Travel Track On Sirk TV: EUGENE’S HOT CHICKEN [Birmingham, Alabama] - Part II - video Dailymotion

Travel Track

Owner/Operator Zebbie Carney talks to Travel Track about intent, approach, influence and the growth of a business in regards to his restaurant: Eugene’s Hot Chicken in Birmingham, Alabama.

Transcript

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00:38 I just think people are always looking for authentic.

00:40 Yeah.

00:41 Authentic in terms of clothing.

00:43 Yeah, when I think about where we started

00:45 and how we started, we started with a food truck

00:47 going to breweries.

00:47 Yeah.

00:48 So you know--

00:49 So that influenced it, OK.

00:50 Yeah, that really influenced--

00:51 Got it, OK.

00:52 And even before then, when we was just popping up,

00:55 doing pop-ups at Eugene's Hot Chicken,

00:57 we started-- the breweries was the first one to say, hey,

00:59 come here.

01:00 Do a pop-up here.

01:01 So we've got real relationships with those breweries, man.

01:05 So we want to support them as much as they would support us,

01:07 because they just as part of our success as anything else.

01:11 And it's the whole experience.

01:15 You know, when people come here, I

01:16 want them to try local beers.

01:17 I want them to try a very unique soda.

01:20 I want them to try the food, because it's

01:22 the total experience.

01:23 It's more than just us putting a plate of food in their face.

01:26 Yeah.

01:26 Somebody come into Birmingham, I want

01:28 them to get a whole experience of Birmingham.

01:30 I want them to get it right here in our restaurant.

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02:03 And it's a whole chemistry thing.

02:04 It is.

02:05 And it's also an instinct thing.

02:06 It is.

02:07 Could you talk about the balance

02:08 of instinct and the recipe?

02:10 Yeah, so you know, just being in this industry,

02:13 you know, your palate changing.

02:15 You know, I say my palate grew up a little bit.

02:18 So you know, I wanted to create something that, you know,

02:21 when I'm thinking about each and every menu item,

02:24 you know, what my grandparents enjoyed.

02:26 They passed away, but you know, that's

02:28 my experience with cooking and, you know,

02:30 what they enjoyed at food.

02:32 But could the young people really

02:35 enjoy their food as well?

02:36 So that's the balance I'm trying to figure out.

02:38 Did your granddad get to taste of the food

02:40 you started creating at any point?

02:42 No.

02:42 Oh, all right.

02:43 No, it didn't.

02:44 It didn't.

02:44 So you know, it's just all a memory.

02:46 He passed when I was real young, but you know,

02:48 those are my memories of just food, you know.

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03:10 Once you taste it, you understand.

03:12 But people just can't get their heads past it.

03:14 Yeah, it's that mental thing, man.

03:16 You know, about eating a frog leg that just, you know,

03:18 I can't do it, you know.

03:19 But if I think it tastes like chicken, I'm going to eat it.

03:22 And then after, you're like, oh, man, granddad,

03:24 but you didn't eat it at that point.

03:25 So you know.

03:26 So I don't know.

03:27 I just try to be real unique with the menu items

03:30 and just bring flavor.

03:31 Just think of it like a hot dog.

03:33 You know, people love hot dogs so much

03:34 because you get so many flavors on something so simple.

03:37 Yeah.

03:38 Right?

03:38 And that's what we try to do with the chicken.

03:40 We try to bring so many flavors that you're like, wow.

03:44 I'm still feeling-- from the time I bite it to after,

03:47 I'm still feeling so many different levels of flavor.

03:50 And that's what we try to do with every menu item here.

03:53 It is to keep people like, wow.

03:55 I wasn't expecting that.

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04:20 Is there one item that just pops in your mind

04:23 on your menu in that way?

04:25 Whoa.

04:26 It's a couple.

04:27 You know, for me, you know, it's--

04:29 so if you eat any of our chicken hot,

04:33 you know you get that real unique flavor.

04:35 But if you eat--

04:35 You can ask for a hot chicken.

04:36 You can ask for a hot-- yeah.

04:37 So we got a level.

04:38 So it's mild, hot, hot damn, stupid hot, or just lemon

04:42 pepper.

04:43 Yeah, so that hot, you know you get a unique flavor.

04:45 But if you taste the hot damn, you

04:47 get another level of flavor.

04:49 And then our collard greens.

04:51 And you know, we're from Scratch Restaurant,

04:52 so we like our white sauce.

04:54 You know, we make an Alabama white sauce, you know,

04:57 that's our version of it.

04:59 You know, our white sauce started in Kailah, Alabama.

05:02 And you know, we got a comeback sauce.

05:04 It started in, you know, Mississippi.

05:06 So we got our version.

05:07 But you add your little bit.

05:08 We add our little thing on it and make it ours.

05:10 So you know, it's just bringing that uniqueness

05:13 to this good old fashioned Southern cooking.

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05:34 Could you talk about that building a business here

05:37 from the ground up?

05:38 Yeah.

05:39 So you know, being from Nashville,

05:42 and I started a hot chicken joint in Birmingham,

05:44 people always ask me, do I think I'll be as successful

05:47 if I would have started in Nashville.

05:48 I tell them no.

05:50 Because Birmingham just got a unique ecosystem that, you

05:55 know, I just hadn't seen anywhere.

05:57 In what way?

05:58 And you know, so we started pitching our business.

06:02 That's how we started.

06:03 We started doing business pitching with a nonprofit,

06:07 Rev Birmingham.

06:08 And from there, you know, just they

06:11 had introduced us to so many different people.

06:13 We got our-- found our building through Rev,

06:16 through this ecosystem, you know, a lot of the contacts

06:20 we have, our lawyer.

06:22 So there's a support system.

06:24 It's a huge support system here, you know.

06:27 And I did a--

06:28 I spoke at an event like a couple of weeks ago.

06:31 And the support system here now, it's

06:33 even better than it was then.

06:36 Yeah, some of the things, you know,

06:37 like that we had to navigate through was business license

06:40 and figuring out which accountant to pick

06:44 or which lawyer to pick that, you know, now,

06:47 it's almost a book, you know, here in Birmingham

06:49 that, you know, you can just go step by step, one-stop shop,

06:52 and you can pretty much get all your business advice from.

06:54 I'm like, now, I'm like, wow, you know.

06:57 Eight years later, I'm like, man,

06:58 I wish I had some of this stuff now that people have.

07:01 And, you know, it's so many different entities

07:04 that, you know, they kind of work together just

07:07 to help businesses grow.

07:08 It's impressive.

07:09 It's pretty impressive what Birmingham got going on.

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07:15 So Birmingham's too small to have any bad restaurants.

07:34 All I'm going--

07:35 I like that.

07:36 Yeah.

07:37 It's a lot of great food here, but I

07:39 think it all complements well, you know.

07:41 And like from us, what we was trying to do, you know,

07:43 we got James Beard Award-winning chefs here, you know,

07:46 until you also got restaurants that

07:48 have been, you know, a staple in the community for 60, 70 years.

07:51 You know, so you really can't--

07:52 So it's history.

07:53 Yeah, it's a lot of history here.

07:54 So, you know, we couldn't take from that, you know.

07:57 We can only add value to that.

07:59 So our whole goal was just trying to add value to that.

08:01 And what I'm seeing here now is just more and more restaurants

08:05 adding value to the already great culinary scene

08:08 we have here in Birmingham that can rival, you know,

08:10 some of the major cities.

08:11 Yeah.

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08:57 (gentle music)

Travel Track On Sirk TV: EUGENE’S HOT CHICKEN [Birmingham, Alabama] - Part II

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