An inside look at one of Birmingham's most popular restaurants

Frank Stitt rhapsodizes about the fresh Italian porcini mushrooms on tonight's menu in Bottega's dining room.

"The porcini is meaty, luscious, earthy," the restaurant's owner and executive chef enthuses during a pre-service meeting. "It is umami."

Stitt holds one up for the waiters, who are dressed alike in black vests and long white aprons. "Porcini means 'little pig.' You can see why. They're plump and chubby."

Availability is brief, he adds. "If your guests haven't had fresh porcini, you should urge them to try them."

Bottega, the middle child in Stitt's restaurant family, celebrates its 30th anniversary this month. But in that time, Stitt has not lost a grain of zeal for sharing its bounty.

Whether praising the "personality" of salad greens from Terra Preta Farm, or raving about how tiny Fairy Tale eggplants from Belle Meadow cook so "pillowy soft," it's obvious, Stitt gets giddy about great ingredients.

"I need to spread the gospel," he says. "I love to turn people on to flavors that are sensual and delicious."

Stitt opened the Italian-influenced Bottega six years after founding his flagship restaurant, Highlands Bar and Grill. Both have profoundly affected Birmingham. Many local restaurant owners today trained at one or both.

While Highlands gets the national press and accolades, including this year's prestigious Outstanding Restaurant award from the James Beard Foundation, Bottega seems to operate in its shadow, despite being every bit its equal.

Those desserts that earned Dolester Miles this year's Beard award for national Outstanding Pastry Chef? She and her crew make them at Bottega.

Over two and a half months this summer, Birmingham magazine gained unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to Bottega, observing how its artists interweave cooking and service.

This article explores a day in the life of the restaurant and how Stitt, along with his partner and wife, Pardis, sustain one of the greatest establishments in a nationally recognized restaurant city.

CULINARY WORKSHOP
In Italy, a bottega is a workshop where artists recreate works by their mentor. Bottega is Stitt's workshop for Italian cuisine.

Stitt first became interested in Italian food during visits to Italy in his early 20s, where he watched produce vendors set up and butchers hone their skills. After opening Highlands at age 28, Stitt traveled throughout Italy and fell hard for its regional cooking and wines.

The trip inspired a desire to explore Italian cuisine in Birmingham, but he didn't want to distort Highlands' country French-inspired Southern menu by adding pastas and carpaccio to it. The result was Bottega.

Stitt kept noticing Bottega Favorita, an ornate stone edifice built in 1926 on a high point along Highland Avenue. The architecture buff admired the Beaux-Arts design, with columns and arches, high ceilings and patio space.

"So, I fall in love with the building just as I fall in love with Italian food," Stitt says, recounting the story of his restaurant's beginnings.

On Oct. 27, 1988, Stitt opened Bottega's formal dining room, with white-cloth tables under imported chandeliers, and a grand staircase leading to a mezzanine.
Expanding two years later into adjoining space, Stitt added a cafe with a menu built mainly around pizzas and dishes roasted in a wood-burning oven.

The successful pairing--a casual yet top-quality concept next to a more formal restaurant--provided a blueprint when Frank and Pardis opened their third restaurant, the bistro Chez Fonfon next to Highlands in 2000.

Bottega's dining room and cafe have different kitchens. Otherwise, they mostly overlap. Patrons can order off either menu. Staff often works on both sides. Waiters undergo the same rigorous training. Raw ingredients come from the same farmers, meat suppliers, cheesemakers, and importers, but take different spins depending on the side.

"We have a bit more lobster in the dining room," Stitt says. "It has splurges like veal chops and truffles that are too expensive for the cafe."

Unlike the dining room, the cafe is open all day and doesn't take reservations. "You may wait a few minutes," Stitt says. "But it's not a bad place to wait."

MORNING GLORY
Dolester Miles moves a flat of farm eggs to a work station in Bottega's spacious main kitchen early in the morning.

She starts cracking, separating the yellow-orange yolks before combining them with white sugar in a large mixer. In go flour, buttermilk, white wine, and Spanish sherry for Frank's Favorite Cake.

The lush dessert is technically named Zabaglione Meringue for its core components. That name doesn't sell quite as well, though.

