Melt and more: Gourmet grilled cheese helped revive a Birmingham neighborhood
Melt started as a food truck, became a restaurant and then started a family of restaurants in Birmingham's Avondale neighborhood. (Brittany Faush-Johnson/Alabama NewsCenter)
From grilled cheese to craft cocktails, Harriet Reis and Paget Pizitz offer people plenty of delicious reasons to hang out in hip Avondale. Together and separately, they own four establishments that are invigorating this Birmingham neighborhood with its exciting and fast-growing restaurant and bar scene.
The two women are partners in Melt, which specializes in grilled cheese sandwiches of all sorts, and in Fancy’s on 5th, an oyster dive and burger bar. Pizitz also owns Hot Diggity Dogs, home to some of the most inventive hot dogs in town, and The Marble Ring speakeasy with its time-travel 1920s vibe.
It all started in 2011 with a food truck named Matilda.
Food and family, business and home all Melt together at Avondale restaurants from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
Reis’s restaurant experience included Ocean and 26, which she co-founded. Pizitz moved back to her hometown from New York City in 2009 and wanted to follow in her family’s entrepreneurial footsteps and open some sort of retail business.
The very beginning: Harriet Reis, Paget Pizitz, chef Joey Dickerson and Matilda, the Melt truck. (Contributed)
Their first collaboration was a fundraising gala, which Reis was chairing. She Facebook messaged Pizitz asking her to help. “We started talking about our passions and what we wanted to do in life,” Reis says. “Come to find out, she wanted to be a restaurant owner, and I wanted to get back into the business.”
Figuring that a food truck would let them test a grilled cheese concept without a huge investment, the two teamed up with chef Joey Dickerson, and they all hit the road – Pizitz and Dickerson inside the truck making sandwiches, Reis out front with customers.
Dickerson still works with the women today as the executive chef at both Melt and Fancy’s on 5th, and he occasionally drives Matilda, too.
“One of the things that I’m most proud of is that Joey, Paget and I are still in partnership together,” Reis says. “We respect Joey tremendously and trust that he’s going to make the most incredible food.”
Everybody’s welcome
Avondale wasn’t on Matilda’s original route, but the neighborhood has become their home base, and they couldn’t be happier. When they first bought into the area, Avondale Brewing Company and Saw’s Soul Kitchen were about the only businesses there. Reis says she originally was looking to open somewhere over the mountain south of Birmingham.
“I made her come down here one day,” Pizitz says. “I knew she would see it, too, when she saw a Saturday. There are people from 1 to 100. You’ve got the mom and the dad and they’re walking around and want to have drinks on a Saturday and they also have kids and they have dogs, so what do you do? You bring them all to Avondale, and everybody’s welcome. It’s a city. It’s a neighborhood. It’s everything.”
Their collaborations have resulted in a variety of things for people to love.
Melt is crowded at lunch and dinner with fans who flock to the repurposed gas station for melted cheese in many guises – Swiss on a Cuban sandwich, ghost-pepper cheese on the Firebird, Monterey Jack on Texas toast with buffalo-sauced chicken tenders and cheddar on the Classic Melt. The Mac Melt, with housemade mac and cheese, is popular, and the fried pickles with a drizzle of roasted jalapeno ranch dressing are a must. Melt’s tomato-basil soup is excellent. Salads range from a classic wedge to a seasonal mix of fresh flavors. There’s local beer on tap as well as a variety of brews. Specialty cocktails include a strawberry margarita and the Bham Bloody Mary made with “moonshine.”
Fancy’s on 5th is a bit, well, fancier, although Pizitz insists that, “There’s nothing fancy about Fancy’s except the name and the white marble bar.” There’s no denying, however, that it’s special. A collection of museum-quality swords adorns one wall; the restaurant’s mascot, a stylized octopus, floats above the handsome bar and over the partially enclosed “mobster booth.” Some tables have views of Avondale Park, and a huge marble chef’s table overlooks the busy oyster shucker’s station and the even busier open kitchen.
