Saturday, December 4, 7:00 pm
Members $90, guests $115

Back in September, Hurricane Ivan wreaked havoc across the Southeast, leaving homes destroyed, neighborhoods flooded, and several areas in a state of emergency. Among the storm’s most notable effects: millions of people lost electricity, roads and campgrounds along the Gulf Coast were wiped out, a 1,000-pound alligator named Chucky escaped from an Alabama zoo (he was later recaptured, much to the relief of area residents), and Joseph Gilley’s Gulf Coast Seafood Extravaganza at the James Beard House had to be postponed.

Fortunately for us, chef Gilley is giving the dinner another go on December 4, when he will be cooking up a meal representative of the local institution from which he hails.

The story of Jesse’s Restaurant begins in 1922, when Moore Bros. General Merchandise was opened in the riverside town of Magnolia Springs, Alabama. The Depression ensued, a world war came and went, men landed on the moon, but at Moore Bros. little changed from 1922 to 1993. For as long as most patrons could remember, they were greeted with a smile and some local gossip by Jesse King, who ran the store for more than 60 years. According to local lore, he never missed a day of work.

Times changed when illness and the threat of Wal-Mart shuttered the store. Enter Charles Houser, a Magnolia Springs native who bought the general store and the old post office next door, then gutted and rebuilt them, taking care to retain as much of the original structures as possible. Moore Bros. became a grocery once again and the post office was reborn as a deli dubbed Jesse’s. Overwhelming business in the first three days prompted Houser to re-envision the space as a full-fledged restaurant, all the better to showcase chef Joseph Gilley’s delectable regional cuisine.

Gilley didn’t plan on a restaurant career, but a dishwashing job after high school changed that. From his sudsy vantage point, Gilley kept a keen eye on all the goings-on in the kitchen, until, as he casually puts it, he “migrated” to cooking. That proved a happy accident—Gilley found his passion and proceeded to work his way up the line at Jesse’s. He has been head chef there for four years, and for the past two—when he isn’t “dishing up delectable lunches and dinners,” as one Southern Living writer described them—he’s honing his skills at Faulkner State’s Culinary Program.