The Pat Conroy Cookbook (37 page)

The Highlands Bar & Grill changed the way the people of Alabama thought about food. It was a revolution in the center of a neighborhood that was going slightly to seed but was about to start its renaissance. The quality of its restaurants is an important gauge for a city to measure its call to greatness. Frank Stitt put Birmingham on the culinary map the day he opened his restaurant. Later I heard from a white-shoe lawyer in one of those Atlanta law firms with enough WASP names to start a hive that the Highlands Bar was better than any restaurant in Atlanta. That’s long before the kinks were worked out and long before Frank hit his amazing stride. I made it to the restaurant in the first six months of its existence and discovered that Frank Stitt was a far, far better chef than anyone who had ever crossed the Chattahoochee River from Georgia or entered the Birmingham city limits under the cover of darkness after a lost weekend in New Orleans.

Here is what you get in a Frank Stitt meal and what you get with every recipe in his magnificent cookbook,
Frank Stitt’s Southern Table:
the full measure and passion of a man on fire with devotion to his chosen work. He gives you all the artistry at his command every time you sit down for a meal, and he does not tolerate lapses in the kitchen or produce that is not the freshest available. I have eaten at the Highlands Bar & Grill over twenty times and have never eaten a single meal that was not superb—the restaurant remains the best reason to move to Birmingham
that I can think of. I would call Frank Stitt the best chef in America, but that would cause undue jealousy in the ranks of other chefs whose powers of cruelty are exceeded only by genocidal despots and serial killers with bad tattoos. So let me simply state that I think that Frank Stitt is
one of the
best chefs in America, and America is starting to come around to my position.

I have watched with interest the growing reputation of Frank and his restaurant on the national scene. Whenever I go to Birmingham, I return to the Highlands or its sister restaurant, Bottega, where I look forward to the changes and improvements in the menu. Frank works miracles with pork, as I discovered when I ordered a tenderloin with a bourbon and molasses glaze that I thought was the best thing I ever put in my mouth. But I had said the same thing about the soft-shell crab with brown butter and bacon vinaigrette and, on the same night, the basmati rice salad with chilled crabmeat, crescents of avocado, roasted peppers, and slivers of olives and mushrooms folded into a lemon mayonnaise that was both delicate and fragrant. I could write poems about the seared duck breast and his Louisiana rabbit simmered in red wine. Even the lowly Southern dish of grits Frank uses as a palette that he fills with slices of country ham and tosses with wild mushrooms, with a dusting of Parmesan cheese, grated fine.

At the Highlands Bar & Grill, there is a sensibility at work in the smallest of details. When Frank offered me a watermelon margarita, I could think of no more nauseating a combination of tastes than a sweet fruit and tequila. Naturally, I was wrong and watermelon has seemed a noble fruit, as kingly as pineapple, since that encounter. Frank’s bar makes a better gin martini than New York’s Plaza Hotel, and his Chilton County Bellini is far superior to the one served at Harry’s Bar in Venice, where it was invented. You can enjoy those drinks at the best raw oyster bar outside New Orleans, where the Apalachicola oysters have been harvested from the Gulf of Mexico on the day you consume them. They are cold and salty and Gulf-born. Just when you think that an oyster on the half shell is the most perfect food on earth, Frank will present you with baked oysters with watercress and a bread crumb crust, or his oyster pan
roast with crawfish and buttery croutons, or spicy baked oysters with caramelized onions, pan juices, and chiles.

But then there are the lamb shanks with favas and the cobia with beet relish and how can I leave out the Gulf triggerfish or the magic he works with South Carolina quail or his ravioli with sweet potatoes, mustard greens, and country ham? I cannot do justice to Frank if I fail to praise his foie gras with corn bread or his roast leg of lamb with spring vegetable ragout, or the wine list that grows and mellows and deepens in complexity with each passing year. I have even failed to mention the desserts, which are often the weak spot of restaurants with the raw ambition displayed by the Highlands Bar & Grill. But Frank’s desserts are the stuff of both dreams and paradise, and I have heard men say aloud in front of their wives that they would marry the pastry chef as they scooped up clouds of the cinnamon crème anglaise or moaned over the crème brûlée. The waiters are classy and well trained. Frank’s beautiful wife, Pardis, runs the front with elegance and panache. His chef de cuisine is masterful and the cooks know what they are doing. The knife work is deft and Zen-like, and every night the men and women of Frank Stitt’s Highlands Bar & Grill know that they are in the process of making both history and art.