An octopus is the mascot at Fancy’s on 5th. (Brittany Faush-Johnson/Alabama NewsCenter)
Reis originally wanted a burger bar and Pizitz wanted an oyster bar, so they decided on both. Fresh oysters from around the country are available on the half shell raw, grilled or baked with toppings like bacon, spinach and Parmesan cream (a local version of Oysters Rockefeller). A charred-lemon garnish shows Dickerson’s attention to detail. Diners will find more than half a dozen burgers at Fancy’s, including the El Guapo flavor bomb with ground chorizo and beef patties, chipotle mayo, salsa, fried jalapenos and Manchego cheese. The menu, which changes with the seasons, also features daily specials, entrée salads and inventive starters like the ahi tuna poke tacos made with won ton shells and cilantro-lime slaw.
Pizitz opened Hot Diggity Dogs in August 2016. Under the direction of former Bottletree Café chef Tom Bagby, the place serves a variety of hot dogs and savory snacks. Birmingham has a long history with hot dogs, each eatery having its own signature sauce. The sauce here shines on the simple Birmingham Dog dressed with mustard, onions and kraut. From there, things get a lot different. The Winky Dink Dog has homemade pimento cheese; Oh Canadog! features fries, cheese, gravy and onions. The Emperor Gochujang has slaw made with the umami-forward fermented hot pepper paste, pickled onions and Korean barbecue sauce, and the Sayonara Dog features surimi salad, pickled ginger and seaweed relish. On a recent Tuesday afternoon, a 20-something guy – totally hip from his Timberland boots to his knitted watch cap – sat in a corner sipping a PBR and eating pork skin nachos (from the “thrills” section of the small menu).
Behind this booth lies a captivating speakeasy — but entry depends on the phone call you place. (Brittany Faush-Johnson/Alabama NewsCenter)
Hot Diggity Dogs is more than just a hot dog stand, though. In clever Prohibition-era style, it’s a front of sorts for the speakeasy on the other side of a conspicuous phone booth. To get into the bar, you have to use the vintage phone to call the other side of the wall. If there’s space in the bar, the door opens. If not, you’ll get a text when you can come in.
You’ll want to go in.
The Marble Ring is beautiful with its glowing, gleaming bar. Comfy sofas and conversation-cozy tables and chairs are grouped beneath decades-old black-and-white photos. Wall sconces illuminate everything just enough. There’s a fireplace for the winter and a patio porch for nicer weather. There’s also a huge, mirrored bathtub in the middle of the room. “People love to take photos in it,” Pizitz says. Eventually, she wants it to be a prop for a burlesque show. Drinks here have literary references, and cocktails are crafted with a Gatsby-like flair: Daisy Fay is made with Cathead vodka, St-Germain, lemon juice and white cranberry juice; Old Sport is Courvoisier VS cognac; demerara syrup; and Angostura, Elemakule Tiki and ginger bitters.
A growing family
Although she has no ownership in the bar and hot dog stand, Reis will step in to help when needed. “We’re very, very fortunate,” she says about her working relationship with Pizitz. “We’re family. It’s a daughter, sister, friendship. And we also respect each other. I’m willing to learn from her, and she’s willing to learn from me.”
Reis says they would not have expanded beyond Melt if they couldn’t still be in the Avondale neighborhood with the tree-lined streets she loves.
“I pull up onto Fifth Avenue,” she says, “and I feel like I’m home. When I see Melt here, which is kind of an anchor, and I see Fancy’s, which is the other anchor, it just … amazes me. It was very serendipitous, and sometimes I wonder, ‘How did we get here?’ But I know it was a lot of hard work. It still is. And I know that it’s just where we’re meant to be.”
“On Fridays and Saturdays when this place is just jumping and every place is busy and people are walking around and you have people moving in – families moving in with their kids – sometimes it just takes my breath away,” Pizitz adds. “We had this vision of what this place was going to be, and it’s delivered and it’s going to keep delivering.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of growth in Avondale,” Pizitz says, “and while there are other restaurants opening up nearby … we welcome everyone to the family. I really can’t wait to see what happens in the next five years.”
