On a stretch of Mobile Bay’s western shore just south of Fowl River, two restaurant-industry chefs found a way to cook together on their own terms. In early 2024, Amber and Hunter Harris were running the Mon Louis Supper Club, a monthly, themed dinner for no more than 15 guests served at the bayfront home of Amber’s parents on Mon Louis Island. The couple described the venture as a side project — and as a test run for bigger culinary plans down the road.
By January 2024, the pair had hosted seven dinners since launching the series the previous June, and every one had sold out. Each Mon Louis Supper Club evening featured five courses, including a mocktail, built around a different theme. Here is how two cooks with very different paths through the food world ended up behind the stove at the same waterfront table.
A Mobile Native Who Cooked Her Way Around the World
Amber Harris grew up in Mobile. She attended UMS-Wright before moving to St. Luke’s Episcopal School, where she graduated in 2013 as part of that school’s first graduating class. From there, she headed to the Culinary Institute of America, earning a degree in Culinary Arts and Business Management.
Her studies focused on farm-to-table cooking. She spent a semester in Napa, California, and studied abroad on food and wine agriculture trips to China and Italy. She also completed a four-month internship at the Four Seasons Resort in Hawaii.
After graduation, Amber took her skills to sea. She worked as a chef aboard three private yachts, cruising from Maine to Fort Lauderdale and through the Caribbean. The last of those vessels measured 197 feet and carried a crew of 15.
“I’m a water girl and enjoyed being a private chef for families, but I was ready to get back on solid ground after 8 months of living on a boat,” she said.
Back on land, she spent time in Lexington, Virginia, working as both a chef and a wedding planner at a wedding venue — an early sign of the event-planning passion that would shape her career. In 2018, she moved home to the Gulf Coast and started working as a cook with restaurateurs Pete Blohme and Nick DiMario. Within four weeks, she had become bar manager at Sunset Pointe in Fairhope.
A Louisiana Cook’s Road to the Eastern Shore
Hunter Harris was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and moved with his family to Mandeville, Louisiana, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, when he was four. He began cooking at 14 and went on to Louisiana State University, where he studied International Trade and Finance.
“I still worked in the kitchen while attending college and decided to get my culinary degree at the Louisiana Culinary Institute,” he said.
After earning his associate degree, Hunter went to work for Jay Ducote, owner of Gov’t Taco, a Latin American-inspired concept, and a chef who had beaten Bobby Flay in a cooking contest. Hunter deliberately moved between kitchens to broaden his experience.
“I wanted to get exposed to all types of cuisine, so I moved around. One stop was at Meribo in Covington, Louisiana, which is the best Italian I’ve ever had,” he said.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic upended the restaurant industry. Hunter landed on the Eastern Shore when he was offered an internship at Sunset Pointe to learn every part of the kitchen’s operation. That is where he and Amber met. He worked as the expediter — “the person who orchestrates the kitchen and calls the food orders,” as he put it.
From Sunset Pointe to Steelwood and Press and Co.
Both chefs’ careers kept moving. Amber became general manager at Squid Ink in downtown Mobile, while Hunter rose to head chef at Sunset Pointe. The two began dating, and Hunter proposed at Steelwood Country Club in Loxley.
Amber later joined Steelwood as its Food and Beverage Director, the role she held when she described the supper club in early 2024. “Event planning is my big passion,” she said.
Hunter, meanwhile, became chef at Press and Co. in Daphne, a then-new cold-pressed juice and organic health cafe owned by Kimberly Cox. With both of them established in demanding jobs, the couple started looking for a project they could build side by side.
Why Mon Louis Island Made the Perfect Dining Room
The answer was waiting at Amber’s parents’ home. The house sits on Mon Louis Island, the low-lying stretch of south Mobile County bordered by Fowl River and Mobile Bay, with a view across the water and a long pier stretching over the bay. It is a quiet, largely residential corner of the county along the route toward Dauphin Island, an area where fishing, boating and sunsets over the water are part of daily life. Nearby, Fowl River is home to Bellingrath Gardens and Home, one of the region’s best-known attractions.
