SLIDE Café makes a big deal out of small burgers in Alabama
Chef Raquel Lenzie is executive chef and owner of SLIDE Café in Birmingham. (Michael Tomberlin / Alabama News Center)
Chef Raquel Lenzie, executive chef and owner of SLIDE Café in Birmingham’s bustling Five Points South entertainment district, is not afraid of a challenge. In fact, she’s sought out challenges time and again in the culinary space – on a televised, national level and right here at home.
She and her sister Regina and niece Alexandria competed on Food Network’s “Family Food Showdown.” She also competed on the debut episode of the Cooking Channel’s “Snack Attack,” where she had to improvise with MoonPies. She made a sauce out of champagne gummy bears on “Chopped,” and people suggested she bottle it.
Originally from Mobile, Chef Raquel has become beloved here in Birmingham, where she chose to make her home. She’s a “shero,” celebrated during the City of Birmingham’s StrongHER campaign (first launched in 2019 by Mayor Randall Woodfin for Women’s History Month).
Chef Raquel started a catering company – Panoptic Catering – in 2014. When, in 2019, the pandemic interfered with her plans for a restaurant, she got a food truck. She and her team served 584 meals at the ribbon cutting – there were nearly 140 orders in the first hour from fans lined up in a hot parking lot in Birmingham’s Avondale neighborhood.
RELATED: Alabama chef keeps rolling through pandemic with new food truck
She opened an earlier version of SLIDE in Irondale, but between COVID-related staffing issues and problems with the building, that location was not sustainable.
But, again, she met the challenge.
“In my life, I’ve noticed that everything that has happened to me or through me … I always see things come full circle. It never fails,” she told Alabama News Center a few years ago. “No matter how ugly stuff looks, it always comes back some kind of way. It may be a different way, but it’s the best way. … I live by that. This is clearly where I’m supposed to be.”
It appears so.
She recently brought her SLIDE concept to a bright, new location in Birmingham’s popular Five Points South – a walkable entertainment district full of food and within easy reach of locals and out-of-towners staying at the nearby hotels.
She serves a variety of gourmet sliders – with 15 signature sliders on the menu at any given time and another 30 or so in her repertoire. There also are homemade sides such as crisp potato chips dusted with her own seasoning and her regionally famous signature six-cheese spinach artichoke dip. You’ll also find fresh, seasonal salads with homemade dressings and freshly squeezed lemonade.
The idea of a career in food came from a family history of cooking, growing and enjoying freshly made, locally sourced ingredients. Her mom and grandmother were always cooking. Her father was a fisherman, so Gulf-fresh seafood was plentiful. They had a family garden in the front yard.
“I remember sitting in the garden just trying stuff raw right out of the ground and getting caught,” she recalled. She was scolded and told to come out of the garden. “But it was so fresh! I didn’t know anything any different. So, my palate is definitely very, very, very sure of what’s fresh and what’s frozen.
“I had a lot of exposure at a young age to cooking. My roots are Southern soul food.”
She was 12 when she started working in her sister’s restaurant. “We did everything,” she says, “whatever she would let us do. She’s definitely that sister that will let you try it as long as you feel like you’re confident to do it. She let us do it – even if it required standing on top of something to reach it.”
The idea for sliders started with the meats – specially seasoned all-beef patties, crab cakes, slow-cooked brisket, chicken fried and grilled, bologna, smoked bacon, country ham and Conecuh Sausage.
“What I wanted to do was encompass my Southern soul along with twists,” she says.
“Everybody’s used to the little, tiny slider. I said, ‘Let me pack it with meat and make it tall. Fill it up. Make you think you’re getting something small and then you get something super tall and big.
“I’m able to showcase seven different meats and just give a variety of options as well as cater to our ‘make it green’ community of people. … To ‘make it green’ you basically take any of the sliders,” she says, “take away the bun and wrap it in lettuce.”
Diners can add meats to any of the seasonal salads, too. Everything is homemade except for the Martin’s slider potato rolls, but even those get toasted with butter on the grill.
What sets her apart, she says, is “the combination of high-quality, fresh ingredients – farm-to-table on all of our vegetables. These things add up and make the slider a slider. And then it’s just something different. You won’t find it anywhere in the state of Alabama.”
The 12-hour brisket slider is her bestseller. “We basically just pan sear it until it’s nice and a little crisp on the outside, nice and juicy still, and then pile it high, add my brown sugar glaze and a little white American cheese.”
The PB&J is a close second.
