Big Spoon Creamery launches new flavors created by Alabama chefs, starting with Frank Stitt
Geri-Martha and Ryan O'Hara, owners of Big Spoon Creamery, have launched a new series of flavors with Birmingham chefs. (Michael Tomberlin / Alabama News Center)
If celebrated Alabama chef Frank Stitt were to create an ice cream in an ice cream shop, what flavor would he choose?
Birmingham-based Big Spoon Creamery has answered that question with its new “chef scoops” and it’s a classic from the chef and owner of Highlands Bar & Grill, Bottega and Chez Fonfon.
“Frank Stitt’s Neapolitan” made its debut at Big Spoon on Nov. 1 and is the first in the “Local Chef Series” available at the artisan ice cream shop.
The Neapolitan is made with a combination of Big Spoon’s Madagascar Vanilla Bean ice cream, its Valrhona Chocolate ice cream and its fresh strawberry ice cream.
Big Spoon owners, the husband-and-wife team of Ryan and Geri-Martha O’Hara, once worked for Frank and Pardis Stitt, so starting the series with Stitt’s choice was the way to go.
“We felt like we had to start there,” Ryan said. “We felt like it just wouldn’t feel right without starting with chef (Stitt). We decided to kick it off with him and collaborate with him.”
Ryan said chef Stitt is a lover of classic things and has an appreciation for quality and refinement.
“Both he and Pardis have an affinity for Neapolitan from their travels in Italy and so he just wanted to do sort of a classic version of that,” Ryan said.
“They love our strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice creams so they thought it would be great pairing them all together – really just a respect for doing things well,” Geri-Martha said.
Creating a Neapolitan in the classic style of segmenting the separated flavors in one container took some doing.
“We had to figure that out a little bit but we finally got our groove and so it’s perfect,” Geri-Martha said.
The Local Chefs Series is an idea the O’Haras have had for a number of years.
“Both Geri-Martha and I came up as chefs in the industry. We worked for Frank Stitt for a number of years,” Ryan said. “We have this great community of friends and people that we’ve worked with or just have known through the industry, so we’ve always thought it would be such a fun idea to be able to work with some of these people who we love and whose work we really respect.”
For Geri-Martha, having other chefs offer their ideas of new flavors is the fun part.
“We’re excited to have the savory chefs come in and have their take on what their dream ice cream would be and what that looks like,” she said. “It’s really about honoring them and their work. They are really pillars in the Birmingham area. This is all about bringing the community together and just celebrating what a beautiful culinary scene we have here in Birmingham.”
Future flavors for the Local Chef Series have yet to be determined, but the collaborators in the coming months will include:
- December – chef Rob McDaniel of Helen.
- January – chef Adam Evans of Automatic Seafood & Oysters.
- February – chef John Rolen of Slim’s.
- March – chef Brian Somershield of El Barrio.
The O’Hara’s met with McDaniel this week to work on the flavor for December.
“We’re excited to collaborate and come up with some fun stuff,” Ryan said.
In addition to Frank Stitt’s Neapolitan, the current menu at Big Spoon is the fall menu and includes popular flavors like Pumpkin Cheesecake, Brown Butter Pecan, Goat Cheese Caramel Apple Pie and an Espresso Hazelnut made with coffee from Birmingham’s June Coffee.
“We’re very much influenced by the seasons – what’s fresh, what is in abundance growing here locally in Alabama,” Geri-Martha said.
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Big Spoon also draws inspiration from favorite desserts or childhood cereals like Fruity Pebbles or Cinnamon Toast Crunch to create popular, small-batch flavors.
It’s a successful formula. In addition to Big Spoon’s original location in Avondale, the company added a Homewood location in 2019 and opened a Huntsville location in June of this year.
Big Spoon also caters at corporate events, weddings and the like. It sells pints in several Piggly Wiggly locations and provides ice cream to Bottega and Slim’s.
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New ice cream flavors are coming later this month along with the return of Big Spoon’s popular hot chocolate, which is topped with a homemade, hand-toasted marshmallow.
“This year on Black Friday we will be launching our holiday menu and hot chocolate,” Geri-Martha said. “And also we’re going to be decking the (Avondale) storefront out in holiday lights. It’s going to be so fun. We’re going Clark Griswold on this one.”