"You'd be surprised how well the same item sells just by changing the name," Miles says, chuckling.

Miss Dol, as she's known, and her four-person team arrive at 5:30 a.m. Over the next eight hours they bake and frost various cakes. They prepare lemon tarts, sorbets, and other desserts. They make pizza dough and the egg-and-cheese base for parmesan souffle.

One rolls dough balls simultaneously with each hand for hamburger buns at the cafe and Chez Fonfon. Another prepares Bottega's focaccia, topping dough with olive oil and salt before baking.

An early start suits Miles. "We have first choice of everything," she says. "It's cooler and quiet. I wish I could get in even earlier."

Miles has been with Stitt all along. She started as Highlands' first garde manger, making salads and starters. Transferring to Bottega as pastry chef, Miles also has worked there since day one.

Making desserts evokes pleasant memories from Miles' childhood in Bessemer: holiday baking with her mother and aunt, and playfully sparring with siblings over spatulas.

Miss Dol loves creating happiness. "Dessert is the last thing you eat and hopefully the first thing you remember," she says.

Self-taught, she passes her skills to a new generation, most of whom weren't born when Bottega opened. But even after three-plus decades and a Beard award, she has no plan to retire.

"Really," she says, "I'm just getting started."

HEATING UP
By 8 a.m., food preparation is well underway in the main kitchen. Bottega's prep-master, Jeff Mincey, cuts vegetables and butchers meats for the cafe. He makes marinara and other sauces, soup, and braises. He prepares most of the cafe's beloved vegetable plate, a summertime Wednesday special.

Nearby, Miles gently scores her signature Coconut Pecan Cake with a long knife, indicating 16 portions. A pastry chef in an adjoining room applies thick swooshes of meringue on lemon tarts.

More than a dozen cooks concentrate on their tasks. Aside from the dish washer rattling pans, the metallic smack as a cafe cook flattens chicken breasts on a stainless-steel table provides one of few other sounds.

But the smells!

Toasted marshmallow from torched meringue. Perfume from mint in simmering simple syrup. The olfactory blast when raw garlic hits hot olive oil. Aromas linger after each tray of bread and every cake come out of the oven.

"Can you smell the herbs?" a server asks as a trainee stirs a vat of olive oil infused with garlic, coriander, chives, bay leaf, and other aromatics.

John "Johnny" Rolen, Bottega's chef de cuisine, arrives and quickly checks in with Mincey, floor managers, and cafe line cooks. He looks through the walk-in cooler for deliveries, assessing what remains from yesterday.

In the kitchen, Stitt samples lettuce freshly delivered by Terra Preta Farm, run by former Bottega waiter Michael Dean. The chef extols the benefits of Dean's approach to soil management, one of Stitt's passions.

"You can taste it," he says, eyes gleaming. "It's got more character--more life."

FARMERS, FISHERS, FAMILY
A printout in Bottega's kitchen lists local farms that supply Stitt's restaurants. It includes the farmers' names, their crops, and delivery days.

What they and other vendors bring daily through Bottega's back door winds up on that night's dining-room menu.

"That fuels our creativity," says Rolen, who text messages to stay in touch with farmers and coordinates orders with his counterparts at Highlands and Fonfon.
Deliveries stream in throughout the morning. Belle Meadow's Andrew Kesterson brings heirloom tomatoes. Perry County's Bois d'Arc Farm has organic green onions, cherry tomatoes, and okra.

Evans Meats and Seafood drops off ribeye, tenderloin, and snapper. From the Gulf of Mexico, Greg Abrams trucks in whole cobia and tuna loin.

One supplier is Paradise Farm, the Stitts' 70-acre spread in Shelby County where they also keep polo horses. Stitt's son, Weston, helps grow herbs, lettuces, favas, asparagus, tomatoes, and other produce on a three-acre plot.

Its hens supplement the 1,100 eggs that Bottega uses weekly for desserts, pasta dough, souffle, and dishes like Tuscan Egg Salad.

Restaurant employees pitch in at Paradise. Planting, weeding, and harvesting strengthen bonds to the food they cook and serve, Pardis says.

