Going home 🍽
Side Dish travels to the city of Schniper's birth and upbringing, to check out some recommended hip/new spots and compare the scene to C. Springs'
The week before last, I traveled to my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. The Magic City — yeah it’s a dumb motto, I’d rather call it Home to Vulcan’s butt — is where I got my start in the industry. I was 15. I worked at a now-defunct Italian fine dining spot called Arman’s. I started as a busboy and food runner and then became the expediter (the kitchen’s orchestra conductor). I later jumped from front-of-the-house to back, moving from pantry (salads/desserts) to sauté (pastas mostly) to the wood oven (pizzas/baked apps/entree specials). I got paid like shit, but loved the life.
Anyway, when I go back to B’ham annually I always ask around about new and/or hip spots. There’s never enough time between family programming to hit everywhere, but I get to what I can in a whirlwind.
Having focused on breweries, cocktails and barbecue in the past few trips, this year I caught up on craft coffee culture and otherwise hit a couple one-offs convenient to our family plans. Despite B’ham’s food scene maturing many years ago, its drink scene lagged behind. Craft breweries were absent when I left in 1997; C. Springs began its rise in ’93 with Phantom Canyon and Bristol, by contrast. While the hooch has caught up, with spots like Good People Brewing Company and Golden Age Wine, coffee culture lagged. Only in recent years have I noticed the opening of several legit third-wave spots that elevated from the Starbucks-level neighborhood places.
A spot called Revelator really got my attention several years ago, but it’s since closed shop in ‘Bama. Now, I’m told — by some young B’ham residents I recently hosted in the Springs — the list of craft go-to’s are June, East Pole (out of Atlanta, B’ham’s bigger-city culture feeder three hours away), Cala Coffee, Domestique, Punch Love and Seeds. I’m able to hit the first two.
Near the downtown gem Railroad Park, East Pole has a minimalist vibe and limited menu that evokes Loyal Coffee. Pourovers are on parade and it’s just the traditional espresso drinks. The batch brew’s excellent. As much as the Springs’ finest roasters have plateaued at the high-end of coffee (there isn’t really a progression to a fourth and fifth wave; the ceiling’s kinda set), East Pole gives me the feeling that B’ham’s scene has firmly arrived and that true bean worshippers now have ample nerdy refuges from the bullshit syrup slingers and mass-market caffeine peddlers.
June reinforces that sense, with an impactful, industrial-influenced stylishness. Look at the chic wood panels and neat brick bar and European-feeling patio under a peeling vintage mural. Black sesame-date latte: check. Orange-fig latte: check. And what’s that? A “Matcha Peachu” with green tea, peach-almond syrup and sweet cold foam. Yup.
But there’s another reason to venture to this revived downtown corner: Last Call Baking, recently listed by Eater Atlanta as among 30 Essential Restaurants in B’ham.
I was warned to go early before everything sells out, which happens daily. (Think Nightingale Bread, with a shorter line and less inventory.) We arrive in time to nab a pain au chocolat, cinnamon roll, croissant and two berry Danishes: a blueberry-lemon and strawberry-ricotta.
The croissant might be the best we’ve ever had (I hate to be superlative, but what can I say, it’s a checkmate moment.) Butter, lamination, airiness, pull-apart-y-ness, flakiness, texture, color, smell, flavor, weight, it’s all there, what you want, painfully perfect and validating. The pain au chocolat is textbook stellar, the cinnamon roll less sweet than commercial glazed nonsense, and the creamy fruit elements of the Danishes are total delights.
It’s true what they say about this place. The reverence is real. Oh the agony of great pastry moments because you can’t fully enjoy what you know’s about to end in crumbs when you don’t live nearby so you can’t get more. So you savor the edible ephemera and shrug off the sugar consumption ‘cuz there’s no calories on vacation. And surely this is health food when it buzzes the brain bits like this and excites the senses so. Am I being over-the-top? Don’t know, don’t care.
That night, at Slim’s Pizzeria in Crestline Village in Mountain Brook (which is kind of like saying in Buckhead in Atlanta or around the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs), we run back into the Last Call Bakery owners by total coincidence. I’m reminded that like the Springs, Birmingham (metro population roughly 1.1M) still feels like a small city where you often bump into people you know. And on that note, I meet the spot’s co-owner John Rolen, former chef de cuisine at a highly respected spot called Bottega. Or I should say that I re-meet him, as we barely recognized or remembered each other though we worked together a little over 25 years ago at Arman’s.