The couple already knew the property worked for a gathering: their wedding reception had been held there. “I planned everything and it worked out really great, so this seemed to be the perfect place to host a dinner,” Amber said.
With her parents’ blessing, they created the Mon Louis Supper Club around a simple format — a unique, themed menu served to a maximum of 15 guests, once a month. The first dinner took place in June 2023.
Five Courses, a New Theme Every Month
That first menu leaned into the flavors of the Gulf Coast and south Louisiana:
- Chargrilled oysters from a local, all-women-operated oyster farm
- BBQ shrimp
- Duck and andouille gumbo
- Cajun toffee pudding with brown butter ice cream
Later dinners ranged far beyond the bayou. Themes included A Real Tour of Italy; a Northeast Feast, which one guest from the Northeast praised as authentic; an End of Summer Harvest; and Mediterranean and Latin American menus. The couple also scheduled a cooking class for January 29, 2024, and planned to feature purple Mardi Gras oysters that February.
The oysters on that opening menu point to one of the more interesting developments on Alabama’s coast in recent years. Off-bottom oyster farming, in which oysters are grown in floating cages or baskets rather than on the bay floor, has taken hold along the state’s shoreline, supported by research and training from Auburn University’s Shellfish Laboratory on Dauphin Island. Small farms from Portersville Bay to Mobile Bay now supply restaurants and raw bars across the region, and chefs who emphasize local sourcing have embraced their product.
That kind of sourcing ties back directly to Amber’s culinary training. Her farm-to-table emphasis at the Culinary Institute of America, and her study trips focused on food and wine agriculture, centered on the idea that a dish begins with where its ingredients are grown or harvested. On Mon Louis Island, surrounded by the waters that produce Gulf shrimp, oysters and fish, that philosophy fits naturally, and a menu that opens with oysters farmed a short distance away makes the connection between the table and the bay unmistakable. Hunter’s south Louisiana upbringing, meanwhile, shows in dishes like BBQ shrimp and duck and andouille gumbo, staples of the Creole and Cajun kitchens he grew up around.
“So far, we’ve had a lot of repeat guests, and we are excited to see it grow,” Amber said at the time. “After each event, we post the menu for the next dinner four weeks in advance on our Facebook page at Mon Louis Supper Club. People have been so receptive.”
A Growing Taste for Intimate Dining
The supper club format has a long history in American dining, from the roadhouse supper clubs of the mid-20th century to the modern pop-up and private-dinner scene, in which chefs invite small groups into homes, farms and unusual spaces for set menus. For cooks, these events offer a chance to experiment with dishes that might not fit a restaurant’s regular menu and to connect directly with diners. For guests, the appeal is the combination of creative food, a limited number of seats and a setting that feels personal rather than commercial.
A waterfront home on Mobile Bay, with a pier at sunset, is about as Gulf Coast as that experience gets. Keeping each dinner to 15 guests allowed the couple to cook ambitious multi-course menus while still talking with diners around the table.
Beyond the monthly dinners, the Harrises also offered the Mon Louis Supper Club for private party catering. They served hors d’oeuvres at the Bourbon by the Bay event hosted by the Coastal Alabama Partnership, bringing their cooking to a wider audience of regional business and civic leaders.
How to Follow Along
At the time of the interview, the couple used the Mon Louis Supper Club Facebook page to announce upcoming dinners, typically posting each menu about four weeks ahead of the event. Anyone interested in attending a future dinner, booking the pair for a private event, or checking whether the series is still running should look there first, since details, dates and availability may have changed since early 2024.
For Amber and Hunter Harris, the supper club was a way to test what they could build together — two chefs who had cooked on yachts, in resorts and in busy restaurants from Louisiana to Fairhope, finally sharing a kitchen of their own with a view of the bay.