Page 70 - Esquire - USA (Winter 2020)

No. No.

6 8

G E T C O Z Y
W I T H F R I E N D S
A N D N E X T-
L E V E L PA S TA AT
R E Z D Ô R A .

No.

7 me when I was in North Carolina, and I

Someone mentioned this place to

made the stupidly impulsive decision
to rent a car and drive seven hours to
Alabama on a sweltering Sunday. Grouchy
and groggy by the time I parked in front
of Automatic, bummed out by one too
many radio broadcasts about the Book of
Revelation, I sat down on a barstool and
saw the light. The oysters were fresh, the
A meal at Alewife A.S.O. cocktail was cold, and dishes like
feels, to me, like a a crispy fish collar with Calabrian chili
feast aboard a butter and flaky fish ribs with Alabama
friendly pirate ship: I have grown wary of new Italian restaurants. There are white sauce floored me with their direct-
Everything’s loose so damn many of them all over the country, and for the most
and lively, and chef part they succumb to copying one another. But every now hit deliciousness. Chef Adam Evans, a
Lee Gregory’s product of Muscle Shoals, is paying
seafood-driven menu and then a pasta emporium comes along (last year it was Misi homage to a specifically southern tradition
lends itself to commu- in New York, and in 2017 it was Felix Trattoria in southern of seafood cookery, and he’s doing it in a
nal revelry. I piled into California) whose handiwork with flour, water, and salt turns me spacious, wide-windowed room that feels
the place with a bunch into a quivering mess of pleasure. Proceeding through each
of friends and chil- like a boat club where nobody’s a snob.
dren, and the group of the five courses of chef Stefano Secchi’s pasta tasting menu It’s worth the trip. I should know.
devoured the fried at Rezdôra—a restaurant conceived as a tribute to the many
Calabash crab claws excellent eats from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy—gripped
with Old Bay aioli with me with such noodle euphoria that I morphed into Meg Ryan
such gluttonous alac- during that climax in When Harry Met Sally.... I apologize
rity that we had to ask C R U D O
D O N E R I G H T
for a second order, to anyone who was sitting near me—although eventually the AT A U TO M AT I C
and then a third. same thing happened to them. S E A F O O D .

Yeah, we are aware that
chef Lincoln Carson is fifty. But after
decades of unsung brilliance
behind the scenes with chefs like
Michael Mina, Carson has inspired
late bloomers everywhere
with the vision and precision of his
cooking at Bon Temps.

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