James Beard-winning Alabama chef Adam Evans on Timothy Hontzas disqualification: ‘Something good will come out of it’

As he frequently does, Birmingham chef Adam Evans dropped by Johnny’s Restaurant in Homewood for lunch on Monday, bringing along his wife, Suzanne, and their soon-to-be-2-year-old-son, Hank.

“I really love taking the family there,” Evans, the James Beard Award-winning chef and co-owner of Birmingham’s Automatic Seafood and Oysters, said Tuesday afternoon. “It’s like one of our spots that we always go to at least once, if not twice a month.”

On this particular visit, though, Evans wasn’t there just for the cornmeal-breaded fried shrimp, but also to show his support for Johnny’s executive chef and owner Timothy Hontzas.

It was the first time they had seen each other since Hontzas revealed last week that the James Beard Foundation had disqualified him as a finalist for this year’s best chef in the South award.

Hontzas was the only repeat finalist from among the five nominees, and, as such, was considered by some to be a favorite to win.

In an email to Hontzas, the foundation said that, following an independent investigation, its ethics committee “found it more likely than not” that he had violated the foundation’s code of ethics. The investigation, Hontzas said, stemmed from an anonymous complaint that he had yelled at an employee and at guests in his restaurant.

Hontzas has said in the past that, yes, he does sometimes get on to customers who leave the front door open or try to save seats – in fact, it has become something of a schtick.

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And as for how he treats his employees, Hontzas told AL.com last week that many of them have worked with him for several years.

“Why has my sous chef been with me over seven and a half years?” he said.

“Why has my dishwasher been with me over two and a half years? Why have two of the food runners out front been with me over five years? Why have two employees that used to work for me for two years come back to me in the past four months and asked me if they could have their jobs back?

“It doesn’t sound like too awful of a place to work, does it?” he added.

The James Beard Foundation has declined to comment on the specifics of its investigation, or on the investigation’s findings.

“The Foundation does not comment on specific allegations,” it said in an email to AL.com.

A show of support

As it has been for the past few days, the dining room at Johnny’s was packed when Evans and his family visited on Monday.

(A photo posted on the Johnny’s Restaurant Instagram account shows a crowd of customers lined up on the sidewalk outside Johnny’s waiting for the restaurant to open Sunday morning.)

“People are showing up and supporting him,” Evans said today. “I was proud, just for Tim, to see that. “And my word (for him) was, ‘I’m here for you.’ . . .

“It’s really unfortunate this is costing him something he really wanted,” Evans added. “That’s been taken away now, and it’s a shame, but I really think something good will come out of it for him.

“He’s too good of a guy, too hard of a worker, to not come out better on the other side.”

The disqualification, and the aftermath

This time last year, Evans and Hontzas were both first-time finalists for the James Beard Award for best chef in the South, an award that Evans later won. (Hontzas was previously a semifinalist for the award from 2017 to 2020.)

Before and since, the two chefs have been champions of each other’s cooking and frequent guests at one another’s restaurant.

Evans said he first got wind that something was up last week when he saw a cryptic Instagram post from Oxford, Miss., chef John Currence, a close friend and mentor to Hontzas.

The post included a photo of Currence’s 2009 James Beard Award for best chef in the South, which Currence had taken off the wall of his City Grocery restaurant and smashed with a brick, shattering the glass.

Evans texted Hontzas but did not get an immediate response.

The next day, he found out what had happened.

“A lot like other people, I was just kind of shocked,” Evans said. “I don’t recall something like this happening.”

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Following Hontzas’ disqualification, another Oxford, Miss., chef, Vishwesh Bhatt, the head chef at Currence’s Snackbar restaurant, took his 2019 James Beard Award for best chef in the South down from the wall of the restaurant, and, as reported by The Food Section, he stepped down from his post as a volunteer judge for the regional restaurant and chef awards.

The Food Section also reported that food and culture writer Todd Price of the USA Today Network also resigned as a judge on this year’s chef and restaurant awards committee after learning Hontzas had been disqualified.

Price told The Washington Post he wasn’t even made aware of the fact that Hontzas was being investigated and learned he had been disqualified not from the James Beard Foundation but from phone calls and text messages he received following last week’s AL.com story.

“I felt it was better to just step away and make it clear that I wasn’t involved in this process that was completely opaque to me,” Price told The Post.

The heat in the kitchen

Regarding the complaint about Hontzas yelling at his employees, Evans said Hontzas is a lot louder and more demonstrative than most chefs.

“I don’t know all the details, but I know, from what I’ve seen of him and from our interactions, that he’s a hard-working chef,” Evans said.

“He is very passionate about what he does, and he cares about the people that work for him and the people that come in there and spend their money.”

Evans said when he was working in New York City for celebrity chef Tom Colicchio at his restaurant Craft in the mid-to-late 2000s, the kitchen was noisy and intense, and emotions often boiled over.

“My experience in New York was that was how I was taught,” he said. “There’s a lot of screaming, a lot of yelling.”

One day, though, Colicchio told his staff that times were changing, Evans recalled.

“Tom Colicchio came into the kitchen and said, ‘Hey guys, we’re not going to yell. . . . This is not the way to do it anymore.’ It didn’t completely end after that, but he was making a statement.

“I can see how it really bothers some people, but for me, I learned really well in that environment,” Evans added. “You had a reason to not make the same mistake again because you didn’t want to get yelled at. I can handle it. A lot of people didn’t take it so well.”

The winners of the 2023 James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards will be announced June 5 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Following Hontzas’ disqualification, Birmingham’s Bottega restaurant, a finalist for outstanding hospitality, is the only Alabama restaurant or chef nominated.

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