We reminisce a bit about those wild times (formative for us both in the industry), and I’m glad I’m able to sincerely say good things about Slim’s. Particularly about the peach pizza with pancetta, hot honey, jalapeños, ricotta and chives. The dough’s awesome and airy and chewy crusted. I ask if he’s buying the standard, Italian 00 Caputo flour and he says no, that he likes the higher protein content of a flour grown and milled in-state. He does a three-day cold ferment. Everything’s on point, including a Gulf shrimp appetizer (with hot honey butter and Calabrian chiles) and desserts made with local Big Spoon Creamery ice creams. My affogato reverses the normal presentation, filling a cappuccino mug with fior di latte ice cream but leaving a crater in the middle into which the espresso shot is poured. Bliss.
We return in the morning to that same village for Crestline Bagel Co. for a whole wheat everything bagel and garlic bagel to take and toast back home. And we hit Church Street Coffee & Books for an oat milk latte and housemade lavender-chai latte. We peruse the tightly curated bookshelves as we wait, noting everything from Malcolm Gladwell to Wendell Berry and Cormac McCarthy, with a little Neil Gaimon thrown in for good measure. (Hell, they have a copy of Kent Haruf’s Colorado-set Plainsong.) Of course there’s a copy of Frank Stitt’s Southern Table; the James Beard Award-winner also owns Bottega (where Rolen worked; like I said, small world).
Before leaving Church Street, I can’t help but notice that every man in the room is wearing virtually the same thing: creamy gray/white slacks with various collared shirts all in a blue tone whether patterned, striped or gingham. Despite slight variations in footwear, it makes me uneasy. (There were several others at the bagel shop also dressed this way.) What odd conformity is this? Oh yeah, the one I grew up around and rebelled against (wearing my houndstooth chef pants to high school in Dr. Martens with suspenders over a t-shirt). How do multiple grown-ass men, houses apart, wake up and put on virtually the same damn thing? I bet their wives vaguely resemble one another — blond hair, you know it. (Malcolm Gladwell come back to B’ham, where I know you’ve reported on civil rights and much more, and unpack this for us please in that way that you do.)
I ask my dad about the same-dressed-dudes when I get home — he sighs and rolls his eyes. He’s worked in the men’s fashion industry for decades as a wholesale rep to retail stores. “That’s the Mountain Brook look, the uniform — preppy,” he says. “When people started wearing Lee jeans vs. Levi’s back in the day, that was a coup.” I confess in reading that now that I don’t entirely know what he meant by that (because we were too busy laughing) other than to say clearly there’s a tipping point (back to Gladwell) as to when a particular item hits critical mass locally and becomes the standard. But still, guys: why do you want to dress like everybody else instead of express some individuality? I don’t get it. Be your own man — man!
Sadly, our last meal in town isn’t from a recommended list, but eaten out of the utility of location and us being nearby and tired. I have mild hope for a decent meal at The Pita Stop Express because B’ham has always had decent Mediterranean eats by my recollection. But alas, all but the hummus and baba ganoush fall pretty flat. There’s lipstick imprinted on my wine glass; the first pinot noir I order is so bad I have to push it aside and order a different one; the salad greens are starting to brown at the edges; the dressing is sappy commercial nonsense; the rice has to be Ben’s Original wild rice; they pair unripe fruit with entrées such that a co-diner says “I should not have to scrape rice off to eat cantaloupe”; and to cap it all off, the staff starts flipping chairs atop tables around us well before closing time in the ultimate uncouth move.
It just goes to show that listening to those passionate about finding the best eats and drinks locally does make a difference. Gamble and of course you may lose. But follow a regional food journalist like Hanna Raskin when in the area and you’ll be eating pretty. Charleston-based Raskin pens The Food Section, some of the finest food journalism being produced anywhere. Just for funsies, I reach out to Raskin (who I’ve dialogued with once before as a fellow Substack-er) to solicit some thoughts on B’ham as I’m concluding this visit. She writes back with the following tips:
"I was most recently in Birmingham to visit the city's storied Greek-owned restaurants, and have resolved to include at least one of those places on all my Birmingham itineraries going forward. It's easy to get distracted by fancy cooking when eating in town: Automatic Seafood & Oysters is one of the best restaurants in the region right now, and (at least until Highlands reopens) Chez Fonfon is where serious diners can and should express their gratitude for Frank Stitt's contributions to modern Southern dining. Plus, Pizza Grace. But the soul of the city's hospitality culture lurks in restaurants such as The Fish Market and Ted's."
So you see, Birmingham’s not all barbecue, fried chicken and sweet tea, as out-of-towners often assume. There’s James Beard winners and respected, legacy restaurateurs. You should go sometime. So file this blurb in your future folder for a long weekend away, as you would hit Nashville or Austin or wherever. (Oh, and make sure to go see Vulcan’s butt.)
I would gladly pay to go on a “Schnip Trip” like this!
For a quick visit home you sure absorbed a lot of new info and as usual made it sound very appetizing where deserved.