The two Franks knew each other, but not for the reasons most people might know them.
Frank Stitt, the celebrated chef and co-owner of Highlands Bar and Grill, first got to know Frank McEwen, the founding father of McEwen & Sons grits, because Stitt bought feed for his horses from McEwen.
McEwen also owns Coosa Valley Milling & Hardware, a one-stop farm supply and mercantile store on the main drag in the small Shelby County town of Wilsonville. Stitt’s farm is a few miles up the highway in Harpersville.
“A lot of our farm supplies, from baby chicks to horse feed to salt blocks, all kinds of things, we would get (there) for the farm,” Stitt says. “It’s a wonderful, old-fashioned seed-and-feed store.”
In 2002, though, McEwen, acting on a suggestion from his father, Ralph McEwen, bought a stone burr gristmill and began grinding organic grits at his store.
He delivered a few samples to some of the chefs and restaurants around Birmingham, most notably one of his regular customers at the feed store, Frank Stitt at Highlands Bar and Grill.
“In a few days, he called me back and said, ‘I like your product. I would like to try to use some,’” McEwen recalls. “Then it went from there.”
Stitt later took a little tour of McEwen’s gristmill operation, and he was sold.
“When I discovered that Frank was sourcing organic corn and grinding it and that we could get grits or cornmeal,” Stitt says, “I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is just too good to be true.’”
Stitt, who had been buying his organic grits from the Golden Temple natural grocery just down the street from Highlands, instead began using McEwen & Sons grits, which he featured in his signature baked grits appetizer at Highlands.
Word got around.
“A lot of people found out that he was using it, and then they started calling me because it was in Highlands Bar and Grill,” McEwen says.
“Chefs from around the country would call and order stuff,” he adds. “I said, ‘Where did you find out about it?’ They would say, ‘Oh, I used to work at Highlands Bar and Grill.’ It’s amazing the reach (Stitt) has.”
These days, you’ll find McEwen & Sons grits not only on the menus of some of the top restaurants in Alabama but also in such cities as Nashville, New Orleans and Seattle.
For a country gentleman from rural Alabama, that’s high cotton.
“It’s fun,” McEwen says. “It really is. Who would think people would get so excited about grits?”
Stone-ground baked grits with Benton’s country ham, mushrooms and thyme is the signature appetizer at Highlands Bar and Grill in BIrmingham, Ala. Frank Stitt, the restaurant's executive chef and co-owner, uses organic yellow grits from McEwen & Sons in Wilsonville, Ala.(Photo courtesy of Stitt Restaurant Group; used with permission)
Buying a gristmill
The roots for McEwen & Sons grits, though, go back a few years earlier, to the mid-1990s, when McEwen’s parents, Ralph and Peggy McEwen, took their motorhome on a getaway to the Great Smoky Mountains.
In Sevierville, Tenn., they discovered a farm supply store much like McEwen’s, except it also had a gristmill in the back, where the owner ground cornmeal for many of the restaurants in the area.
His parents came back home with bags of cornmeal and told McEwen he might want to think about getting a gristmill, too.
Intrigued, McEwen and his wife, Helen, and their infant son, Frank Jr., later made a trip to the Smokies to check it out.
“It kind of piqued my interest,” McEwen says. “So, I came back (home), and it just kind of simmered in my mind for several years.”
Finally, in 2002, he found a gristmill in North Carolina and had it delivered to Wilsonville.
“I didn’t know what it was,” McEwen says, “and I didn’t know how to run it.”
He found someone to show him how to set the stones and grind the corn, and then he was in business.
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The initial thought was that it would be more of a hobby than a vocation.
“I started making cornmeal, just with the idea that it would be fun to take it and give it to people at a dinner party sometime,” McEwen says.
He quickly learned that grits would be more popular than cornmeal, so he bought a sifter to separate the coarser grits from the finer cornmeal.
After McEwen underwent open-heart surgery, Helen, his wife, convinced him that they needed to start eating an organic, high-fiber diet.
So, her husband began grinding his grits with organic corn from Fizzle Flat Farm in tiny Yale, Ill.
“If you are going to do something different,” McEwen says of his decision to go organic, “be real different.”
For about 10 years, the McEwens sold their grits, cornmeal and eggs at Pepper Place Saturday Market in Birmingham, which helped them get the word out about the glorious stone-ground grits in the shiny blue bag with the McEwen family crest on the label.
“Pepper Place did wonders for us,” McEwen says. “Pepper Place really got us on the map.”
Brothers Luke, left, and Frank McEwen Jr., pictured in this 2004 photo, started selling organic eggs when they were little boys. They are now on staff at a campus ministry at Auburn University.(Birmingham News file/Frank Couch)
Teaching the sons
Their boys, Frank Jr. and Luke, are the sons in the McEwan & Sons name, and from an early age, they pitched in to help their parents get their business started.
“They grew up with it,” Helen McEwen says. “They used to work down at the store some, and they would deliver for us. We took them to Pepper Place when they were little-bitty -- pulled them out of bed at 5:30 on Saturday mornings. But they enjoyed it.”
