In another time and place, Frank Stitt might have been a famous explorer, decorated by a monarch, studied by schoolchildren, perhaps even immortalized in a statue. But Stitt was born in the small northern Alabama town of Cullman in 1954, and instead of conquering new lands, he channeled his wanderlust and curiosity about the world into food.
Stitt's restlessness became fully evident in the 1970s, when, just months before graduation, he left Berkley—where he was studying philosophy—bound for Europe. Alice Waters, who had let Stitt help out in the Chez Panisse kitchen, wrote him a letter of introduction to cookbook author Richard Olney, and Stitt spent the next several years working in Olney's garden in the south of France, learning about great vintages from Olney's wine cellar, and assisting at vineyards in Provence and Burgundy. The local cooking—the way it springs straight from the fields, its ripe flavors, its simplicity, its balance—resonated with him, even though it was based on arugula and morels rather than the okra and butter beans he had grown up with. "My family on all sides are southerners," Stitt explains. "There's an almost mystical love of the land that all true southerners have."
When he returned to Alabama in 1980, Stitt was struck by the uniqueness of the southern ingredients he had known and loved from childhood meals at his grandmother's house. The techniques he had absorbed in his decade abroad, and the tastes and textures he'd experienced along the way, combined with this new appreciation to create a seamless style of cooking. "There's an aesthetic framework that developed for me during my time at Chez Panisse and while I was working with Richard Olney," says Stitt. "It's a reverence for simplicity and authenticity."
Stitt opened Highlands Bar and Grill in Birmingham in 1982, and though outsiders initially wondered how grits seasoned with fresh thyme would go over, he made it easy for them to support his efforts. There's nothing precious about his cooking and nothing pretentious about his restaurant. Sure, the roast quail has foie gras in the stuffing, but its bourbon jus is the essence of down-home.
"We try not to use too many ingredients," says Stitt. "We abhor fusion; we want to have just a few harmonies that are in balance." Stitt may not have earned his college degree, but he has formulated a food philosophy that fits perfectly in the Deep South as in the south of France.