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.”

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.