Birmingham’s bounty of celebrated chefs has helped build a strong eat-local ethos, inspiring one of the state’s premier creameries to collaborate with Alabama food figures to create limited-time treats through the winter in what it calls the Local Chef Series.
Geri-Martha O’Hara (CJ Shaver/Contributed)
Big Spoon Creamery is now offering the first flavor, Sage & Cornbread, which was created with Columbiana private chef and media personality Jonathan Harrison. The one-month-only special is available at Big Spoon’s three shops, in Birmingham, Homewood, and Huntsville.
The series is a fun way to explore new ideas and showcase the unique tastes created by the area’s award-winning restaurants and chefs, says Ryan O’Hara, who founded Big Spoon in 2014 with his wife, Geri-Martha, the company’s ice cream guru.
“Jonathan’s flavor for November came about out of a shared love for incredibly fresh seasonal flavors and ingredients and an admiration for traditional Southern food,” he says. “We combined the two, and Sage & Cornbread was born.”
Harrison strives to “take the South to the world and bring the world to the South” through cooking, food, social media, and by practicing radical empathy, according to his website.
Each month, Big Spoon will feature a different local chef, who also will host a pop-up event at the creamery’s flagship store in Birmingham’s Avondale neighborhood. Harrison, who competed on the television cooking show Next Level Chef two years ago, will serve Friendsgiving snacks at his event on November 8.
The menu includes his Chorizo Dressing Arancini, house-made Cheeseball, and Country Ham Deviled Eggs, as well as the ice cream. The event is set for 5 p.m.-7 p.m. and tickets are $25.
Flavors and pop-up dates for the remaining chefs will be announced later via Big Spoon’s social media. The lineup includes:
- December — Ryan Westover, co-founder of Pizza Grace in Birmingham, a 2023 semifinalist for a coveted Best New Restaurant national award from the James Beard Foundation.
- January – Jesus Mendez, a Birmingham restaurateur whose latest partnerships include Salud and Adios.
- February – Roscoe Hall, a Magic City chef and artist with extensive experience in Birmingham’s food scene.
- March – Wil Drake, who founded Hero in 2016, and now has locations in Homewood, Birmingham, Hoover, and Trussville as well as stores in Georgia and Tennessee.
Ryan O’Hara (CJ Shaver/Contributed)
The O’Haras introduced the Local Chef Series last year to draw more interest during an otherwise slow period for ice cream shops amid winter’s chill. The 2023-2024 lineup featured Frank and Pardis Stitt (Bottega, Chez Fonfon), Rob McDaniel (Helen), John Rolen (Slim’s), Adam Evans (Automatic Seafood & Oysters), and Neville Baay (El Barrio).
“We spent a great deal of time considering a number of worthy candidates, and we ultimately settled on this list because they have three things in common,” Ryan said. “They are friends who we have great relationships with, each is doing really interesting and unique work, and we have immense respect for each of them,” Ryan says.
Geri-Martha and Ryan met while working at Bottega, where she was part of the crew that made desserts for the entire Stitt Restaurant Group. Soon after they married, the couple began making premium ice cream at their Birmingham home, which they first sold from their driveway. Publicity from a writer for Southern Living built enough buzz for the couple to start Big Spoon, first selling from a cart and later a truck. They opened the Avondale shop in 2017, followed by Homewood in 2019, and Huntsville last year.
The creamery uses Alabama-grown fruit, produce, and herbs in its regularly rotating lineup of seasonal flavors, made with cream and milk from an Alabama dairy. Even Birmingham’s abundance of honeysuckle inspires a springtime ice cream, blended with Alabama-grown blackberries.
The O’Haras’ culinary approach, and that of the local chefs they are celebrating, is a reflection of greater Birmingham’s passion for food raised close to home and served at its peak.
“We are thrilled to bring back our Local Chef Series for a second year,” Ryan O’Hara says. “We are excited to highlight each one of them and showcase their unique approach to food through our collaborative ice cream flavors.
