traumas aside to sample it.

“Rosie, is this new?” I asked.

I was sitting at the bar, studying the menu and sipping masala tea while I waited on a to-go order. A member of the friendly family that owns the restaurant smiled at my question.

“It is,” she said. “We have several new things —”

She started to point them out to me, but I butted in to boast. “Wait, wait — I know the menu so well, I bet I can find them all.”

I picked up a pen and circled five things in addition to the Chicken 65. Rosie’s grin got bigger. She took my pen, turned around the paper to-go menu and started drawing stars next to the new items. Seven of them! Seven in addition to the five I’d already circled! If it had been a quiz, I would have flunked!

Taj India’s new menu items include:

Mulligatawny soup – a delicately spiced chicken and rice soup

Sev Betata Puri – “The seaside attraction of Bombay” – small biscuit-like puris covered with cubed boiled potatoes, onions, cucumbers and tomatoes, topped with fine gram-flour straws, mint and tamarind chutney.

Shrimp Pakora – Tiger shrimps wrapped in gram-flour batter with coriander, garlic and ginger, then crisp-fried.

Shrimp Pepper Masala – Shrimp stir-fried with chopped onions, fresh herbs and spices in sharp, tangy sauce. Served medium to spicy.

Keema Mattar – Minced lamb blended with green peas, tomatoes, fresh herbs and spices.

Paneer Tikka – Seasoned chunks of homemade cottage cheese baked with bell peppers, cabbage and onions.

Chicken Mushroom – Boneless chicken and baby mushrooms cooked in a blend of tomato- and onion-based sauce. Medium spicy.

Chicken Dalcha – Succulent chicken cooked in a moderately spiced yellow lentil sauce. Great over basmati pillav. Medium spicy.

Kadhai Chicken – Tender pieces of chicken cooked in a thick tomato-based masala sauce and finished with kasoori methi.

Of course, nobody who has dinner at Taj on Sunday and Monday, March 11-12, will want to order off the menu. On those nights, the restaurant will offer a special buffet as part of its 18th annual celebration of the Indian holiday Holi, which marks the arrival of spring.

Holi has origins as an agricultural festival but also commemorates various events in Hindu mythology. As a seasonal celebration, it’s a Pan-Indian holiday, marked all over that nation by Indians of every religion with a variety of games, pageants and bonfires. Wherever it’s celebrated, Holi is the most colorful Indian holiday — literally. Friends and family ply each other’s faces, hair and clothing with colored powders — faces turn red, yellow, orange and purple; hair goes from black or blond to blue or pink or green. In India, the colorful festival is a time when social norms are temporarily abandoned: When everyone is covered in colors, the distinctions of gender, status, caste and age are far less visible, and the revelry brings people together.

For the Taj India celebration of Holi, doors open and 5 p.m. and the set price for dinner includes a complimentary glass of wine. The buffet will feature a bounty of colorful dishes, a few of which are detailed below.

Palak potli pakora – Potli can be translated to mean “parcel,” and pakoras are vegetable nuggets, usually battered in gram flour and deep-fried. In other words, these are the same kind of deep-fried treats that Southerners would probably call fritters. The palak variety is comprised of spinach, and this special variation includes brocoli and mushrooms, too.

Kalonji Bengan – In India, the vegetable Americans call eggplant is called bengan, or, in English, aubergine. The spicy and aromatic Bengan Bharta is one of the most popular dishes on the regular menu at Taj India. The Holi preparation of the purple vegetable includes onion seeds, fennel, garlic, ginger and a small amount sweetness from raw cane sugar.

Satrangi Kofta – Soft cheese, or kofta, is the heart of this dish, while “satrangi” refers to all the colors of the rainbow. More than half a dozen vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices account for the colors in Satrangi Kofta, including cauliflower, raisins, carrots, corn, cilantro and chiles.

The two rice dishes on offer will be herbal pillav, basmati rice prepared with a variety of herbs; and rang bhare pillav, a dish whose name means “rice full of colors,” that includes carrots, corn, cauliflower, brocoli and other vegetables.

Desserts will include besan ki barfi, a golden sweet made of gram flour, ground nuts, condensed milk and sugar; sweet pretzels called jalebi and a sweet cheese (paneer) dessert called chum chum. The latter comes in many colors in Indian sweet shops — pink and yellow are particularly popular, as is bright white.