Abrams, who has supplied Stitt's restaurants for decades, contacts Rolen before fish even hit the dock. "He'll call and say he's got a grouper boat coming in," Rolen says, "or 'We don't have as much grouper as expected, but we have all the triggerfish you need.'"

Stitt built and nurtured a supply network from scratch because most ingredients Bottega needs were not available here in the late 1980s.

He started by foraging for the best producers at the Alabama Farmers Market on Finley Avenue. When Dean desired to farm, Stitt helped him start Terra Preta.
The chef connects with legacy growers like Trent Boyd of Harvest Farms, a fourth-generation farmer, and new-generation farmers like David Snow of Snow's Bend.

"They're vegetable whisperers," Stitt says.

Every January, Stitt meets farmers to specify vegetables his restaurants need for the coming year. Accompaniments on the plate are as important to Stitt as the meat.

SPRINKLING "FAIRY DUST"
Pardis Stitt may be the biggest reason Bottega and its siblings maintain excellence year after year, decade upon decade.

"She is the charming one who sprinkles the fairy dust and makes everyone feel they are the center of attention," her husband says.

Pardis also cracks the whip, making sure employees strictly follow Bottega's standards and training at every shift and with every table.

Chef Stitt says he's no exception. "She's really tough on me about dishes. She's always saying, 'What is the wow factor, Frank?' Usually she has a point."

But Pardis is mama to a staff that the Stitts consider family. While talking about former employees now running restaurants she calls them "our children."

The oldest of three daughters to a dentist and an educator--both born in Iran--Pardis Sooudi grew up in Birmingham with feet planted in two worlds.

She spoke Farsi before learning English. Her mother insisted her daughters recite Persian poems that she taught students back home.

But Pardis also danced jazz, tap, and ballet. She joined the Rebelette squad at Vestavia Hills High School. She worked at stylish clothing stores.

Young Pardis' future started to coalesce when she began working as a hostess at the former Bombay Cafe.

Off duty, she frequented Bottega's dining room. Its manager offered her a job, and in a few months she was promoted to manager. She immediately began developing systems and standards for front-of-house staff.

Pardis, who married Frank in 1995, doesn't seek the limelight. "I'm really shy," she confides. "People don't know that because I'm out front. But I really have to work at it."

But the limelight finds Pardis. Patrons seek her attention whenever she glides through the dining room in a flowing dress and heels. She stops to converse. She hugs people at the door.

In between, the perfectionist adjusts place settings, removes a just-emptied wine glass, or ducks around the corner to tutor a trainee.

Shyness aside, Pardis' hospitality is instinctive. She attributes that to her heritage and upbringing. Her mom, for example, always cooks for a crowd in case one shows up.

"There always was a party in our house, or we were going to somebody's party in the Iranian community here," she says. "We would have 20-30 people gathering for food and drink, conversation, and laughter."

Much of Pardis' day is quite unglamorous.

Dressed casually in the cramped upstairs office at Bottega, she handles thousands of tasks to keep multiple restaurants running--overseeing website improvements, resolving issues with Bottega's sound system, monitoring how trainees progress, arranging replacement of Fonfon's awnings.

She sweats special-event details, including menus. "Frank, they requested mac-and-cheese as a vegetable," she says as her husband stands nearby. "Are you OK with that?"

He looks stunned but says nothing, provoking a laugh from Pardis. Someone notes treating the cheesy pasta bake as a vegetable is quintessentially Southern.
Raised in Cullman County near his mother's family farm, Stitt firmly shakes his head. "That is not what I grew up with."

Pardis moves on to valet issues and works with the office manager to resolve a payroll snafu. Seeds for the next planting at Paradise Farm need to be ordered.
She telephones a new linen supplier. "Let's stay in touch," she says, "so we can get the first orders right."

CAFE LUNCH 
Friday's cafe lunch rush hits early. People start arriving before the 11 a.m. opening. Tables and the bar soon fill. Some eat quickly. Others linger over wine.
Cooks are in overdrive in the small open kitchen that's visible to most tables. They'll feed some 400 people before closing time.

Paco LaTorre shuffles pizzas in the oven, which hits 750 degrees near the flaming hickory logs in the rear. He slides a pasta bake closer to the front, a "cooler" 500 degrees.

