Across Alabama, chefs are building deeper relationships with the people who grow their food, shaping menus around what’s in season, sourcing with purpose, and creating dishes that tell a larger story about place. This locally-sourced mindset reconnects kitchens to farms, fisheries, and food traditions that have long shaped the South.

That connection is at the heart of Seed to Soul, a video series from SoulGrown that highlights chefs who are championing local producers and bringing greater awareness to Alabama’s foodways. Through each episode, the series steps into the kitchen to explore not only what chefs are cooking, but where those ingredients come from and the people behind them.

On Morris Avenue in the heart of downtown Birmingham, La Fête has become something of a fixture. Chef Kristen Hall, a Michelin-recognized chef whose path into professional cooking wound through pastry, home kitchens, and years of honing her craft, has built La Fête into a space defined as much by its hospitality as its food. Her menu reads like a love letter to France, but her sourcing and ingredients are rooted firmly in Alabama.

Chef Hall welcomes us into the kitchen to prepare a frisée aux lardons, a French bistro classic she makes her own by swapping traditional frisée for fresh arugula sourced from Lovelight Farm. She layers the peppery greens onto a plate, tops them with glistening bites of lardons, and finishes the dish with a beautifully poached egg, also from Lovelight.

For Hall, early summer produce is some of her favorite to work with, and dishes like this one reflect why.

“I think working with local farms and seasonality kind of keeps you honest as a chef. It keeps you focused on what’s growing in the ground, and as a chef you can get far from the farm,” she says. “When I focus on what’s available to me, what the weather is doing and the nuances of the seasons, that’s really exciting to me.”

Those ingredients come from Jennifer Dunbar’s Lovelight Farm, a women-owned and operated market garden that grows produce using sustainable, chemical-free methods under the Certified Naturally Grown label. The farm also partners with local schools to give children hands-on experience with where their food comes from, from seed to farmstand, connecting the next generation to the people and practices behind what’s on their plates.

For Hall, that mindset runs deeper than a single dish. The seasons don’t follow her menu; her menu follows the seasons. It’s a philosophy that requires patience and flexibility, but for a chef who finds genuine excitement in the nuances of what’s growing and when, seasonality is not a constraint, but rather an invitation to explore and create.

Hall’s cooking is certainly about more than a beautiful plate. At the heart of Hall’s work is the relationship between a chef and the land around her, and the belief that staying close to both makes for better food, and a better story.

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