What does a classically trained cook do after two decades of working Saturday farmers markets and Birmingham pop-ups? If you’re Richard Bates, you open a small French-leaning bistro on a quiet stretch of John Hawkins Parkway in Hoover, name it after your grandmother, and start serving lunch five days a week to whoever finds it.
Chez Suzette has been quietly operating near the Riverchase area since Bates signed the lease three years ago. It’s a strip-mall space — no getting around that — but Bates stripped out the dropped ceiling tiles in the front room, put up whitewashed shelving lined with vintage French cookbooks, and installed a long marble-topped bar salvaged from a Birmingham restaurant that closed during the pandemic. The result is a room that feels considered rather than decorated.
Bates spent his formative years in a Lyon apprenticeship before returning to Alabama, and that background shows up on the menu without announcing itself. The steak frites uses a flat-iron cut from a Blount County farm, cooked to a proper medium-rare unless you ask otherwise, and arrives with hand-cut fries that have just enough char on them to matter. The croque monsieur is made with house-pulled ham and a béchamel that’s thick and lightly nutmeg-forward — the kind that makes the grocery-store version embarrassing by comparison. Soup changes daily. On a recent Thursday it was a celery root velouté with a thin drift of crème fraîche. Twelve dollars, small bowl, worth every cent.
The lunch crowd runs the range you’d expect from a suburb like Hoover: contractors eating fast, a couple of Riverchase office workers sharing a bottle of the house Bordeaux blend, a retired teacher who has apparently been coming every Friday since November. Bates moves between the kitchen and the floor without any visible anxiety, stopping tables to explain what the catch of the day is or why he switched purveyors on the duck confit. He doesn’t perform warmth — he just has it.
Dinner happens Thursday through Saturday only, and the menu expands to eight or nine plates. The duck confit he mentions is worth ordering: the skin crackles, the leg meat falls off the bone, and it comes alongside white beans slow-cooked with a bit of rosemary and pork. It runs about twenty-seven dollars, which is not cheap for Hoover but is a fair price for the cooking. Desserts are limited — usually two or three, made in-house — and the tarte Tatin, when it’s available, is the right reason to stay.
Reservations aren’t strictly required for lunch but are a good idea for Friday and Saturday dinners, when the forty-seat room fills by seven. Bates takes bookings by phone; there’s no online reservation system, which some people find irritating and others find refreshing. Wine list is short and well-chosen — mostly French, a few Italian, nothing priced to gouge. Bottles start around thirty-two dollars.
The restaurant sits far enough from Patton Creek and Stadium Trace that it doesn’t pull the casual chain-dining crowd, which seems to be exactly what Bates wanted. His grandmother, he’s mentioned in at least one interview, cooked the same way: carefully, without spectacle, for the people who showed up at the table.
