After a year in which his restaurant sat empty for more than six months because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chris Hastings, the chef and co-owner of Birmingham’s Hot and Hot Fish Club, says he, his staff and his guests can almost taste a return to normalcy.
And appropriately enough, today, as he has done every May since he and his wife, Idie, opened their restaurant in 1995, Hastings welcomes back their signature Hot and Hot Tomato Salad to the menu.
“We feel very good and very bullish about the remainder of the year moving forward,” Hastings says. “So, the tomato salad, in my mind, . . . just kind of adds to that hopefulness of where we are as an industry and as a city and a state and a nation.
“I’m just happy to be doing what we do again in a normal kind of way -- almost normal, very, very close to normal.”
To be clear, Hastings hasn’t let down his guard regarding COVID-19. Seating at his restaurant is limited to 50 percent capacity, with a proper distance between tables, and the restaurant staff continues to wear masks.
He’s just finally starting to see an end to the “new” normal that was 2020 and a return to the old normal of before.
And what better way to usher in a return to normalcy than the Hot and Hot Tomato Salad?