Inspired by their grandfather, a commercial chicken farmer, the boys also started raising free-range hens and began selling their organic eggs to many of the same restaurants who bought their family’s grits.
“I decided we would get a few chickens and teach the boys how to tend to animals,” McEwen recalls. “We started getting more eggs than what I needed, so I called the chefs at Bottega and asked if they needed any farm eggs. They said, ‘Hell, yeah.’”
Frank Jr., 25, and Luke, 24, have since graduated from Auburn University and have stayed in Auburn to serve on the staff of the campus ministry Onward.
But that little egg business they started has since grown into a small empire.
“Started out with 24 hens and now we have a couple of thousand,” McEwen says. “They’re all running loose -- 2,000 hens and three Great Pyrenees to protect them.”
Over the years, McEwen & Sons has also expanded its line of grits and cornmeal to include not only the original organic yellow grits, but also white grits, speckled (yellow and white) grits, blue grits and Indian corn grits – as well as polenta, cornmeal, rolled oats, fish batter, hushpuppy mix and organic popcorn.
A favorite of chefs around Alabama, McEwen & Sons organic, stone-ground grits are available online and at grocery stores throughout the state.(Birmingham News file/Frank Couch)
Singing their praises
Around Alabama, McEwen & Sons grits are featured on the menus of such restaurants as Hot and Hot Fish Club, Blueprint on 3rd, FoodBar and Dyron’s Lowcountry in Birmingham; Lucy’s and The Depot in Auburn; The Rawls in Enterprise; and Jubilee Seafood in Montgomery -- as well as in Big Bad Breakfast locations statewide.
For home cooks, they are available at such grocery stores as Whole Foods, Piggly Wiggly and some Publix locations, as well as such specialty markets as The Fish Market, Alabama Goods, Snapper Grabber’s, Catherine’s Market and of course, at McEwen’s Coosa Valley Milling & Hardware store in Wilsonville. They are also available online.
McEwen’s sister, Susan McEwen McIntosh, a registered dietician who has written about food for Southern Living, featured several recipes for her brother’s grits, polenta and cornmeal -- including the marbled cornbread from Continental Bakery and the shrimp and blue grits from the former Little Savannah Restaurant and Bar -- in her 2009 cookbook “Glorious Grits: America’s Favorite Comfort Food.”
Chefs around the state say McEwen & Sons is a great Alabama product that they’re proud to spotlight on their menus
“I’m a huge fan of McEwen & Sons,” Brandon Cain, the executive chef and co-owner of Saw’s Soul Kitchen in Birmingham’s Avondale neighborhood, says. “The man and his wife and family – they’re just great people. I like Frank a whole lot. Every time he comes in, we talk. He’s like a good friend who makes a great product.”
At Stitt’s Bottega restaurant, James Beard Award-winning pastry chef Dolester Miles uses McEwen & Sons polenta in her recipe for polenta pound cake, which is soaked in an espresso syrup and served in a rich and chocolaty tiramisu.
“Instead of using lady fingers, I decided let’s make it a little bit more Southern and a little bit more unique, so we use polenta to make a pound cake,” Stitt says. “It just has a wonderful flavor.”
And in one of the more inspired creations, last summer, Back Forty Beer Company in Gadsden unveiled a seasonal lager made with stone-ground corn from McEwen & Son’s.
“They got some grits, white corn grits, and made a beer called Grit Kisser,” McEwen says. “It was good. It was one of their specialty deals. We went up there when they were canning it. They took us through the whole deal.”
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At Saw’s Soul Kitchen, Cain uses McEwen & Sons grits as the foundation for the restaurant’s enormously popular Pork ‘n’ Greens, a customer favorite with pulled pork and collard greens heaped onto a bed of grits.
But they’re also plenty good as a stand-alone side dish.
“The really awesome thing about the grits is, they don’t need anything,” Cain says. “We sell pans and pans of cheese grits every single day, just as a side. It’s definitely its own menu item.”
A few years ago, Cain was working a two-week internship in the kitchen at New York City’s James Beard Award-winning Gramercy Tavern and discovered a familiar product from back home featured in one of the dishes.
“They were using (McEwen & Sons) polenta,” Cain says. “I remember seeing the bag, and then I was talking to chef Michael (Anthony) about it. He made a joke of, ‘We don’t do grits up here; we do polenta.’ But it was McEwen & Sons, so it was awesome.”
So, wherever they go out to eat these days, Frank and Helen McEwen always have lots of options.
“People ask me, ‘Where do y’all want to go eat?’” McEwen says. “I say, ‘I only want to go to people that buy from me.’”
And as long as they’re McEwen & Sons grits, he doesn’t care if they’re yellow, white, blue or speckled.
“People always ask me, ‘Which ones do you like the best?’ You know, I like whichever ones that are cooked for me,” he says. “That’s what I like. They’re all good.”
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