"Paco works oven day and night," chef de cuisine Rolen says. "He's tough."
The kitchen's four cooks silently coordinate. When Antonio Artega flips a chicken on the grill, Carola Basilo makes salad for Chicken Paillard. She watches the oven, timing her end of a half-pizza and small-salad combo that is served exclusively at the bar.

"Fire Table 7," a waiter calls, indicating cooks should start that table's entrees because customers are nearly done with starters.

A waiter at the server station slices Peach Upside-down Cake for her table's dessert. In the dining room, another says hello to regulars on the way to his tables across the room.

David Garcia removes a hot skillet from the oven. In go marinara and feta cheese. He tosses it, plates it, and tops it with shredded basil. He adds focaccia and tries pita--a new touch for the classic Baked Feta dish.

"I like that," says manager Kim Thomas, smiling in affirmation as she checks finished dishes and coordinates with waiters.

Frank or Pardis appear periodically, watching the kitchen and floor. They also check for diners looking uncomfortable, a sign they need service.

EARNING THE VEST
Service standards created by Pardis and managers over the years codify how waiters act, from posture to presentation.

Customers are "guests." If a guest says thank you, thank them back. If anything anywhere is even slightly out of place, fix it.

Before and after service, waiters must wipe all wood in their sections and ensure each chair and banquette is spotless. They even scrape seams with cotton swabs.
No perfume or cologne. No exposed jewelry or anything jangling in pockets that could distract guests. Be in full uniform before evening staff meeting. To earn the black waiter's vest, prospects train for up to six weeks and must pass an extensive written test.

They start as Waiter Assistants (their training manual is the "WA Survival Guide"), shadowing vested servers.

They learn to set a formal table, as well as the official methods to carry, place, and pick up plates. They're shown how to make espresso; prepare coffee and tea service; carry and open wine bottles; and wrap water pitchers so condensation doesn't drip.

They put in kitchen shifts, learning how everything is prepared and watching servers interact with cooks. Oral quiz topics for budding waiters include how to make remoulade, what's in the spice rub for house-cured pancetta, and who supplies the pork.

"It reinforces the fact we're serious," Pardis says. "They have a much greater appreciation of everyone's role and why they are important."

The prospect returns to tables for several shifts, helping an experienced waiter and learning the point-of-sale system. Bar shifts teach wine pairings and cocktail-making. Back on the floor, the trainee gradually picks up more responsibilities.
Managers must sign off on each step before the employee is awarded a waiter's vest.

This depth of training presages long-term commitment. "We want them to fully share our excitement about learning and creating a great restaurant," Chef Stitt says. "That takes hold after you're here three, four, five years."

Several staffers have a decade or more here. Leaders like Thomas leave briefly and return. Rolen, hired in 1998 and put in charge of the kitchens in 2001, left orbit briefly for Whole Foods and a saner schedule for his children, now ages 16 and 11.

Bottega's gravitational pull eventually re-snagged Rolen, who returned in 2016. "I missed the restaurant family," he says. "Working for Frank is a growing experience. Every day I learn something new."

BORN TO RUN
A detail-oriented leader and gifted chef, Rolen practically was born to run Bottega's kitchens.

His great-grandfather, an Italian immigrant, had a farm in Birmingham's West End from which he sold his ricotta and mozzarella cheeses dried in handwoven reed baskets. A Sicilian grandmother schooled Rolen in her homeland's rustic cooking.

Rolen revels in pasta-making. "I like finding the perfect ratio between silky, beautiful egg yolk and flour, and pushing it to the limit," he says. "Pasta reflects the maker. It shows who you are."

Rolen's first Bottega encounter was on a high-school prom date. "I had a nice steak," he recalls. "My girlfriend had Capellini Bottega, my first time seeing the pasta pomodoro we still do today."

He began working at the cafe, but left a year later to study art history--and the pasta arts--in Italy. Upon return, Rolen rejoined Bottega's kitchen. When the chef de cuisine position opened, he pounced on the top kitchen spot.

Seventeen years later, Rolen and Stitt seem telepathically connected. Rolen has Stitt's total trust. "Sure, I tweak some things," Stitt says. "I encourage using certain ingredients. But he is the leader."

