A Postcard From Birmingham Alabama
My intro to southern food
Hello, Happy Sunday!
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I am back in a rainy and cold London, wishing I was still stateside where it was beautifully sunny and spring-like. I spent the last week in Birmingham Alabama, listening to Texas Hold ‘Em by Beyonce on a loop of course! I was in the south after all. This trip was both my first visit to Alabama but also my first time ever in any of the Southern states. I was there to visit the Bake From Scratch offices and spread the word about British baking. My side mission was also to get an intro to southern food and eat as much of it as possible. The below is a handful of places I tried and loved during my week in the ‘Magic City'.
I should also say a massive thanks to Brian and Brooke, the duo behind Bake From Scratch magazine, who so graciously showed me around town and indulged all southern food cravings.
I love BBQ but, as it was my first time in the south, a stop off for some BBQ was still a MUST. Saw’s is a much loved local chain and regularly seems to top the list of best BBQ in Birmingham. When we placed our order I let Brian and Brooke take charge and order for me, choosing a few different things they thought a southern newbie should try. We ordered Pork and Greens, a sweet-tea brined fried chicken sandwich plus an order of potato salad and for dessert the classic banana pudding. To wash all of that down I had my first sweet tea, which unlike the iced teas I have had before was simply sweetened and iced black tea, no added fruit flavours here. To be honest, all the sweet teas I tried were way too sweet for me, they need diluting with lots of ice (not an issue in the US) or, my preferred solution, making them up as an arnold palmer, adding lemonade to the tea to brighten the whole thing up a notch.
Lets start with what I didn't love, dont worry its a short list. Like many things that are alien to us, I think a southern potato salad may be a comforting and delicious dish to those who grew up with it but, being polite, it just wasn’t for me. The rest of the food? Absolutely delicious. The pork and greens is a dish Saw’s is rightly known for; made up of a bed of grits topped with braised collard greens and a very generous portion of BBQ’d pork, it is then garnished with what I would describe as shoestring onion rings. The rings were not thick and chunky but incredibly thin and whispy and they added the perfect crunch to the soft and tender textures every other element provided. This was like an opening chapter to my southern food journey and it absolutely made me want to dive head first into the rest of the book! The dish that really stuck in my head, the one I want to recreate for all of you, is the fried chicken sandwich. Yes, I am sure we have all had fried chicken sandwiches before but this was really special, firstly the chicken was incredibly tender, having been brined in sweet tea, and the batter incredibly crispy, a pre requisite for any good chicken sandwich. But what made it extra special was the Alabama White Sauce. Most BBQ sauces tend to be red, using either a sweet tomato base or a spicy vinegary base, Alabama white sauce is different. It starts with mayonnaise, stay with me, and is then mixed with vinegar and tons of black pepper. To my untrained eye those seem to be the classic base ingredients and then you often find garlic, Worcestershire sauce and maybe even some hot sauce added in along with a variety of spices. At its core it is an incredibly tangy and peppery sauce and now that I have had it that way once, I never want a chicken sandwich served with anything else.
My other come to Jesus moment was the banana pudding. I have tried, and loved, banana pudding many times before, but there was something about being in a BBQ joint, in the south, that made the whole thing taste even better. I have become slightly obsessed with this dessert and next week I’ll be sharing the love with all of you. Long story short, I loved this place and next time I am in Alabama will be headed straight from the airport to Saw’s, for a fried chicken sandwich and some banana pudding.
This bakery is taking the city by storm, I don’t think I have ever seen a bakery with queues quite like it in a fair while. A couple weeks before my visit the pastry chef behind Last Call was named best emerging chef by the James Beard Foundation and ever since they have been completely slammed. They have doubled their production, and yet, are still regularly selling out within a few hours of opening.
On a surprisingly cold day, with jet lag waking me at an ungodly hour, I decided to go early to get in the doors before everything sold out. When I arrived it was -2C and the line was maybe 30-40 people deep. I LOVE baking (obviously) but that was too much for me, I went around the corner and got a coffee at June (who luckily also sell pastries from Last Call) with no queue to speak off, double win!
Thankfully on my second visit, we managed to get a small selection of treats just before they sold out. The bakery specialises in laminated pastry but unlike many bakeries where that style is the focus, they also offer a wide variety of other baking. We got a ham and cheese croissant, a brownie, a passion fruit square and a cream cheese artichoke focaccia. The reputation is clearly well deserved, the ham and cheese croissant was fabulous, baked properly, nice and dark, it was full of flavour and perfectly textured. My other favourite was the passion fruit square, a twist on a classic American lemon square. A shortbread style base topped with a bright and zingy passion fruit curd and then baked until set, it was a perfect bite of sunshine on a cold morning. When I next visit I will absolutely be returning and cant wait to see how this bakery grows over the next few years.
Now, if Southern is what you want, you can’t get more southern than a ‘meat and three’. These restaurants are a staple of Alabama cuisine and they all follow a similar pattern. You order one of the meat dishes on offer that day (many spots have a regular rotating menu) and then choose three vegetable sides. The first thing that stood out to me was that one of the ‘vegetable’ sides was Mac and cheese. If I knew Mac and cheese was a vegetable I would have turned vegetarian years ago! The main thing to note, however, is that these restaurants serve a great variety of southern classics, from fried green tomatoes to cornbread to fried catfish it’s a really great intro to southern classics.
Dig under the surface just a little and you’ll find that many of these ‘meat and three’ restaurants are Greek owned, due to immigration back in the early 1900’s. This influence can seen on many of these ‘meat and three’ restaurant menus but seemingly none more so than at Johnnys, where you’ll find greek inspired chicken and keftedes (meatballs) on the menu next to southern classics like fried catfish. My order included a recommended hamburger steak, brilliant red creole beans, mac and cheese and fried green tomatoes, all washed down by sweet tea of course. Its easy to imagine these places are a relic of a time gone by, mainly inhabited by tourists like me, looking for a taste of something traditional, but this place was packed with a steady stream of regulars, the entire time we were there.
