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How did you get started in restaurants?
I grew up in New Orleans and Gretna, specifically, across the river and worked in restaurants as a teenager to get money to fund my young tennis career. It was more of a means to an end in the beginning, and I wound up working in some pretty good places, like Christian’s. It was definitely eye-opening for food tasting and getting an understanding of how good food could taste. I then went to college in Birmingham, Alabama, and worked in kitchens like Bottega Café and Highlands Bar & Grill. I got a real bad injury playing in a tennis tournament, and I learned more and more about not only cooking but also being part of the kitchen and how our kitchen staff produces food as a team.
You opened your first restaurant in Springville, Alabama—how was that experience?
I figured I had been [cooking for] a while and I wanted to at least finish this journey I was on by having my own restaurant, and I had no real expectations of success or failure. I was just going to see if it worked, and that was back in 1994, and I’ve been doing it ever since. The important lesson I learned there in Springville was that companies I was used to dealing with were not going to come out to me for the small orders that I was placing and I had to have a creative mind and realize I’m surrounded by a couple of orchards, a vegetable market, a garden club, and a fish farm a mile away from me. I just realized I need to forage to get the best possible product, and once I started formulating that strategy, I started the tasting menu.
How do you specialize the guest experience?
It’s great to see the mix of people that are coming to us and really enjoying the experience. Because we are small, the experience is unique, authentic, warm, and intimate. Because each group of diners is different every night, it’s all about the customers and how they’re feeling, which makes each night different. We feel like we’re taking the decision fatigue out of dining with our tasting menu and we’re able to accommodate our guests’ different dietary restrictions. So, you come in and there’s only a few choices you have to make. We can do special menus that are vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, etc. We’re always being challenged in the kitchen, and our creativity keeps us thinking all the time and the menu is constantly changing and we’re always discussing how to elevate certain items. Because there’s only one seating a night, all of our intention is on whoever is in the room. We always have a date on our menu, so there’s always a memento of the evening, and if there’s any special occasion, we have a handwritten card for you with a wax seal just to add a special touch. We want guests to thoroughly enjoy themselves and [to] create memories for them, so we offer things that people don’t expect, because it’s a lost art in the restaurant industry of giving more and that’s our mindset.
CHRIS DUPONT
