Mon Louis Island is the kind of place that even lifelong Mobile County residents can drive past without registering. It sits down the bay, small and quiet, where the wind moves through the palms and pelicans work the shallows. Once a month, on the deck at the end of a pier there, a long table is set for exactly fifteen people, and a five-course dinner begins.
This is the Mon Louis Supper Club, run by chefs Amber and Hunter Harris, a married couple who built a high-end dining experience on the property where Amber grew up and where the two of them were married.
A Kitchen That Started With Sunday Dinner
Amber was born and raised on Mon Louis Island. As a girl, she told her mother she wanted to learn to cook. Her mother’s solution was to invite Amber’s grandparents over every Sunday after church and let her run the whole affair.
“I made it a whole thing,” Amber recalls. “Made an invitation, explained the menu and set the table the way I wanted.”
Those Sunday dinners turned into a career. She trained at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, then traveled to China and Italy, spent a semester in Napa Valley studying farm-to-table cooking, interned in Hawaii, and worked aboard private yachts. She did not expect to come home.
“I thought I was never going to come back home, but something brings you back,” she says. “I really did miss the people, the place, the body of water we have here. It’s really special and unique.”
Two Cooks, Two Temperaments
Hunter started working in kitchens at fourteen and never seriously left. “I’ve never done anything else. Flirted with other stuff, went right back to it,” he says. He grew up outside New Orleans and trained at the Louisiana Culinary Institute, absorbing Cajun, French, Latin American and Asian techniques along the way. His father-in-law describes the result as “that Louisiana flair.” Hunter puts it more bluntly: “Everything’s gotta have flavor.”
The two met working in restaurants in Fairhope, married, and three years ago went looking for a creative outlet. The supper club was the answer.
In the kitchen they balance each other. Hunter builds from consistency and repetition, developing signatures like his gumbo butter. Amber works in color and composition, plating dishes like blackened scallops over an Alabama corn nage. They push each other, and they rein each other in.
The Food Is Local, and So Are the References
The menus lean heavily on Gulf seafood, as anyone cooking on this stretch of coast would expect, but the couple deliberately builds in dishes that reach beyond the obvious.
- Mobile Bay Cioppino reimagines the Italian-American seafood stew as a redfish dish with Southern and Cajun accents, built on shrimp, oysters, okra and zucchini.
- Ode to Bayou La Batre Crab Claws marinates local crab claws in nuoc cham, the sweet-sour Vietnamese dipping sauce, and serves them with daikon, carrot and fresh herbs. The dish is a direct nod to the Vietnamese fishing community that has shaped Bayou La Batre for generations.
- Blackened Scallops with Alabama Corn Nage pairs seared U10 scallops with a silky corn puree, a vegetable succotash and a toasted cornbread crumble.
At least three dinners a year are built without seafood at all, for guests with allergies or different preferences. “But you still deserve the view,” Amber says.
Fifteen Seats, and No More
Every place setting comes with a name card, a printed menu, and a message in a bottle left behind by a guest from the previous month’s dinner. The chefs introduce each course themselves. Dinners proceed rain or shine, with a covered area beneath the raised house serving as backup.
Tickets sell out. Repeat guests have made it a standing monthly date night. The couple could almost certainly triple the table and still fill it, and they have chosen not to.
“I want to keep it intimate, because that’s what’s really cool about it,” Amber says. “It’s 15 people at that table. We get to talk to each guest, learn where they’re from, ask what their favorite course of the night was. When they end up leaving, we all really know each other.”
A Family Operation
Amber’s parents gave over their property for the dinners and have stayed involved. Her father built the sign. Her mother helps serve courses. Amber is not shy about calling for backup mid-service. “We keep it formal, but I’m still going to yell out, ‘Dad!'” she laughs.
What Comes Next
The couple has purchased a property about a mile up the road, a place with old mossy oaks, established azaleas and the same water view. There they intend to expand their catering and event company into a larger space with a commercial kitchen and an event venue.
The supper club itself, they insist, will stay exactly as it is: fifteen chairs, one table, one pier, once a month, on a small island most people never think to look for.