Food & Wine USA - (07)July 2020

JULY 2020 69

To celebrate Automatic

Seafood & Oysters’ one-year

anniversary, which took

place a few weeks after the

state-mandated shutdown of

restaurant dining rooms,

Automatic offered

Champagne in to-go bags

(left). It was such a hit with

customers, they’ve kept it on

the menu. facing page: Chef

Adam Evans with his wife,

co-owner and designer

Suzanne Humphries Evans

For the new to-go menu, Evans focuses on dishes that customers

might not make at home or find elsewhere, like pan-fried snapper

with a warm frisee-and-bacon salad (below).

“You have to take it day by

day,” says Evans of the

switch to takeout. “But

it’s comforting to know

that everyone is going

through it and figuring it

out, just like we are.”

Adam Evans has a deft hand with all things
oceanic—he spent years at the helm of
The Optimist, one of Atlanta’s most criti-
cally acclaimed seafood restaurants. Now
back in Alabama, his home state, Evans is
using those skills to champion the seafood
of the Gulf of Mexico, with an emphasis on

less-celebrated species and off-cuts. Try the

fish collar, a part that is typically discarded

but which Evans, like a fish fairy godfather,

transforms into the belle of the ball: It arrives

at the table crispy on the outside, tender

and flaky on the inside, and smothered in a

lush Calabrian chile butter. Follow it with an

order of the swordfish, which Evans poaches

in duck fat until you can slice it with a butter

knife, and a plate of the meaty oysters swim-

ming in pools of preserved lemon–herb

butter. There are no wrong turns on the

menu, but one thing is for sure: If it’s from

the sea, you want it cooked by Adam Evans.

their pivot

why we love them

photography by WES FRAZER