Chris Hastings
Owner and Chef
As he prepares to celebrate 25 years of serving Birmingham diners in 2020, James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Hastings is more excited than ever about the future. For starters, Hastings and his wife Idie will celebrate a quarter century of culinary success with the new location of their iconic Birmingham restaurant, Hot and Hot Fish Club with an expansive new space in the city’s popular Lakeview / Pepper Place neighborhood.
“We’ve never been about trends,” explains Hastings. “Our entire culinary mindset has always revolved around featuring the cooking of our place, the South and using our ingredients and the seasons as a springboard for ideas. It’s about telling our guests about our culture and using the best locally sourced ingredients to stretch our creativity.”
As they prepare for the future, the duo is welcoming their son Zeb and daughter-in-law Molly into the family business. The young couple is working beside Hot and Hot’s founders to learn the business from the ground floor up.
Among the first lessons Hastings is imparting to the new generation of Hot and Hot Fish Club owner-operators — it truly takes a village to become a success. Back when the Hastings were poised to open Hot and Hot in the fall of 1995, the farm-to-table movement didn’t even have a name, and in the pre-internet era, building a network of local purveyors meant going business to business, one farm, one dairy at a time.
Recalls Hastings: “Basically, we went to each farmer, each purveyor and said, ‘If you grow it, we’ll buy it and support what you’re doing and we’ll let our other restaurant friends know you’re out there.’ Fast-forward 24 years, and we’ve got a massive network with farmers markets everywhere, borne out of Birmingham’s farm-to-table community. It’s one of the things I’m proudest of.”
In addition to being named Best Chef: South by the James Beard Foundation in 2012, Hastings notably beat celebrity chef Bobby Flay when he competed on Food Network’s “Iron Chef America” in 2012. With his wife Idie, Hastings published “The Hot and Hot Fish Club Cookbook: A Celebration of Food, Family and Traditions” via Running Press Publishers in 2009. Their culinary accomplishments, meanwhile, have been written about in the New York Times, USA Today, Garden & Gun, Southern Living, Food & Wine and more.
Hastings first honed his skills at the Johnson & Wales Culinary School in Providence, Rhode Island. After graduation, he moved to Birmingham — where he and Idie met — and worked for Frank Stitt as chef de cuisine of Highlands Bar & Grill. Later, he helped to open Stitt’s second restaurant Bottega. In 1989, the couple relocated to the Bay Area where Hastings worked under Bradley Ogden to open the Lark Creek Inn in Larkspur, California. In 1995, the couple returned home to Birmingham to display the culinary knowledge they had accrued with the debut of Hot and Hot Fish Club, the first farm-to-table restaurant east of the Mississippi.
The new, larger location of Hot and Hot Fish Club at Pepper Place is housed inside the old Martin Biscuit Building that is down the street from the Hastings’ other successful second restaurant Ovenbird, the live-fire, small plates-focused concept the couple opened in 2015 and a thriving catering and consulting business. Hastings says the key to success is building a talented team.
“It’s about hiring the best people, people who want to be coached up and mentored,” says Hastings. “We want to give people more than a paycheck. If you’re committed to us, we’re going to be committed to you. And now, to get to work beside our son and our daughter-in-law and to see them learn the business from us and our veteran staff is a gift like I’ve never before received.”
Idie Hastings
Owner and Director of Operations
As a brand-new graduate of the California Culinary Academy, working at esteemed restaurants including chef Jeremiah Tower’s Stars Café and Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio in the early 1990s, Idie Hastings received a master class in restaurant operation just by observing her surroundings.
“Those experiences opened my eyes to the degree of excellence in everything, from how to light a dining room to the food, service, everything,” Hastings recalls. “I remember the first time I saw Jeremiah walk into the dining room. He was busy checking all the lights to make sure they spotlighted each table. For him, every day was an assessment of the overall restaurant.”
For the past 25 years, Hastings and her husband Chris have incorporated those important life lessons into Hot and Hot Fish Club, their nationally acclaimed Birmingham farm-to-table restaurant, their live-fire, small plates-focused concept OvenBird and the couple’s successful catering and consulting business.
While Chris is the Type A extrovert who goes on Food Network’s “Iron Chef America” and beats Bobby Flay, Idie is the quiet half of the couple, the yang to Chris’ ying who is managing, fine tuning and juggling their multiple business interests behind the scenes. She is affectionately known as “Big Mama” –small in stature but large in influence.
“My eyes scan everything, from the outside appearance as I drive into the Hot and Hot parking lot, as I walk through the dining room and greet the wait staff,” says Hastings. “And I always end up in the kitchen. My staff jokes that I’m known to go on the line and taste the one thing that may not be correct. My sixth sense just kicks in. My strength is being behind the scenes checking everything to make sure the guest is taken care of.”
With 32 years of marriage, 25 years of co-owning a successful restaurant and catering business and raising two children together, Hastings brings an uncompromising attention to detail to the family business. Hastings’ daily responsibilities include maintaining daily operations and providing managerial guidance and expertise for their business ventures.
As the iconic Hot and Hot Fish Club prepares to celebrate its 25th anniversary and open a new, expanded location in Pepper Place, Hastings is able to bring a much-beloved piece of her Italian heritage to the menu with the addition of fresh pasta dishes.
“With a bigger canvas to play with, I wanted to bring some of my favorite pasta dishes, both old family favorites and dishes we’ve discovered on vacation in Italy, to our guests,” says Hastings. Diners can now expect to see a luscious lasagna with béchamel sauce, vegetarian pasta dishes, seafood pasta entrées and Hastings’ favorite red sauce with guanciale, a dish she and Chris first fell in love with in Rome.
When she’s not implementing protocol, overseeing operations or ensuring brand standards, Hastings also is making an impact in her community with her philanthropic endeavors. Named as one of the Top 10 Women in Birmingham by the Birmingham Business Journal in 2003 and an Empowering Woman by Go Haute in 2014, Hastings is a board member of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB. She supports the Cancer Center as a way of honoring her mother-in-law whom she did not have the pleasure of meeting before she lost her battle with breast cancer.
Hastings also dedicates her time to Hand in Paw, a Birmingham-based nonprofit organization committed to the welfare of animals. As a dog lover, she wanted to get more involved with this special organization. After becoming alarmed by the increase of pet deaths related to tainted pet food, Hastings even started her own line of dog biscuits, Miss Coco’s One Lucky Dog Biscuits, a business she hopes to expand into a whole line of dog food.
And as Hastings helps to position Hot and Hot Fish Club for its second quarter century serving Birmingham, she’s now working beside her son Zeb and daughter-in-law Molly, who have decided to enter the family business.
“I’ve always told our sons to go and find their passion,” says Hastings. “Zeb is truly Chris’ mini me so I wasn’t surprised that he wanted to come home and learn the business. But we’re thrilled that Molly also wants to be a part of this. I am delighted to teach, train and then be able to one day walk away to work on my philanthropic projects.”