And speaking of bright white — that’s the best color to wear to Holi if you’re willing to go all out in joining the celebration. Some revelers opt only for a little color applied to their faces, and it’s even OK to refuse the hues. But if you’d like to be covered in colors, the staff of Taj will be more than happy to oblige.

Taj India celebrates Holi on Sunday and Monday, March 11-12. Reservations are strongly recommended: Call (205) 939-3805.

Oh, dear God.

Birmingham blogger Wade Kwon saw Mike Elliot’s BBQ & Grilling Sauce on some Birmingham grocer’s shelves and questioned whether the sauce’s branding is really appropriate. Either Kwon was the first to notice, or the first to care (not sure which is worse).

Asked by email about his label, Elliott said, ”My ‘logo’ is a long story. He is a character that has been with me for quite some time.

“He’s meant to portrait that once trying my sauce that it will turn you into a savage and will do anything to get some of that savory sauce.”

The “savage” depicted on the label echoes centuries-old stereotypes of the black community, ones that continue to rile in Alabama.

Read Kwon’s full post here.

Veranda on Highland executive chef Tom Robey.

After nearly five years at Veranda on Highland, executive chef Tom Robey is returning to his culinary home, Commander’s Palace in New Orleans. Jeffrey Hansell, who previously worked under Robey as sous chef and has more recently served as executive sous chef at Luke in New Orleans, will return to take the helm at the Southside restaurant.

Robey told the Birmingham News that he is proud of the success of Veranda, but he has longed to return to the Crescent City.

“You know, I’ve been here five years, and I’m very proud of what I’ve accomplished here,” the 44-year-old Robey says. “But I know what it means to miss New Orleans, and it’s just time to return to my friends and family. And I am very proud to be going back to Commander’s Palace.”

At the new downtown eatery, owned and operated by the same savvy fellas responsible for the inimitable Trattoria Centrale (née Zaza), the stuffed poblano pepper has a reasonable amount of cheese but isn’t drowning in it. Accompanied by cooked cactus, red rice and black beans, the pepper is bathed in roasted garlic cream, the combination of which is plenty thrilling, but then there are the pine nuts.

Pine nuts on a stuffed poblano pepper! Would you have ever thought of that?

New neighbors: The El Barrio crew includes Chris Cullen, Brian Somershield, Neville Baay and Geoff Lockert. Photo by Bradford Daly.

And it’s not the only jaw-dropping, lip-smacking, happy-belly surprise on the El Barrio menu. Other unexpected delights include pineapple salsa on the al pastor taco and pumpkin seeds on the hongos taco (Hongos, by the way, is Spanish for mushroom; al pastor, in this case, is Awesome for chile-marinated pork.) There’s the grilled chorizo meatloaf (Mexican meatloaf? Who knew?), served with spinach, cojita-mashed potatoes and a ranchera sauce that includes cumin-scented sour cream. The salsas please the eyes as much as the tongue — one’s a vivid green, made of fresh tomatillos and the other, made of charred tomatoes, glistens in robust red. Other than the selection of quesadillas, this doesn’t resemble a typical Mexican restaurant menu. That, according to El Barrio co-owner Geoff Lockert, is exactly the point.

“There won’t be numbers, combo platters or dishes labeled as house specialties,” Lockert says.
“And,” adds his partner Brian Somershield, who also works as the chef at Trattoria Centrale, “we’re trying to stay away from Tex-Mex. El Barrio is 100 percent inspired by Mexican rather than authentic Mexican. After all, I didn’t grow up eating Oaxaca cuisine.”

Neither, presumably, did El Barrio executive chef Neville Baay, a native of Wellington, New Zealand. Baay (pronounced “by”) came to Alabama in 2002 to work as the personal chef for Birmingham businessman and philanthropist James M. Fail, preparing virtually all of Fail’s meals and managing his extensive home wine cellar. Due to the length and proximity of Baay’s tenure with Fail — Neville, his wife Rachel and their two young children lived with Fail for eight years — Baay’s job description eventually came to include as much organizing and managing as it did cooking. He organized Fail’s international trips, local receptions, business events and family holidays in cities all over the world. Shortly after Fail died in March 2010, Baay decided to return to a life in a restaurant kitchen. He heard from friends that the owners of Trattoria Centrale were planning to open a Mexican restaurant and submitted his résumé. As impressive as his culinary credentials were, there was an elephant-in-the-room type problem.

