Famous Alabama restaurant reopens months after major fire

Eight months after being closed due to a major fire, the SpringHouse restaurant in Russell Crossroads on Lake Martin in Alabama will reopen for dinner service next Wednesday, August 14.

“We’re back home,” SpringHouse chef and CEO Pete McKenney told AL.com days before the restaurant reopened. “Everyone is super excited.”

For the past few months, McKenney and his team of cooks and servers have continued to serve the SpringHouse menu — on white tablecloths and with all the SpringHouse cutlery, tableware and wine glasses — to their guests at the nearby but more casual Fanny Goldmine Diner, another Russell Crossroads restaurant that, like SpringHouse, is part of Russell Lands.

“Everyone was so grateful that we did it,” said Roger Holliday, Russell Lands vice president. “I got emails, texts and letters (saying, ‘Thank you all for what you did.’”

“We started in mid-February and everyone — the staff, the customers, everyone — is ready (to come back). The food was good, but it just didn’t have the same atmosphere.”

SpringHouse has been closed for renovations and refurbishment since December 23, when a chimney fire spread to the attic, hampering firefighting efforts.

According to Holliday, the Alexander City Fire Department — along with volunteer fire departments from Our Town, Ray, Kowaliga and Windermere — responded to the call for help extinguishing the blaze, pouring about a million gallons of water onto the restaurant to contain the blaze.

“Structurally, none of the beams were burned,” Holliday said. “So if it had been just fire (damage), we would have been out of the house for maybe two months. But it was the water (damage) that ruined it.”

The roof and interior walls, ceilings and floors of the restaurant had to be replaced, as well as tables and chairs, Holliday said. Many of the old photographs on the walls were saved.

When the restaurant reopens Wednesday, it will look much the same as it did before Dec. 23, Holliday said.

SpringHouse is a 144-seat rustic restaurant serving innovative Southern cuisine with an emphasis on wood-fired meats and local and seasonal produce. It opened in April 2009 and is the centerpiece of the Russell Crossroads development at Russell Lands.

In 2014, Southern Living magazine named SpringHouse one of the “100 Best Restaurants in the South.”

Rob McDaniel, the restaurant’s founder and executive chef, worked at SpringHouse for five years and was a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: South before leaving in 2020 to open his own restaurant, Helen, in downtown Birmingham.

McKenney, an Ohio native who previously served as executive chef at Willow Point Golf & Country Club in Lake Martin before leaving to work in restaurants in Washington state, Arizona and Vermont, returned to Lake Martin in 2021 to take over as executive chef at SpringHouse.

Many of the restaurant’s regulars — some of whom eat there every weekend — have already made reservations for the reopening this week, Holliday said.

“When we knew when we were going to open, we called our regulars,” Holliday said. “We have some people who have regular reservations because they come to the lake every weekend. They come every Friday or Saturday, and some come Friday and Saturday.

“As soon as we knew the possible date (of reopening), we started getting them all signed up because they are stressed out too.”

Holliday added that the SpringHouse crew, who have been hard at work preparing the restaurant to reopen, are also looking forward to serving them.

“They’re excited,” he said. “They’re ready to go. They’re tired, but they’re ready to go home.”

SpringHouse is located at 12 Benson Mill Road in Alexander City, Alabama. The phone number is 256-215-7080. Dinner is open Wednesday through Saturday from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m., and brunch is open on Sundays from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. For more information, go here.