Alice Vol. 4 No. 2

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A Table Conversation with Frank Stitt By Anna Klement Some would think the best chef in America looks like Wolfgang Puck or Nobu Matsuhisa, maybe Bobby Flay. To me, America’s best chef looks like Walt Disney. Frank Stitt, the 2018 James Beard Award Winner, creates magic in his kitchen. What Walt Disney created for childrens’ cartoons, Stitt mimics with food. There is a very short list of chefs bred from Cullman, Alabama who value a salty oyster as much as a conversation on French philosophy. Stitt is as educated on history and culture as he is in agriculture. “Our cattle graze in sixteen different types of grass up to your neck,” Stitt said. He speaks of the quality of beef his farmers raise for his restaurant, Highlands, which was named one of America’s best restaurants. I could only imagine a restaurant higher than his on the list would have to grow seventeen types. Cross-trained in Provincial France, Stitt chose to take his extraordinary talent back home to Alabama because of the fruitful harvest seasons and his proximity to family. It’s clear he knows farm to table cuisine. Stitt grew up picking crops in his grandfather’s fields and organically learning that a chef’s relationship to cooking begins with seeds. He studied in California’s Bay Area before following a chef he was trained by to France. Like a francophile love story, he fell in love with the French countryside and the essence of slow food at a supper table. European fashion is to spend hours conversing, drinking and eating several courses. Dinner is the main event. After France, he worked in the Caribbean, for which he credits his incorporation of fresh seafood on his menu to. “I wanted to be crazy diligent about getting the freshest fish,” Stitt said. “Once we would get through our order of 20 snapper, we would move on to the next fish. That’s the reason we change our menu every single day...It’s kind of a badge of honor to serve the freshest seafood.” There wasn’t any formal training at a culinary institute to explain his level of excellence, but he did make an impression 62 Alice Spring 2019
on Julia Child before he was nominated on a decade long streak for Best Chef in America. For someone like Stitt to accomplish so much on his own, he remains one of the most humble people I’ve ever had a conversation with (and I’ve never spoken to anyone more decorated than him in the world of food). His three restaurants create a sense of place when you sit down at one of his tables, as if he was sitting across from you like he was with me. His eye contact is fixed on me when he speaks, and he remains engaged with the conversation. “I want people to be wowed by the sincerity, the genuineness, the quality of the food,” Stitt said. You wouldn’t know unless you looked at the top right corner of his menu for Highlands that it changes everyday. The typography of his menu and logo is simple. Yet, it makes a bold enough statement for someone like me who geeks out over fonts to appreciate it. The font speaks a lot for the restaurant's atmosphere. It’s classic and whimsical. It’s reasonably priced for a nice meal yet has the sense of exclusivity only the best restaurant in America could give. The details in the decor aren’t obvious to a naked eye. The restaurant itself draws inspiration from Creole and French artists. The walls of the kitchen and private business area are still intact from the 80s. There’s framed news articles and shadow boxes of older menus with detail right down to who the servers were for the night. “Birmingham is really a place where I could take my California, French and Caribbean influences here,” Stitt said. “My mom took a second mortgage out on her house to raise money, since I needed investors to open the restaurant. Everything I had was used equipment.” The sincerity of Stitt and his staff is enough to earn a spot as the Best Restaurant in America. It took ten years of perseverance, hard work and dedication climbing James Beard’s list for the title to finally stick. If there was one thing he wanted to strive for in opening three restaurants, a James Beard Award was never his end goal. It was always about having the highest integrity as a proprietor and chef. “I want people to be wowed by the sincerity, the genuineness, the quality of the food,” Stitt said. Behind a great man, is his two equally as talented and hardworking women. If it wasn’t enough to have a champion restaurant, his pastry chef since the conception of Highlands, Dolester Miles - known around the restaurant as Dol - is a James Beard winner as well. She began working along Stitt with no prior kitchen training, just a stellar work ethic and sweet tooth. In present day, she bakes the purest coconut cake with a crème pâtissière that I’m not ashamed to say tastes better than my own grandmother’s recipe. “Dol didn’t have any cooking experience,” Stitt said. “She helped us sew the curtains a week before we opened.” Though he’s humble, Stitt remains confident in his recipe development. He will not take credit for any measure of success in his restaurants without mentioning his other life partner who works just as hard behind the scene: his wife, Pardis. Pardis has been responsible for advancing the business interests since their marriage began. He says it’s frustrating when people credit his success without mentioning her. “If I were her I’d be so pissed off,” Stitt said. “How dare you not acknowledge the woman who’s been here the past 25 years working equally as hard.” He says he practices new recipes every evening with his co-owner, as a great chef should. His face lights up and his tone changes when asked about Pardis. “I owe it all to her.” It’s no secret his productions of food are sensational love letters to his wife, and that is something even Walt Disney would be proud of. Alice Spring 2019 63
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