Dreaming about cooking at Elle's Kitchen

Good Monday morning and welcome to day two of Tuscaloosa Restaurant Week, where we'll be spending the day with Bo Hicks, owner of Druid City Brewing Company and Ell's Kitchen.

Every day this week, Thread and Visit Tuscaloosa will publish a morning feature on the city's hottest restaurant locations and the artisans making its best dishes.

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At the heart of Tuscaloosa's Druid City Brewing Company and the still-new Elle's Kitchen is a commitment to service: not only serving customers, but also employees and the community at large.

That could be because founder Beau Hicks owes a lot to the service industry: A Birmingham native whose family moved to Brookwood before he was 10, Hicks said his first jobs cooking and bartending helped him avoid making a living in a basement.

“I grew up in the county and went to Brookwood High School and while coal mining is a noble profession, I honestly and not cynically thought it wasn't for me,” Hicks said.

So instead of taking a job at Walter Energy, Hicks went to Shelton State University after high school, half-planning to become a history teacher, but dropped out to, as he puts it, play in bands, rowdy and video games.

Live music led Hicks into the bar world, and soon he was selling drinks at Egan's on the Strip, working late into the night amid the dim lights, thick smoke and loud music of the now-shuttered tavern.

But after a few years, Hicks realized that working long hours as a bartender, like the long hours mining metallurgical coal, came with its own costs.

He switched to a day shift at Manna Grocery, where he was working at the time the grassroots movement “Free the Hops” sparked a series of changes to Alabama laws regulating beer brewing.

By 2012, lawmakers had allowed the sale of stronger beer, legalized bars, and approved larger bottles of beer.

Hicks and his late business partner decided to pool their resources together to open Tuscaloosa's first modern brewery before someone else did it first.

“We figured someone would open a brewery in Tuscaloosa to promote its proximity to the university,” Hicks says, “but we wanted to do more than that. We wanted to be a pillar of the community and creative spirit of the town.”

The duo got busy, selling their first beer in October 2012 and making their debut with a now almost mythical secret show at Egan's featuring Brittany Howard and Alabama Shakes.

Twelve years later, a lot has changed for DCBC. In 2019, they partnered with Huntsville's Straight to Ale Brewing and soon began working hard to expand into a new, larger space in the same shopping center where they've always operated.

Then Mr Roberts tragically passed away last February, just before the brewery was due to reopen in its new premises.

The new space has allowed Hicks to open the Moon Room, a small but cool venue for karaoke, comedy and aspiring musicians, a big step up from the live entertainment space in the original Taproom.

Last summer, Hicks was also able to open El's Kitchen, where he and Tyler Marshall prepare simple dishes to go with the beers served in the taproom.

“It didn't make sense to build a 10,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, but it made sense to have a larger space and offer food in addition to our 'liquid bread,'” Hicks said. “El's Kitchen is named after Elliot because all the guy loved was eating. Tyler helps run it. We love that this is another outlet to be creative, come up with ideas and execute on new ideas.”

Hicks said opening a restaurant inside a brewery has been an exciting challenge, and a tightrope walk of deciding what's worth making and what's better bought in. For example, Ell's carries Alabama Cone-Cue sausage, so Hicks and his team don't have to make the sausage by hand and charge $20 for a plate of meat.

But that doesn't mean Hicks is cutting corners: Other proteins served at Elle's Kitchen are cooked in a Shirley Fabrication smoker made right here in Tuscaloosa, using hickory and pecan wood that staff split from logs in the parking lot.

Hicks said it's been a great year since opening the kitchen, with many new avenues of service offered.

Not everyone likes beer, for example, and Hicks said the restaurant gives them something to enjoy and a way to support DCBC during shows and comedy nights. It's also a creative outlet and an additional revenue stream for Hicks, Marshall and the rest of the staff.

COVID-19 and the inflation it has caused haven't allowed Hicks to do all the things he'd like to do in this field, but that doesn't mean they aren't having fun.

“I haven't yet been able to execute all the grand plans I have for Elle's Kitchen, but that's the fun part,” he said. “Limited facilities allow me to be creative. Many of my best ideas have come from thinking, 'Hey, what if I tried this?'”

Marshall recently came to Hicks and told him that while he was sleeping he dreamed about making pizza.

Instead of tomato sauce, it has a cheese base, minced meat and sliced ​​pickles, and is finished with yellow mustard, making it taste like a cheeseburger pizza.

Hicks approved of the idea, and Marshall's Dream Pizza, which uses braised conecuf instead of beef, will be available at Elle's Kitchen during Tuscaloosa Restaurant Week.

Wow-worthy highlights of the Tuscaloosa experience

Hicks said when he and Elliott opened the brewery, he wasn't even sure if he would be making enough money to quit his job at Manna.

More than a decade later, he's created something special in Druid City that's unmistakably Tuscaloo: The wooden bar counter was salvaged from Alberta's Leland Lanes after the bowling alley closed, the logo features Moon Winks Lodge's iconic crescent moon and the ceiling is emblazoned with a “Sistine Chucker.”

“I continue to enjoy being an interesting and welcoming part of Tuscaloosa,” Hicks said, “In addition to our great regulars, we also meet a lot of nice people who want to stop by the brewery when they're traveling, and I hope we can put an exclamation point on their experience in Tuscaloosa.”

And it's not just the decor: Though the brewery is a community hub, hosting trivia nights, karaoke coming up soon and live music frequently livening up the Moon Room, its business is breaking even at best.

“A place where you get security, where the staff is well taken care of, where people are listened to. It's a godsend when you're traveling 500 miles on a Wednesday night and you have this place in between,” Hicks said. “Having played in a band and toured, I want to be that place for people, even if we're in the red. I see it as almost community service.”

Hicks said he's not sure what the future holds or how directly involved he'll be in Druid City, but as long as the doors are open, it will be a welcoming place for the entire community.

“Like everyone, I have days where I'm like, 'Is this really what I want to do today?'” Hicks said, “But I think I'm a giving person, and when I see people's genuine joy as they pick out records to spin, play old video games, or enjoy a surprise live performance, it's just so gratifying. It's so satisfying.”

Druid City Brewing and Ell's Kitchen is located at 70114th Street in Parkview. They open Monday through Thursday at 4pm, Friday and Saturday for lunch at 11am, and Sunday at 2pm. Ell's offers a wide selection of craft beers as well as sandwiches, tacos, pizza, nachos and more.

During Tuscaloosa Restaurant Week, Ell's Kitchen is offering a variation of the Eldridge sandwich, with smoked pulled pork, house-made pimento cheese and sliced ​​pickles, served piping hot in a panini press.

This profile is the second in a series as part of Visit Tuscaloosa's Restaurant Week 2024, presented this year by UA Online.

Check back with Tuscaloosa Thread every morning this week for more feature stories.