Hot and Hot’s Chris Hastings is about more than Iron Chef fame

This has been a huge year for Chris Hastings, chef of Hot and Hot Fish Club. Between finally scoring a coveted James Beard award (the Academy Award of the food world) and a Food Network Iron Chef title, Hastings and his staff have been busy doing what they always do – cranking out thoughtful, delicious dinners. But some residents might not know this culinary professional is their neighbor, currently living in Colonial Hills. When Hastings and his wife, Idie, decided to plant roots in the Magic City, Mountain Brook proved to be the ideal location, he said, citing the community’s wonderful people and its resemblance to where he was raised – Myers Park in Charlotte, N.C.

But another thing many may not know about Hastings is his drive to positively affect his community. For him, it all starts in the kitchen.

Many residents are regular Hot and Hot Fish Club patrons and are familiar with the restaurant’s style of cooking — food Hastings calls “technically sound” that focuses on his passion for locally sourced, seasonal ingredients. This translates to dishes cooked with a great amount of skill and technique that are just plain delicious. It can be as simple as a Tanglewood Farm roasted chicken with autumn vegetables. Other entrees might be more ambitious, like when he cooks the chicken sous vide.

“We take a chicken mousse with herbs, and we roll it into the leg and thigh of the chicken with the skin on. Then we tie it, chill it, compress it in Cryovac and sous vide it until it reaches an internal temperature of 58 degrees Celsius. Then to order, we roast it to get the skin nice and crispy. What you end up with is a good crispy outer skin a beautiful perfect inside that is brilliant.”

Every item on the menu showcases the best this region has to offer. Thumb through the Hot and Hot Fish Club cookbook, and you’ll see page after page devoted to the purveyors who supply those coveted ingredients. Seafood in particular gets top billing, calling the quality of Alabama seafood in this state “unbelievable.”

An equal amount of passion and technique go into the consulting arm of the Hastings’ business model. The couple has been able to capitalize on their network of local and regional purveyors, working with restaurateurs and real estate developers to create communities that foster long-lasting, purposeful relationships. SpringHouse Restaurant at the Russell Crossroads at Lake Martin is one example of this ideal.

“It’s about how you create community events in and around food that bring people together for stimulating conversation for getting to know one another,” he said. “This idea of kinship, I think is really important.”

Hastings’ eagerness to improve his community through the power of food may lead him to tackle some interesting projects in Mountain Brook, things like building edible schoolyards and gardens? It turns out the only thing stopping him is just being formally asked to help.

“I am ready to go, you just tell me when,” he said enthusiastically. “We can leverage the things available to us here and make a real difference. And I could do it all on a budget.”

The marketing power a James Beard-award-winning chef could generate by working with local schools to create gardens and help plan lunch menus has the potential to create an amazing legacy, both for Mountain Brook and the Hastings family.

“One of the things that we chose from the beginning of this restaurant is until our children go off to college we wanted to have a restaurant that was open five days a week, dinner only,” he said. “One that allowed Idie and me to be present in our boys’ lives – to where if it was a scout meeting or coaching baseball or teaching them to fly-fish — we could participate. We can be home in 10 minutes.”

Both of Hastings’ sons, Zeb and Vincent, attended school in Mountain Brook but opted to finish their high school years at a boarding school in Connecticut. When it came time to choose a place for college though, they were both drawn back to the South. Hastings said the short time away was crucial in their development.

“Both Zeb and Vincent learned that they missed their Southern identity. They learned that being Southern is very important to them. They missed their friends.”

Zeb is now a junior at the University of Alabama, and Vincent is a freshman. Speaking of which, when asked if either son will follow in his father’s footsteps to join the culinary ranks, Hastings is quick with a smile and a wry laugh.

“Zeb and Vincent are not drawn to the restaurant business. They are way too smart for that,” he said. “They love great food and they are knowledgeable on food. (Idie and I) can roll those kids up in Le Bernardin or the best barbecue place on the planet, and they recognize both as equally valuable and delicious.”

Christiana Roussel lives in Crestline and enjoys all things food-related. Follow her culinary musings on line at ChristianasKitchen. com or on Facebook or Twitter (Christiana40).