Dining in differently

If you attend one of Josh Haynes’ Alloy Thai speakeasy dinners at his Highland Park apartment, there are some things you won’t find. You won’t find sushi. You won’t find crab Rangoon. And you definitely won’t find pad Thai — or at least not in the way you’ve had it before.

But you will find yourself in a cozy living room surrounded by a Buddhist shrine, Asian décor and about 10 other guests, all who, like you, purchased a ticket to the dinner via alloythai.com. Each course will be presented and explained by the chef himself, peeking in and out of his small galley kitchen. In short, you’ll find yourself privy to an authentic, seven-course experience featuring Thai dishes unlike any in Birmingham and different still from those you’ll find in Bangkok. 

Where some other chefs shy away from making their food “too Asian” — choosing not to cook with pungent shrimp pastes or oddly textured jellyfish — Haynes has done the opposite. 

“I think people try it and find that it’s delicious and not what they think,” he said. “What we’re seeing in Birmingham is that people are getting more excited about authentic food experiences, so I think that really bodes well for me.”

If Josh Haynes is cooking for you, you’ll dine on dishes such as Kaeng daeng nok phirap (red curry dove made with wild dove breast, young ginger, horapha basil, kaffir lime, coconut cream and handmade curry paste) and lon tao jiao (relish of salted soybeans simmered in coconut cream with green mango, wild betel leaves and fried quail egg). You might finish up your meal with at-tim bay toey (homemade pandan ice cream served with coconut sticky rice and peanuts). 

The kicker? The kaffir lime will have been freshly picked from the backyard of Haynes’s mom, same for the basil and betel leaves. The peanuts are from The Peanut Depot, and the dove and quail eggs also are sourced locally. In fact, the majority of the produce and herbs Haynes uses are either grown in his mom’s Eastwood backyard or grown at Fall Line Hills Farm in Morgan Springs, where Josh borrows a little bit of Shindigs Catering land to grow his ingredients. 

Long time in the making

Haynes, a 30-year-old Birmingham native, has been cooking for more than 20 years. As the child of a single mom who had little time to cook and even less talent in it, he said he became the family cook at age 9. After graduating from UAB with a degree in international studies, he lived in Thailand, studied tea art in Japan and worked in a number of culinary jobs, including a Rick Bayless Project in Chicago and under Chris Hastings at Hot and Hot Fish Club. But now, Haynes has returned home with a plan. 

“I was lucky to grow up in Birmingham when I did, and I think it’s really lucky that I’ve come back when I have now that the food scene is growing and thriving as quickly as it is,” he said. “I felt like Birmingham was a place where I could do things that I couldn’t really do elsewhere.”

For him, this meant hosting 20 to 30 speakeasy dinners and a number of curry and rice pop-ups at local breweries since he returned in March 2015. It also meant taking on catering jobs ranging from a last-minute Valentine’s dinner for two to a small plate array for last August’s Birmingham Restaurant Week Preview Party.  

And more recently, it has meant deciding to finally open a full-service restaurant in downtown Birmingham. Alloy Thai, location to be determined, will be the first of many Asian restaurants Haynes hopes to open in Birmingham. 

For Haynes, opening Alloy Thai has been a long time coming. From his elementary school days spent in the library with an unexplainable  fascination with Asian culture, to his semesters studying in Bangkok at Thammasat University, Haynes said the idea for a restaurant has constantly resurfaced in his mind over the years.  

“I’ve always had the idea of a restaurant as a backup plan, which is nuts,” he said. “I think really I was just afraid to commit to it, because it was just a big challenging thing.”

But now that he’s made up his mind, he said he’s really committed.

“I’m currently wondering if I’ll be able to install a shower in the restaurant,” he said. 

Yet he readily admits that despite the hard work he’s put in and all the obstacles that still lie ahead, he couldn’t be happier. 

“It’s a hard lifestyle [being a chef]. When other people are relaxing at home or going out to dinner or seeing a play or spending time with their kids, you’re at work,” he said. “But just this past year, I have had no job security, no benefits, and I have had to create everything on my own initiative, but I feel so much more engaged and fulfilled and satisfied than I ever was doing anything else.”

He plans to seat about 60 diners in the restaurant that will be a fast-casual spot for lunch and a full-service dining room for dinner. Alloy Thai’s lunch menu will consist of about 10 noodle, stir-fry, rice and curry dishes. Dinner will be served in a shared small-plate format, similar to those of Babalu or Oven Bird, with prices ranging from $8 to $14. 

In addition, he said he plans to serve Thai street food such as fried pumpkin fritters and grilled sausages in the restaurant’s bar that will remain open between lunch and dinner hours. And just as with his speakeasy dinners, the dishes will change on a seasonal basis depending on what Haynes can source and grow locally. 

“A big component of it is the commitment to local development and growth, and that kind of ties in to why I wanted to do this in Birmingham,” he said. “I really like the idea of being able to make a success of myself and then contribute something, and with the restaurant and its commitment to local agriculture and sourcing sustainable local food, it kind of kills two birds.”

Sum of its parts

Though the location for a restaurant is still to be determined, Haynes isn’t letting it slow his progress. While he waits for the perfect property, he says he’ll be focusing on continuing to get the Alloy Thai name, one that has already been mentioned nationally by NPR, out, through pop-ups, catering and his signature speakeasy supper club dinners. 

For Haynes, Alloy Thai is the perfect fusion of two of his passions: Asian culture and cooking. His deep knowledge of and zeal for everything surrounding the food he prepares is one of the keys to success, he said.  

“To really understand a cuisine, to be able to share it, you can’t just know how to chop things or sear a piece of meat,” he said. “You have to understand the culture, understand the history, know how they developed and under what context.”

It is with these complementary fusions in mind that Haynes decided to name his business and upcoming restaurant Alloy Thai. Alloy is named partially for one of his favorite curry shops in Bangkok, which was named after an unintentional mistranslation of the word “aroy,” which means “delicious.” 

The word serves as a double meaning in that Birmingham is a steel city, and a triple meaning in that alloy is a compound of two or more elements in which the individual elements become indistinguishable. 

“I thought that was an apt description of how Thai food is prepared,” he said. “If you think about curry, you’re taking disparate ingredients — kaffir lime peel, cilantro roots, shrimp paste and white peppercorns — and you’re fusing them together to create something that’s so complex and flavorful, that’s so much more than the sum of its parts.”

For Haynes, starting Alloy Thai is just that, so much more than the sum of its parts. It’s about doing what he loves, and perhaps just as important, doing it where he loves to do it. With Thai food as his self-proclaimed home cuisine and Birmingham as his hometown, opening a restaurant here feels like nothing less than coming home.