Chris and Idie Hastings

Chris and Idie Hastings are chef and co-owners of Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham, Alabama.  Housed in an historic building on Birmingham’s south side, the award-winning restaurant has earned a reputation for serving some of the most fresh and refined dishes in the region.

Chris 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 and Grill. Later, he also helped to open Stitt’s second restaurant in Birmingham, Bottega. In 1989, the couple moved to the Bay Area where Chris worked under Bradley Ogden to open the Lark Creek Inn in Larkspur, California. While on the west coast, Idie enrolled in the California Culinary Academy and could be found in the esteemed kitchens of Jeremiah Towers’ Stars Café, Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio and at Patisserie Francaise. In 1995, the Hastings opened the Hot and Hot Fish Club, which was one of the first farm to table restaurants east of the Mississippi.

In 1998, they were recognized with the Robert Mondavi Culinary Award of Excellence and since then have been extensively featured in the media, most notably in The New York Times, USA Today, Garden & Gun, Southern Living, Food Arts and Food and Wine. Chris was honored with the James Beard Best Chef: South award in 2012. Idie has also garnered wide acclaim, notably when Birmingham Business Journal named her to their list of the Top 10 Birmingham Women in 2003.  In her free time, she dedicates her energy to the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and is committed to animal welfare causes, including Hand in Paw, an animal-assisted therapy group.

Chris and Idie have also expanded their geographical, if not culinary, boundaries adding the title Restaurant Consultants to their growing list of roles and have helped many operations find success.

The Hastings actively participate in charity events with the James Beard Foundation and have been guest chefs and speakers at Music to Your Mouth Event at Palmetto Bluff, the Charleston Wine+Food Festival, and the Southern Foodways Alliance. Chris also serves as an advocate for the Alabama Seafood Commission and Director of the Bocuse d’Or USA Foundations Culinary Council.  Idie and Chris continue to call Birmingham home with their two sons, Zeb and Vincent.

Molly Hastings

Manager of Operations

As a student at The University of Alabama, Molly Morring envisioned working in the medical field, perhaps as a physician’s assistant. Then, in her sophomore year, she went to a party and ended up talking for hours with a boy named Zeb Hastings. Within weeks, the two were joined at the hip.

“Zeb was completely different from the other guys on campus,” recalls Molly. “He didn’t have a single social media account, and to this day, he carries around an iPhone 4. If he could live in a cave, he would. He would take me to the best restaurants in Tuscaloosa, and we would sit there and he would critique the dish for me, breaking it down and analyzing it. I had never experienced anything like that.”

In 2012, Zeb took Molly to the viewing party when his dad, Hot and Hot Fish Club executive chef and owner Chris Hastings beat celebrity chef Bobby Flay on Food Network’s “Iron Chef America.” Recalls Molly: “Over time, I had a chance to get to meet his family and learn about their successful Birmingham restaurant business.”

In 2014, upon graduation and with a fresh outlook towards her future, Molly took Zeb’s mother Idie Hastings up on her offer to move to Birmingham and fill in as a hostess at Hot and Hot Fish Club until she found a job in her field.

Discovering she had a true talent and love for hospitality, Molly quickly moved from hosting to an office position, ultimately making her way to operations where she works alongside chef Hastings.

Still, Molly didn’t want to wonder “what if” about the career she had gone to school for. She took a job in the medical field, and just over a year later, she made a decision. “Patient care is just not in my realm,” says Molly. “So often, there are just no positive outcomes. But in hospitality, I had more control. I could change the dynamic of a situation, make something right immediately and make someone happy.”

Between career decisions, one night after a sushi dinner with Zeb, Molly returned home to discover candles, flowers and something else waiting for her. “I believe Zeb’s exact words were, ‘Are you going to put that damn ring on or what?’” Molly recalls, laughing. The couple married in 2018.

As she continues her education at Hot and Hot, Molly is learning from the best — Chris and Idie Hastings themselves. “Each night, chef and Idie walk through the dining room, and they go up to each table, knowing each regular and each new face. It’s about the commitment to creating the best guest experience every night.”

