From Emeril’s Saucier to Wine Importer: The Chef’s Path of Seth Hargett
The best stories in the restaurant business rarely run in a straight line, and Seth Hargett’s is no exception. The Mobile native has been a ski-town line cook, a New Orleans saucier, a Grand Hotel menu-rebuilder, a seafood-shack partner, and — through a dozen years and 13 stores — a Five Guys franchisee. Today, as founder of Absintheminded Enterprises, he has turned a lifetime of kitchen and wine knowledge into a business built around the two things he loves most: good food, and the wine that goes with it.
Mobile Roots and a Track Scholarship
Hargett grew up in Mobile and graduated from St. Paul’s Episcopal School before heading to Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, on a track scholarship. The fine-dining education, though, started earlier — at his grandfather’s table in Tampa. His grandfather, a retired Air Force colonel, was known for preparing fabulous meals, and young Seth was exposed to serious cooking and wine from an early age. His grandmother, a Mobile Bay native, knew her way around a kitchen too, especially after a fishing trip or a jubilee on Mobile Bay.
Vail, Boulder and the Birth of a Calling
After his sophomore year, Hargett moved to Vail, Colorado, with his best friend from Mobile, waiting out in-state residency for the University of Colorado while working in restaurants. At the Hyatt Regency in Beaver Creek, he caught the fine-dining bug — watching, in particular, a maître d’ who controlled the entire dining room with nothing but his eyes. By then, he says, he knew what he wanted to do with his career.
He finished his degree in Sociology in Boulder while working at the European Café, then one of the two top Zagat-rated restaurants in the city. From there he followed the classic chef’s route south to New Orleans, where he talked his way into the kitchen of Chef Gerard Maras, the executive chef at Mr. B’s Bistro. Maras hired him and taught him the intricacies of farm-to-table cooking — a philosophy Hargett has carried ever since.
Emeril’s, and a $25,000 Bottle of Wine
Looking to learn from the best, Hargett left Mr. B’s for Emeril’s, the flagship of Emeril Lagasse’s New Orleans empire, where he served as saucier — the cook responsible for every sauce that left the kitchen. The job came with education of every kind. One memorable night, actor Nicolas Cage came in and bought a $25,000 bottle of wine, sharing it with the young saucier. “It was quite a learning experience,” Hargett says, “to say the least.”
While living in New Orleans, he kept returning to Mobile and Point Clear to cook private meals for family, friends, and clients who knew his work. The format was improvisational — clients bought all the ingredients, and he never knew what he would be cooking with until he arrived. “Kind of like some of the reality TV cooking shows today,” he says.
Rebuilding the Grand Hotel’s Menu
In the early 2000s, those private South Alabama dinners caught the attention of Mike Eveleth, then the Grand Hotel’s Director of Food and Beverage, who recruited Hargett as the resort’s Chef de Cuisine and handed him the task of revamping the menu. What he found when he walked into the kitchen was a time capsule: frozen fish and vegetables, powdered sauces. “It was a typical hotel menu when I started,” he says.
Hargett rebuilt the kitchen’s sourcing from the ground up — fresh Gulf seafood, quality meats and poultry, real vegetables — and rebuilt the menu around them. He spent four years at the Grand before helping a friend open Floppers Seafood Shack in Loxley, all while continuing to cook private dinners and parties for clients and business executives across South Alabama.
Thirteen Stores and a Good Exit
In 2009 came the opportunity that changed his trajectory: the chance to develop and own Five Guys restaurants in the Pensacola area, Baldwin County, New Orleans, and Memphis, Tennessee — with two additional stores later added on the Mississippi coast. Living on family property in Baldwin County with his fiancée, Ree Segars, their son Grayton, and a yellow Labrador named Sonny, Hargett had convenient proximity to a growing franchise operation.
Twelve good years and 13 stores later, Hargett and his partners sold the Five Guys business in 2021 — an exit that gave him the freedom to return to his first love. In July 2022, he and Ree formed Absintheminded Enterprises, a wine importing and distributing company licensed in Alabama.
Small Producers, Fair Prices, Big Palates
Absintheminded’s focus reflects Hargett’s years at high-end kitchen tables: small-production growers’ varietals and up-and-coming winemakers, with wines from South Africa, France, Spain, Oregon, and California — bottles he describes as high-quality and well-crafted yet excellently priced. The business model leans on the relationships he built over two decades in restaurant kitchens: he introduces his portfolio to the chefs he has worked with and alongside, and the reception across Alabama has been strong.
The wine business also folds back into the private-dinner work he has done since his New Orleans days. With his combined food and wine experience, Hargett prepares dinner and wine-pairing combinations for small events and celebrations — the kind of evenings where the host gets to enjoy their own party. “I’m doing what I love,” he says. “I like working with people who appreciate good food and wine. It’s fun to use local fresh ingredients and help people expand their palates!”
The Grand Hotel Lesson
If there is a theme in Hargett’s career, it is the conversion of institutional food into real food. At the Grand Hotel, that meant replacing a powdered-sauce hotel menu with fresh, seasonal cooking. At Five Guys, it meant running a fast-casual operation with the consistency of a fine-dining kitchen. At Absintheminded, it means treating wine the way a chef treats ingredients — as something that should taste like where it comes from, made by people who care about the result.
For South Alabama diners, the path matters less than the plate. From a Hyatt kitchen in Beaver Creek to a five-day-a-week import schedule across the state, Hargett has spent his career making sure the food — and now the wine — is worth the occasion. “I like working with people who appreciate good food and wine,” he says. “It’s fun to help people expand their palates.”
Absintheminded Enterprises is based in Baldwin County and distributes small-production wines across Alabama, with private dinner and wine-pairing services available for special events.