Rolen maintains menus dating back some 20 years. "When someone asks for something they ate years before, you've got to be able to recreate it," he explains.
On Mondays, one of two days Bottega is closed, Rolen supervises a deep clean of its bars and kitchens. Periodically, he throws a log into the cafe oven, which never is allowed to go cold.

BACKWARD COUNTING
Daily menu and prep planning for the dining room is a form of reverse engineering.

It starts with a head count. Rolen scans reservations and reads details about a private party. He checks numbers from both previous weeks and this time last year to divine trends.

Rolen's analysis is demand and supply. But he can only make educated guesses. Sometimes everyone seemingly orders the same thing. With snapper an option for tonight's 25-person party, will 15 portions be enough?

The reservation list, broken into quarter-hour increments, also indicates tonight's ebb and flow. Rolen checks events around town: Concerts by bands like the Eagles likely means a pre-show rush. A symphony performance indicates a late walk-in crowd.

Tonight's rush will arrive between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., when the mezzanine private party starts and nearly four-dozen others have reservations, including a table for nine. That doesn't include walk-in guests.

The kitchen will be prepared.

AFTERNOON TRANSITION
"Want me to get on that pompano?" Rolen asks grill cook John Dunlap, who busily butchers beef about three hours before dining-room service.

The kitchen night shift starts arriving around noon. Kyle Goldstein, who is in charge of the sets (kitchen term for accompaniments to the entree), peels asparagus, slices bulb onions, and pre-cooks. Dunlap cuts hanger steaks. Rolen filets fish.

Night-side servers trickle in through the back door and start their routines. A front-of-house trainee observes in the kitchen. He rattles off ingredients when Mincey asks what's in the house marinara: "Mirepoix, tomato, garlic, shallots, bay leaf, thyme, Parmesan rind."

Managers hold pre-service meetings with waiters and bartenders at 4:30 p.m. "Y'all ready?" Rolen asks, approaching the gathering at the dining room bar.
"We're flipping on the mains from last night. Pompano gets risi e bisi (rice and peas). Seared scallops get the lentil set."

Blueberry semifreddo replaces apple tart, Rolen tells waiters. "Halibut is now off the menu, but we have four left. Risi e bisi is the preferred set, but either fish set will work. We have 20 Parmesan souffle and 14 lamb porterhouse."

Rolen dashes to join the cafe meeting. Manager Gray Maddox asks a server how tonight's special, braised duck, is made. "Beautiful," the manager says after the recitation. He adds a wine recommendation. "It goes great with Barbera."

As the dining room opens, Rolen checks kitchen work stations. He pulls out pea
tendrils, chive blossoms, and other garnishes to add to dishes.

Minutes later, a machine spits out the first guest ticket.

WRONG NARRATIVE?
The night's dining room menu is typically mouthwatering. Entrees include fat diver scallops, Pennsylvania lamb, ruby-red Canadian veal, and pork from fabled Alabama purveyor Henry Fudge.

The risotto appetizer features just-delivered crawfish. Tuscan Egg Salad, its greens wilted by soft-scrambled farm egg, includes house-cured pancetta and fried oysters.

Tuna belly, pounded thin, will be served carpaccio-style with dressing that includes high-end citrus vinegar from Italy. The appetizer is finished with crushed Marcona almonds, bright-green baby mint from Paradise Farm, and estate-grown Sicilian olive oil.

"We get the best of everything at Bottega," Rolen says.

So why does Highlands get all the national love, while Bottega remains Birmingham's secret?

The dichotomy puzzles Pardis. It's bothersome, but to a degree understandable to
Chef Stitt.

"I think the food and experience at Bottega is equal to Highlands," he says. "The
commitment to quality and excellence, I assure, is equal."

But the national narrative about Stitt always goes like this: Native son leaves the Deep South, discovers the world, and returns to Alabama to reinvent and elevate Southern cuisine.

Alabama food with French influences is a novelty in New York City, home to the Beard Foundation and most national media writing about Stitt. "Highlands has every box checked," he says.