Chris and Idie also are teaching Molly and Zeb, both self-described introverts, to be more outgoing as they learn the restaurant trade. “If there’s something wrong at a table, it’s your job to go and figure it out and make it right,” says Molly. “It’s been a process for me but it’s a skill that I’m developing, thanks to Idie’s guidance.”

Molly says she’s also learning the art of creating return guests as well. “Last weekend, we had a couple in from Germany,” she says. “They’re moving here to work at the Mercedes plant. Later, they left a review online saying they couldn’t wait to come back. When you can combine a quality seasonal menu in a relaxed environment and people leave here in the best possible mood, they’re willing to drive 45 minutes each way to have that experience again.”

When not working, Molly and Zeb enjoy relaxing with their four rescue dogs Ophelia, Charlie, Beans and Reba, binge-watching “Mindhunter” or “Parks and Rec” or grilling and having a crawfish boil in the backyard for friends.

Zeb Hastings

Sous Chef

The oldest son of Hot and Hot Fish Club owners Chris and Idie Hastings, Zeb Hastings has literally grown up in Birmingham’s restaurant industry. However, that doesn’t mean the 2014 University of Alabama graduate originally wanted to join the family business. After graduation, Zeb initially tried his hand in the coffee roasting business and later as a high-end flooring sales rep, but something kept calling him home. 

“On breaks from school, my friends would go home, and their parents had these regular nine-to-five jobs,” recalls Zeb. “When I came home, I got to watch my dad break down a 200-pound pig, thinking it was awesome. My parents didn’t have ordinary jobs. I looked at what they were doing and realized how meaningful it was. It’s how I wanted to feel at work.”

But as owner-operators of Hot and Hot Fish Club and OvenBird, two of Birmingham’s most successful restaurants, there were no cushy corner offices in which to land, so Zeb learned the business from the ground floor up, starting with an apprenticeship at OvenBird. “I got tossed into the fire pretty quickly!” recalls Zeb. He had to figure out food and labor costs, how to manage hours, staffing and the human resources part of the job, all while training as a line cook.

“I also needed to learn the stories behind the local products and ingredients on our menus,” says Zeb. “I needed to learn the backstory of Henry Fudge and about the pigs he raises on his Fudge Family Farms in northern Alabama. We’ve been serving their pork in-house for years. Diners want that information. It makes the meal and the dining experience with us completely unique. It all goes back to guest service.”

It helps that Zeb’s wife Molly Hastings has joined him in the family business as part of Hot and Hot’s second generation of owner-operators. The pair met at a party while sophomores at The University of Alabama, and just a few weeks later, they were joined at the hip. They married in 2018. “One huge thing I’ve learned from watching my parents work together throughout my life is that there’s a formula to it,” says Zeb. “It’s about picking up where the other leaves off with customer service and also about carving out time for yourselves to just be husband and wife together at home, leave the restaurant at the restaurant and just decompress together.”

For Zeb, the one other critical key to success for working with your spouse: “I trust Molly when she tells me something. She’s pretty much right all the time. Knowing that and learning to listen to her and compromise on things together is what we shoot for every day.”

As he continues to learn the tools of the trade, Zeb says he realizes there’s always more to learn, especially in the kitchen. “For me, it’s about being consistent every single day in the kitchen, learning how to change up a menu according to the season, all while running the business like a well-oiled machine.”

Now that he’s a part of the family business and its future in Birmingham, Zeb understands why his parents have dedicated 25 years of their lives to the hospitality industry. 

“You get to see the purpose behind why you’re doing something each day,” says Zeb. “You get to see the results of your hard work every time a dish gets brought out to a table and you can watch a guest’s facial expressions change. It’s an amazing feeling.”

When he’s not in the kitchen or crunching numbers, Zeb likes to spend time at the lake with Molly and their four rescue dogs, Ophelia, Charlie, Beans and Reba. He also loves fly fishing, hunting turkeys and going on dove shoots along with the cleaning and cooking of his bounty that soon follows.