Velvet Pig offers elevated bar food, heart for service in Alabama’s Port City
The Pork Loin and Collard sandwich at Velvet Pig is a feast of a sandwich. (contributed)
The former Crystal Ice building in Mobile is cool in a whole new way these days, as the husband-and-wife team of Max Donaldson and Mackenzie Klyce are honoring the past and creating a fun, delicious future.
Their Velvet Pig eatery in the Ice Box bar (21 and over) offers Chef Mackenzie’s delicious, inventive dishes that utilize Max’s whole-animal butchery skills. Mackenzie says they originally approached the owners of the Ice Box bar with the idea of bringing in a food component. They ended up buying the place.
The two began working toward this business years ago, and every part of their shared food-related history has been a piece of the culinary puzzle.
Max is from the barbecue mecca of Kansas City, Missouri; Mackenzie grew up in Mobile. They met at Ole Miss, and both worked in the restaurant industry in Oxford. They spent about a year together in Thailand before moving to New Orleans, where Mackenzie worked at Marjie’s Grill, with its focus on Gulf-fresh seafood and Southeast Asian flavors. She moved to the celebrated Coquette on Magazine Street and then helped Ana Castro open Lengua Madre, which offered a modern, fine-dining approach to Mexican cuisine. Max, meanwhile, began working at Piece of Meat butcher shop; then he moved to The Joint to run the morning smoker shift. During their spare time, they opened a food trailer called The Velvet Ditch BBQ and stationed their Texas-style smoker at local breweries.
The name of this initial business was a tribute to their time at Ole Miss. “People call Oxford ‘The Velvet Ditch’ because it’s somewhere that’s so nice that you fall into it and you don’t want to leave,” Mackenzie says.
They left New Orleans in 2022 and spent a few months back in Thailand with side trips to Greece, Italy, Spain and France (what Max calls their “Restaurant R&D World Tour”). Later that year, they moved to Mobile and reached out to the Ice Box bar about providing food. They ended up building out and then leasing a kitchen space at the enormous, sprawling bar, and the Velvet Pig opened in November 2023.
In 2024, they bought the business.
So, Velvet Pig in the Ice Box is a bar with craft cocktails and lots of local beers and a restaurant reimagining global and regional cuisine into elevated bar foods for those 21 and older.
We’re talking boudin eggrolls, a pork loin and collard sandwich and birria quesadillas made with braised pork shoulder. Pork belly is celebrated here: There are pork belly skewers with raspberry-chipotle glaze and cracklin’ dust (one of the most popular items on the menu), Caesar fries with pork belly and a pork belly Cubano (another favorite dish). They offer an Alabama hot fried chicken sandwich with a signature white sauce, a smash burger with a secret sauce, crisp Louisiana catfish with house spices and chicken wings with a honey Buffalo sauce. Guests love crisp fried oysters on a Caesar salad when available.
“Our food is a little bit different than your average bar food,” Mackenzie says. “We make pretty much everything in the kitchen from scratch except for our mayonnaise and our bread. We use Blue Plate mayonnaise and Leidenheimer bread, both made in New Orleans.”
The menu of shareable small plates, sandwiches, salads and specials changes frequently, depending upon what’s fresh and in season locally.
Mackenzie is classically trained, but she grew up around accomplished home cooks; she relies upon some family recipes for her dishes at Velvet Pig. She frequently incorporates dips her family served at parties for some of the shareables here.
“Growing up, my great-grandmother was a cook, and so I have a lot of (dishes) that remind me of home,” Mackenzie says, such as her collard greens (made with their own ham hocks) and homemade cornbread. “I make very good cornbread, and I make it the old-school way in a cast iron with lard in it. We sear each piece to order, and it gets butter, Steen’s cane syrup and Maldon salt. I think that’s one of our most overlooked items on our menu. When people get it, they are shocked that it’s that good.”
She’s particular about ingredients.