If you want a dose of Americana with your baked goods then Hero Doughnuts and Buns has everything you need. When I woke up at 6am, my first morning, I dragged my sorry self out of bed and went in search of coffee. Right across from my hotel was a new outpost of Hero, a doughnut and coffee spot that, to my luck, opened its doors bright and early. At that early hour the doughnuts were not quite what I was in search of but, thankfully, they also serve fabulous breakfast sandwiches, using the absolute lightest homemade brioche rolls. I opted for a classic BEC, a bacon egg and cheese, and it was exactly what my sleep deprived brain needed, okay the giant coffee also helped. As this spot was so close to my hotel, in the Homewood neighbourhood, I had to visit a second time, to actually try the doughnuts and they were a delight, perfectly light and fluffy. I chose a relatively simple blueberry crumble doughnut but, looking back at the images, I wish I had tried the more unusual bread pudding doughnut or the humongous apple fritter.
If you talk to anyone about the dining scene in Birmingham the name Frank Stitt will inevitably come up in conversation. His trio of restaurants have been Birmingham stalwarts for decades and they have become a breeding ground for local talent; I am sure you could draw a family tree of chefs that learnt their trade in those kitchens and who’ve gone on to open their own restaurants across the city and fill pages with those names. Stitt trained in San Francisco and worked at Chez Panisse before moving to the south of France to work with the legendary chef Frank Olney. When he returned to the South he set up Highlands Bar and Grill which, in 1998, won the award for Most Outstanding Restaurant In The US at the James Beard Awards. Sadly, Highlands Bar and Grill has remained shuttered since the Covid pandemic, but thankfully the other restaurants in the group are also well worth a visit.
I opted for lunch the French accented Chez Fonfon which feels just like stepping through the doors of a genuine French bistro, with a zinc bar and belle epoque tables to complete the picture. The menu is French with southern ingredients and influence. I enjoyed a perfectly executed steak frites with quite possibly the best shoestring fries I have ever had. The reason for this visit wasn’t steak, however, it was cake. Coconut cake to be exact. This cake is a southern classic but with a hint of French influence. The cake is made with both coconut and toasted and ground pecans (an Alabama staple). Instead of a heavy or rich frosting the cake is layered with just a whisper of creme anglaise, moistening the cake layers rather than separating them like a buttercream would. The outside of the cake is frosted simply with creme Chantilly and then coated in a blanked of toasted coconut. I know I am being overly enthusiastic about the food on this trip, but I cant help it, this cake, like everything else so far, was truly fantastic.
I am that person that needs to hunt down a good coffee spot in every city I visit. It helps me feel grounded and a little less like an aimless tourist. I was lucky to find June Coffee just two doors down from Last Call Baking but also a short walk from the Bake From Scratch offices, so it is safe to say I visited often. Good vibes, good people and yes, you guessed it, great coffee. The coffee shop also sells a few bakery items from their renowned neighbour as well as a short breakfast taco menu, provided by Ladybird Tacos. Always busy, I can see why its so popular.
I LOVE a breakfast taco, a burrito even more. Sadly Ladybird specialise in tacos and not burritos but thankfully those tacos are pretty damn good. The flour tortillas are made in house throughout the day and the effort is much appreciated, they have the perfect light chew you want from a flour tortilla. I tried a couple different tacos and my favourite by far was the Chorizo, Egg and Cheese. The queso and chips also comes highly recommended but 7am was a little early for a pot of melted cheese, even for me. They also open for lunch tacos where the menu is a little more adventurous. There is always a next time I guess.
On Sundays, not much opens in Birmingham but thankfully, Automatic Seafood is a bright spot. Absolutely jam packed, we visited early Sunday evening and had a fabulous meal. The seafood is primarily sourced from the Gulf of Mexico and much of the produce is sourced locally as well. The majority of the table enjoyed a selection of oysters (not my thing) so I digged into a fabulous smoked fish dip and some exemplary dinner rolls served with a moreish honey butter. For the main course I opted for a prawn fried rice. A fabulous meal.
Despite my life long affair with ice cream, finding a local ice cream parlour wasn’t really on my radar until someone slid into my DM’s. Said person was the owner and founder of Big Spoon Creamery, Geri-Martha O’Hara, who had spotted I was in town and invited me to come along to try their ice cream. The reason she reached out was really special to me because this ice cream parlour, half way around the world, was using my chocolate chip cookie recipe to make their ice cream sandwiches. This will always remain the most amazing thing that happens to me. My favourite part of this job is seeing my books and recipes used in home kitchens all over the world but there is an added professional pride when a chef picks up one of my recipes and uses it in their business, its a very special feeling. After hearing that I, of course, had to go and try the ice cream sandwich for myself. The sandwich in question is their ‘classic’ a chocolate chip cookie sandwiching their vanilla ice cream. Nostalgic and perfectly simple, it was the picture perfect example of an ice cream sandwich, and I am not just saying that because it is my cookie recipe. I also tried the tiramisu ice cream which was similarly fantastic.
Did you try the banana mayo sandwich? How was it?
Hello, Im from Birmingham. I live in Richmond, VA since 1981, but I still have a big place in my heart for southern cuisine. Im trying to perfect vegan southern cuisine. I was hoping as I read your article to find my cousins restaurant. He is the chef at Rougaroux, https://www.rougarouxbhm.com/about
Maybe next time! Thank you for being open minded and writing such a nice article about the south.