Italian restaurants in the Big Apple are ubiquitous. "An Italian restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama," Stitt says, "is not the story they needed or wanted."
Rolen has no heartburn. Bottega gets Frank's and Pardis' attention daily, he says. "That's ultimately what matters to me."

He mentions a Kansas City cook who recently applied after hearing how Bottega's kitchens run. "It means we're treating people well," he says. "We're tough. We're demanding. We have high standards. But people seeking excellence in themselves, that's what they want."

CONDUCTOR, EDUCATOR
Rolen has a saying: Even when Frank Stitt is not in the kitchen, his spirit is there. His standards and aesthetic are ever-present.

Stitt likens his role to a conductor. His staff is the orchestra. "I say 'This is what we'll play and how we'll play it.' They have to pull it off."

He has a legendary love for food, wine, and history, and for sharing how they all intersect. He talks about the joyous look on a young waiter's face upon trying Bottega's roasted red pepper, "a direct descendent of an old Sicilian dish," for the first time that morning.

"Then he tried it with our new rose and said, 'This is one of the greatest things I ever tasted,'" Stitt says. "It's too easy to forget how life altering something like that can be."

Ever the educator, Stitt detours while crossing the kitchen and tells a prep cook to slice lemons thinner so guests don't get a mouthful of rind. Later he warns a line cook about preparing the baby carrots and tiny eggplant too early. "Closer to serving time would be better so they don't dry out," he says.

Old-school chefs have a reputation for pitching fits and screaming. Not Stitt. "It's got to be something outrageously stupid for him to yell," says prep-master Mincey, a 20-year veteran. "I've seen him do it maybe once or twice."

Extremely well-versed in wine, Stitt regularly visits vintners and takes pride in finding unsung wines. The chef has introduced Birmingham to dry Austrian Rieslings, grower-produced sparkling wines, and cru Beaujolais. They now sell all over town.

That could be one of his restaurants' most lasting impacts, Stitt says. "I have an opportunity to influence people's tastes and understanding of wines that need to be considered."

ALL IN A DAY'S WORK
The main kitchen hits a peak around 8 p.m. At least 50 people's orders are pending, progressing from appetizer to entree to dessert. Nearly two-dozen more make up the private party.

Fish fills a griddle. A cook sears scallops and seasons meat. Another plates their sets. And a third boils pastas on an induction burner, while shaking pans with sauces and risotto on the adjacent stove.

Every available server runs house salads upstairs to the party. Appetizers and salads flow to the dining room from two garde mangers. The table for nine orders doubles of everything the duo makes.

Tickets constantly emit from two printers, one for line cooks, the other for garde manger and desserts.

Rolen reads a couple's ticket and calls out, "Prefire pork. Prefire pork." Next ticket is a hanger steak, no appetizer. "Walk-in. Fire hanger mid-rare."

He occasionally uses the phrase "all day" when summarizing all orders so nothing is overlooked. "Five hangers all day, one well-done. Three pompano all day."

Rolen watches everything. Occasionally he tells cooks to adjust portions or presentation. "Break up those tomatoes," he tells one, mid-dinner rush. "See that big chunk?"

He autopsies the few plates abandoned half-eaten. "She said she didn't look cute eating it," a waiter explains about an unfinished salad. "Too much frisee," Rolen concludes.

"Fire the party," another waiter calls. Grill and stoves again fill with food.

As expediter, Rolen wipes and garnishes every plate. "These go to one and two," he says, indicating assigned seat numbers so waiters automatically deliver what each diner orders. "Seat three ordered two entrees," he tells a manager pitching in. "Four is no chilies."

Bottega's kitchen leader hates when plates sit, even for seconds. "Runner, please," he calls if no waiter is nearby. Any further delay, Rolen's body stiffens and his voice is more emphatic. "I need hands."

The last plates go out after 10 p.m. The main kitchen has fed some 120 people. It's time to break down and clean up.

"Good job fellas," Rolen says.

The cooks reply in unison. "Thank you, Chef."

Tomorrow, they'll do it all again.

Details
Bottega Restaurant | 2240 Highland Ave. s. | 205.939.1000 | bottegarestaurant.com

This story appears in Birmingham magazine's October 2018 issue. Subscribe today!