BIRMINGHAM IS HOME TO BUSTLING STREETS and a vibrant culinary scene, but it’s also my hometown and the birthplace of mine and my wife, Christine’s, two acclaimed restaurants, Bistro Two Eighteen and Bocca Ristorante. For two decades now, I’ve worked in kitchens from the Deep South all the way west to Wyoming, but when people ask me why I pursued cooking professionally, my go-to response is always the same.
I like to say I flunked out of college. It’s not really true, but that always gets a laugh tableside. In