The food world is coming around to my opinion formed so many years ago. Recently, I was in another airplane to Atlanta when I read that
Gourmet
magazine had named the Highlands Bar & Grill the fifth-best restaurant in the nation. In the same year, Frank won a James Beard award for being the best chef of the Southeast. The inimitable R. W. “Johnny” Apple of the
New York Times
made one of his baptismal visits to the restaurant and left shouting kudos and benedictions like all the rest of us.

Over a year ago, my wife and I joined Frank and Pardis for a spectacular meal at Alain Ducasse’s restaurant in New York. It was a meal for the ages, and a great joy to watch Frank smell each dish as it arrived steaming from the kitchen, his eyes lighting up with lapidary pleasure as each dish arrived on our table. The restaurant is as formal and plush and forbidding as the Highlands Bar & Grill is welcoming and all-inclusive. The
meal was Proustian and fabulous and indescribable, as all the great meals are.

When Sandra and I said farewell to Frank and Pardis Stitt that night and walked toward our hotel with all the clamor and splendor and mystery of the great city swarming about us, we both agreed that Alain Ducasse is a splendid chef, but we also both agreed that he is no Frank Stitt.

The following three recipes came to me directly from Chef Frank Stitt of Birmingham, Alabama.

GRILLED FIGS WITH PROSCIUTTO, WALNUTS, AND LEMON-MINT CREAM
This is one of my favorite summer hors d’oeuvres—perfect for passing around at a party still sizzling from the grill. Make this only with absolutely fresh ingredients: perfectly ripe figs, the finest prosciutto, and the freshest walnuts. Richard Olney was the inspiration for this dish. He loved figs more than almost any other fruit and was especially fond of their affinity for cured ham. We first passed this now-late-summer menu standard at an event in the gardens of the Joseph Phelps winery. The salty ham and the just-beginning-to-warm plump fig is one of the sexiest bites ever.     
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SERVES 4

RED SNAPPER WITH CRAWFISH MEUNIÈRE
Red snapper has been the reigning queen of Gulf Coast seafood for over seventy-five years and with good reason—the delicate, white, flaky, moist flesh fits almost everyone’s idea of what fish should be. Sautéed red snapper is a wonderful thing unto itself. When you mix plump little buttery craw fish tails with lots of lemon and fresh mint, you’ve created a plate of springtime goodness. Don’t hesitate to substitute crabmeat for the crawfish, if you wish. This recipe calls for a quick sauté of the fish. Then the same pan is used to create the ultimate fish sauce—a meunière. Its origin, the story goes, began with the miller’s wife who would use some of the mill’s flour to dust the fish before cooking. She would then add a bit of shallot and white wine to make a sauce, finishing it by whisking in a little butter, lemon juice, and fresh mint at the last second. The only way we improve upon this age-old formula is to enliven the dish with a little crawfish or crabmeat. One of my favorite restaurant experiences is digging into the speckled trout with crabmeat meunière at Galatoire’s in New Orleans (and at Highlands Bar & Grill). Such meals are some of life’s great moments. If you can’t get your hands on impeccably fresh red snapper, opt for wild striped bass, speckled trout, flounder, or pompano.      
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SERVES 4

CURED PORK CROSTINI WITH SWEET POTATO BRANDADE
A traditional
brandade
is made of salt cod, potatoes, and garlic bound with olive oil. In the south of France, brandade is often used as a spread on crostini. Here we’re having a little improvisational fun. Instead of cured fish, we use cured pork, and instead of the typical potato, we use local sweet potatoes. You can substitute roasted or grilled pork tenderloin and still have delicious results, but if you have the time, try this cure.      
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SERVES 8 AS AN APPETIZER