Chez Fonfon, Birmingham, Alabama

After a morning of Rummikub with young cousins, half the Tanner quadruplets and their spouses, a tour of the Barber Motorsport Museum, Rusty’s Bar-B-Q, and an elementary school football game starring the new Patrick Tanner, Nancy and I capped the day with an early dinner at Chez Fonfon with Debby, David, and the newest and most improved John Tanner, 8-month old John David Tanner. I’d been to Chez Fonfon before, and verified that they serve one of the world’s great burgers, and that they can do magical things with chicken thighs and seafood. I’ve never had anything there that was less than amazing.

It shouldn’t be amazing. Chez Fonfon is the more casual sibling to The Highlands Bar and Grill, the James Beard Foundation’s Best Restaurant in the United States in 2018. Frank Stitt, Executive Chef at both restaurants, also boasts the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef in the Southeast and Outstanding Chef in the United States awards. You expect it to be great, and it is.

We were seated, ordered a glass of wine, and ordered. Debby and David frequent Chez Fonfon often enough that they knew their orders beforehand. David ordered the shrimp & avocado salad, sherry vinaigrette, and sauce rémoulade ($23.00).

Chez Fonfon and the other Frank Stitt restaurants have seafood delivered daily from the Gulf as do a number of other Birmingham area restaurants. It’s perfectly fresh and and handled thoughtfully through preparation. I’ve not tried Chez Fonfon’s remoulade, but watching David enjoy the salad made me put it high on my list.

Debby chose the trout with capers, brown butter, and parsley with Brabant potatoes and haricots verts ($27.00), and Nancy, a major fan of trout, followed suit.

The trout looked delicious. I’m not sure of the provenance, although I know that trout are raised in Alabama. Trout has a mild flavor and a firm, flaky texture that’s perfect for a meunière preparation, and with the brown butter and capers, this looked and smelled delicious. Nancy was very enthusiastic about the dish.

My thoughts roamed far and wide over the menu, from appetizers through desserts. After two desserts at lunch at Rusty’s, however, I limited myself to coq au vin, chicken thighs in red wine with lardons, mushrooms, and cipollini onions. ($29.00)

That’s a lovely dish of food, isn’t it? You can imagine most of it — perfectly cooked vegetables and a chicken thigh over rich and creamy potatoes, but you cannot imagine the burst of flavor from the lardons. They were incredibly smoky and rich, not cooked to the crispness of bacon, but enough to bring out a seductive pork flavor that could hold its own with their smokiness. I’m sure there were other things at work, the extra-earthy mushrooms and the perfect vegetables, the quality of the chicken and the wine, but the flavor from the lardons … wow!

The meal was complemented by lighting and music set perfectly for a relaxing mood without interfering with reading the menu or with conversation. John David took the hint from the setting and the magical touch of his Gigi and, apparently, the spell cast by the trout.

Even at an early dinner hour, the room invariably is graced with attractive young people.

The setting is charming, just perfect for a good meal. That Stitt fellow knows his business.

Frank Stitt, by the way, has an interesting background. He grew up in rural Cullman, Alabama, and wound up as a philosophy major at Berkeley. There he read treatises on food and began cooking and applying precepts such as the use of local seasonal ingredients to the dishes. He studied at Chez Panisse and, bankers being truculent, eventually used friends and family financing to open the Highlands Bar and Grill merging French techniques to local Southern ingredients — think ramekins of grits baked with a parmesan sauce, country ham, and wild mushrooms — and paid off his investors in four years. Not bad for a country boy.

If you get a chance to go to Chez Fonfon, go. That applies to each of his restaurants, Bottega, with its Italian-meets Southern ingredients menu, and its more casual sibling next door, Bottega Cafe. Highlands Bar and Grill is closed as of this writing while the restaurant trains up a covid-disrupted staff to the level of professionalism the food deserves, but stay tuned. Indeed, with other Beard-recognized chefs and superb barbecue and meat-and-threes along with other attractions, Birmingham is well worth the trip. Just don’t leave without a meal at Chez Fonfon.

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