“The PB&J has become super popular,” Chef Raquel says. “People like to be adventurous.” This slider features her house blackberry-habanero jam, which is a nice kind of sweet heat made with fresh blackberries. She puts this with a “hand-pressed patty, a little bit of that peanut butter we had when we were kids – you know, Jif – and loads of bacon.” The peanut butter, she says, is “definitely creamy so it melts all over that patty.”
Another popular choice if you want to go really big: The XL – a combination of the 6 a.m. (with hashbrowns and a fried egg) and the classic slider.
There’s the Porky Pig with layers of smoked bacon, country ham and Conecuh sausage; a barbecue chicken slider with a savory Alabama white sauce. This white barbecue sauce also goes on her Smokehouse slider with a seasoned beef patty, American cheese and smoked bacon. There’s a grilled chicken slider with homemade pesto aioli and a Buffalo fried chicken slider with Siracha aioli. She puts homemade “mayostard” on her thick-cut fried bologna sliders.
The crab cake slider, made fresh each day with lump crab meat, is Chef Raquel’s personal favorite. “It’s definitely a touch of home,” she says. “It reminds me of my dad; we used to go fishing all the time, so the whole sea thing and vibe. It’s deep fried, it’s real good (served) with lettuce and tomato and my house remoulade.”
There’s also a delicious Saturday brunch.
“We have a corncake waffle (and) scratch biscuits I make every morning on Saturdays. We have house grits – I make the grits the old-school way – as well as different brunch sliders.” Some of these are biscuit sliders, others are made with the waffles. She also offers a variety of signature skillet hashes starring seasoned potatoes mixed simply with eggs, peppers and onions or a more adventurous scramble of grilled salmon and cheddar with house pesto aioli.
It’s all served up in an energetic, light-filled space with bold colors and lots of fun graphics. The design, she says, “is the combination of me just spilling my thoughts over to KL Blake (Kanesha Blake) of Hello Branding Solutions as well as my wife who did all the sayings that are all over the place. Those are her ideas. We just put it together and made it work. … The whole point is to have a nice place to go. Very clean, very chic and modern and just bright and fun.”
Chef Raquel says, the “experience above everything,” is what matters at SLIDE. “Customer service is a big deal for me. I want people to feel like they’re recognized, like we see you. That’s a big deal for people – to feel like they walk in, and they’re greeted. The icing on the cake is the food, but it starts with customer service.”
There is nothing mini about SLIDE Café’s sliders. (Michael Tomberlin / Alabama News Center)
It’s an approach that extends to catering, too, whether that’s a private gathering at SLIDE (the space is perfect for parties and corporate events) or onsite through Panoptic for anything from intimate dinners to large parties.
The key to the success of SLIDE, Chef Raquel says, is the idea of “mini big bites.” She explains: “There is flavor in every bite. You can break that thing apart and … each piece is going to taste good. People think, ‘I thought I was going to get this slider, and I left with a mouthful.’”
Chef Raquel says she’s most proud of her “stick-to-itiveness and resilience … being able to continue to keep pushing forward. I wake up every day and say, ‘You’re still doing it.’ Even when it looks like it’s chaos. I’m still doing it, and it’s still working. Even if it doesn’t look like it’s working.”
And, as if the challenge of running her own restaurant isn’t enough, Chef Raquel remains game for some culinary competition whenever the opportunity presents itself.
“To be honest, I almost have to talk myself into it, but I like it. … I’m running and operating every day. It’s fun to sit back sometimes and just cook. … It’s good to just go and stand for 13 hours and showcase what I don’t get to do here. I love a challenge. Give me some stuff I’ve never seen; give me some things that make no sense, and I’ll still come up with something.
“I think what I take away from each one of those competitions is the positive feedback … And to be around different people. You’d be surprised at the walk of life of the culinary industry. It just blows your mind to hear everybody’s stories and their backgrounds. To just be there with different people, you know. It’s fun.”
There is nothing mini about SLIDE Café’s sliders. (Michael Tomberlin / Alabama News Center)
2012 Magnolia Ave. S, Suite R3
Birmingham, AL 35205
Monday and Tuesday: 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Wednesday through Friday: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Saturday: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (with brunch served from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.)
Closed on Sunday
Susan Swagler has written about food and restaurants for nearly four decades, much of that time as a trusted restaurant critic. She shares food, books, travel and more at www.savor.blog. Susan is a founding member and past president of the Birmingham chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier International, a philanthropic organization of female culinary leaders.
