It all started with an innocent conversation. My friends Karen, Clare and Phyllis, and I were talking about Rural Studio, the off-campus undergraduate architecture program at Auburn University that’s builds affordable housing out of recycled materials in one of the most impoverished counties in Alabama. I’ve been fascinated with their work for years and got to visit as part of the Serenbe AIR (Artists in Residence) board. Karen, Clare and Phyllis said they’d love to see it.

I said, what are we waiting for? Let’s go to Alabama. And if we’re going to go to Alabama, let’s stop in Birmingham. And if we’re going to stop in Birmingham, we absolutely have to have dinner at the Hot and Hot Fish Club. And if we’re going to do that, we should have drinks with chef/owner Chris Hastings first.

They were, as you might imagine, sold.

So we headed out bright and early one morning. Shortly afterwards, the “check engine” light came on in Karen’s car, so we made a short pit stop. But we can have fun anywhere—even a Ford dealership in Opelika, Alabama.

When we got to Newbern, where Rural Studio is located, we stopped at a little grocery store that’s the only thing for miles and miles. In the back, someone had opened a restaurant and we decided to have lunch. Karen and I split a Gorilla burger—a hamburger topped with onion rings, more onion, cheeses, lettuce, tomato and a really funky cole slaw. God, it was delicious.

We toured through Newbern and saw the unbelievable impact Rural Studio has made on that community. The Newbern Library. The 20K houses. Such inspiring, humbling work.

Then we were off to Birmingham. We had drinks with chef Chris Hastings then toured the city a bit until it was time for our 6:30 reservations at Hot and Hot. When we were seated, Chris came out and asked, “Is there anything you won’t eat?” We said no. He said, “Okay, we’re getting ready to love y’all up.” And then food started coming and didn’t stop. For hours.

 

He sent out his signature dish—the Hot and Hot tomato salad with field peas, fried okra and bacon—and added shrimp to it. He sent out charcuterie plates filled with chicken rillettes, duck prosciutto, coppa, head cheese and bresaola. But my favorite—and even as I’m thinking about it I can still taste it—was the lardo butter. It was part of his butter plate that came with honeysuckle and beef butter, but the lardo. Oh God, the lardo. It was pure animal fat that he’d run through a fine mill grinder and then whipped. It was air. Pure air.

Six-thirty on a Tuesday night in Birmingham and the restaurant was jammed, which is such a testament to Chris’ talent. The ladies and I ate. And drank. And we laughed so much that the woman at a table near us kept turning around giving us the Look of Death, but Chris couldn’t have cared less. “The greatest compliment you can give a chef is to come in, really understand what we’re trying to do, appreciate the food and fill our dining room with laughter,” he said. And so we kept on going.

And going. And at one point I looked around and saw that the restaurant was no longer jammed … because it was 11:30 p.m. We’d closed the restaurant down, so we said our goodbyes, got back in the car and headed to Serenbe. We pulled in around 2:30 a.m. the morning after we’d left. I moved a little slower that day, but it was a small price to pay for such a wonderful adventure.