“We didn’t know if he could cook an egg,” Somershield says.

The try-out
Chris Cullen, a Clevelander like Lockert and Somershield and the third co-owner of El Barrio, explains the doubts they had about Baay as a viable candidate.

“His most recent reference was dead, and his last job before that was 10 years ago in a foreign country,” Cullen says. “We didn’t know what to do with him.”

“Brian, Geoff and Chris were personable, friendly guys — the kind of people I would aspire to be around anyway,” Baay says. “I knew I could do it. The more I talked to them, the more I knew that I wanted to do it. I didn’t want to sound desperate, but I was so emotionally invested in the idea that I could do this job.”

The solution? They had him audition.

One Sunday night, with his wife Rachel, their 8-year-old daughter Madi and 4-year-old son Asher in tow, Baay went to the downtown apartment that Cullen and Lockert share and cooked dinner for them and Somershield. Baay prepared two kinds of fish tacos — one with fried fish and one with grilled. He made charro-type beans and tomatillo salsa, and finished the meal with apple sopapillas. Seeing Baay in action probably gave them more information than any reference could have anyway. He cooked a meal for six, in a strange kitchen, while being interviewed by three of them and simultaneously keeping an eye on two children under 10.

“He was fully composed,” Somershield says. “In what could have been a nerve-wracking situation, but the food was great and he was completely at ease. And his philosophy was so in line with ours.”

“What that philosophy is,” Lockert interjects, “includes all-natural meat and seafood, local produce.”

Neville Baay kept his cool while auditioning his talents for the crew. Photo by Brad Daly.

“When I started cooking, being a chef was sort of like being a magician — you wanted to be mysterious and secretive, to never let anyone in on how you did what you did,” Baay says. “As in, ‘Taste this! Taste what I’ve done! I’m not going to tell you how I did it and you may not even know what it is!’ I’ve left that behind. What I appreciate now and practice now is the rustic, the simple, the straightforward. There’s a Mediterranean approach like this: ‘Hey, we caught a fish. Let’s use what’s around to season it.’”

Although Mexican-inspired food is completely different than anything Baay has done before, he says he has enjoyed the challenges.

“Training as a chef, I had to learn French cooking, I had to learn Italian cooking, English cooking and Asian cooking and techniques,” Baay says. “This is all new and the process of rewiring my thinking methods has been amazing.”

Using natural, farm-raised meats and organic local produce when possible, Baay says El Barrio has a menu that’s approachable.

“And as people grow to trust us, we can start to introduce people to Mexican food that is way beyond what they’ve had before.”

About the barrio
If the success of Trattoria Centrale is any indication, a considerable number of people already trust the El Barrio crew. The pizzeria on 20th Street has been wildly successful — lines for Friday dinner and Sunday brunch stretch down the block when the weather permits and snake through the tiny restaurant when it doesn’t. Somehow these guys have activated affordable and mid-price downtown dining in a way that few other restaurateurs have even come close to. With El Barrio in the old Storkland/Blair Furniture space on Second Avenue, a few blocks west of Urban Standard, downtown nightlife will receive another small but much-needed boost.

“We don’t think we’re pioneers,” Somershield says. “Part of our motivation is that we really wanted this for the neighborhood. ‘El Barrio’ – it means ‘the neighborhood,’ but there’s this other connotation, you know? It also means ‘the slums.’ And that is part of an attitude we’ve encountered or at least heard about, doing this and before we opened Trattoria – a certain type of person saying ‘Why would anybody open a restaurant downtown?’ But we think it’s going to work.

“The way that we’re approaching the food, the way we are positioning ourselves as a neighborhood place, we think it’s going to work.”

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

El Barrio Restaurante y Bar is located at 2211 Second Ave. North. For the time being, the kitchen is open for lunch only; when full service begins, El Barrio will offer lunch and dinner Monday through Friday (11 a.m.-10 p.m.) and brunch on Saturday (11 a.m.-3 p.m.). For more information, call (205) 868-3737 or visit www.elbarriobirmingham.com.