“All of our produce is sourced from small, local farms and farm stands,” Mackenzie says. “And then, as far as our meat, we get our hogs from Home Place Pastures. It’s right outside of Oxford, Mississippi.” They rely upon Evans Meats for additional proteins, and seafood is sourced from nearby Bayou La Batre.
As expected with a whole-animal butchery component, sustainability is key here. All parts of the animal are utilized – the bones and feet are roasted to make stock, which is used in the collards, pink-eye peas and gumbo. Legs and hocks are brined for days and then roasted for the Cuban sandwich.
“That’s really important for us to make sure that we use every part of every ingredient that we get,” Mackenzie says. “It’s very important with the pig, but we do that with other stuff, too. Like, for instance, we have collard greens on our menu, and they are in three dishes throughout the menu. We make a collard-green-and-artichoke dip, they’re on the (pork loin) sandwich, and then you can get them as a side. There’s a lot of stuff on our menu that you’ll see a couple places. That allows us to make sure nothing goes to waste and everything’s utilized. And it keeps the kitchen a little bit tighter.”
All of this happens in a really cool space.
Elements of the old icehouse facility remain, but now there’s a welcoming bar up front, cozy nooks throughout, a breezy patio and an event space with another bar in the back. Old icehouse tools and signs, original art, books and shiny bottles create a colorful, casual, eclectic vibe.
Even as they gather new fans every week, Mackenzie says they aim to take care of their regulars. Some of these are other people in the local service industry.
“We do a free family meal here every Sunday night,” Mackenzie says. “At 7:30, I put out a different meal each week … chicken and dumplings, spaghetti and meatballs, we did lasagna once. We brought our smoker in one day and did ribs and smoked chicken. … A lot of service industry comes for that and also some of our regulars. … I like doing it. It doesn’t take much more out of me to put something like that out, and people really appreciate it.” She sometimes serves 30 or 40 people. “People just kind of come in and they’ll have a drink and have dinner and go home. It’s great. I’m glad we can do it.”
It’s comfort food, Mackenzie adds. “It’s not usually stuff that’s on our menu. It’s just something random and easy that we have some of the ingredients for and I only have to buy a couple things.”
Yet, it’s special.
“We are coming from New Orleans. The service industry community there is so tight-knit, and everybody helps everybody out. And it’s such a sense of community. So, we really wanted to bring a part of that here. It’s just very important to us to try to be those people for this community and help be a part of that – of bringing the industry together and, you know, just creating a sense of family.”
This heart for service extends to any customer who comes to Velvet Pig.
“Making sure our guests have a good experience is important to me,” Mackenzie said. Good, attentive front-of-house people make sure that happens. Simply being there does, too.
“People really love the fact that they can talk to me or Max. That we’re owners and we’re here all the time. That’s a big, big plus for people.”
“I hope people … are a little bit shocked that they’re able to get this sort of experience in a place like this – an old icehouse that was just a bar. We were very fortunate that we came into an existing establishment, because we did have a client base that was already here. But people were pretty surprised that they could get the quality of food that we put out in a bar.”
Mackenzie said she’s proud of the business she and Max are building.
“I’m proud of us for actually doing this,” she said. “We’ve talked about it a lot, you know, and just to see our dreams start to become a reality is awesome. We’re moving pretty quickly and becoming a part of this community, and we’re just really happy to be here and glad that people are accepting of us.”
Velvet Pig (in the Ice Box)
Velvet Pig has become a favorite among Mobile locals in the know. (contributed)
755 Monroe St.
Mobile, Alabama
This restaurant is part of a bar, so it is 21 and older.
Hours:
Wednesday and Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Friday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Saturday, noon to 11 p.m.
Sunday, noon to 7 p.m.
Closed Monday and Tuesday.
Susan Swagler has written about food and restaurants for 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 women leaders in food, wine and hospitality whose members are among Alabama’s top women in food.
