It’s fair to say that having The Noble South featured on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” over the weekend was a big deal: It’s the first time since 2008 that viewers of the popular Guy Fieri show on Food Network have been turned on to an Alabama venue.

On top of that, Fieri showcased some tasty treats including chicken-fried quail, crawfish etouffee and some very distinctive cornbread made with heirloom cornmeal from a Baldwin County farm.

(The cornbread also uses sugar and mayo, which set Fieri back a bit. “I’ve seen a lot of cornbread go down but I’ve never seen mayonnaise in it,” said the host. He later pronounced the “mayonnaise cornbread” to be “really delicious.”

Now that the show has aired, Noble South owner and chef Chris Rainosek is more at liberty to talk about the experience and how it came about. Given that Mobile-area restaurateur “Panini Pete” Blohme co-hosted the episode, it’ll come as no surprise that Blohme, a longtime Fieri accomplice, helped get the ball rolling.

The Noble South opened at 203 Dauphin Street in 2014 at the onset of a boom in the downtown dining scene. At the time it was something unique and, for Mobile, almost revolutionary: A dedicated farm-to-table concept focusing on elevated Southern cuisine.

Rainosek said the first contact with Food Network producers came via email, and he’s not even sure if they specified which show was involved. “We got an email saying that they were coming to this part of the world and that [they wanted to] you know, to kind of ask if we were going to be interested.” Rainosek said the restaurant has gotten a few such inquiries over the years, so this one didn’t particularly jump out at him.

“I kind of didn’t pay much attention to it and then, yeah, Pete reached out to me as well,” he said. “And he kind of gave me a little bit of a rundown as far as how it would go. And then I just kind of talked to my family.”

Rainosek said his wife, Lesley, was encouraging. And he thought his kids might “get a kick out of it.” That’s son Warren Noble, 12, whose middle name adorns the restaurant, and daughter Lily Helen, 9.

“So we kind of just decided to make the jump,” said Rainosek. “We knew it was good for the food community as a whole, the fact that they were coming here. And once we found out some of the other restaurants that were doing it, [there are] some we’re friendly with, so it seemed like a good thing for the community as a whole.”

Blohme has said that “DDD” crews hit five restaurants in Mobile and one in Baldwin County. While local social media offers hints at a couple of them, only one other subject has been confirmed by the Food Network. Southwood Kitchen in Daphne will be among the restaurants featured in a new episode airing Friday, Oct. 27. Last week, the Food Network revealed that additional Mobile spots, as yet unnamed, will be featured on Nov. 10 and Nov. 17.

Once The Noble South agreed to do the show, it was time to focus on food. Rainosek said this involved an extensive discussion. Producers naturally wanted some distinctive, photogenic dishes, but he had the sense they didn’t want anything overly expensive. They also were thinking in terms of the dishes that might be featured in other segments of the same episode, how they might compliment or contrast one another. One concern on his side was that The Noble South offers different lunch and dinner menus and he didn’t want to create false expectations among viewers.

“It’s still a concern for how, people come in at lunch, whether or not they’re going to be able to get everything they saw on the show and kind of vice versa at dinner and how we’re going to handle that,” he said.

The Noble South features many seasonal offerings and regularly changes its menus. Given that “DDD” fans were likely to order anything featured on TV, Rainosek said he went through a lot of old ones looking for dishes that he knew he could reliably offer year-round. Chicken-fried quail was one that checked all the boxes.

It also involves some craft. Making it is “a bit of a process,” Rainosek said. “We brine the quail and then we soak it, buttermilk, then kind of do a traditional, somewhat traditional fried chicken breading to it.”

“It’s certainly a riff on fried chicken but, you know, a little more petite,” he said. “And then we just put it with some pickled things, something with some sweetness from, like, a spicy honey with a little bit of heat, a little bit of sweetness. We have some pickled turnips on there, some acidity. And, you know, so I think it all works really well together and you don’t have to commit to a full giant thing of fried chicken.”

Rainosek has previously said it was a very positive experience, having Fieri and his crew in the restaurant. He has described the host as “very generous with his time and very curious and very appreciative of what we were trying to do with the restaurant as a whole.”

Appearing on the show comes as a nice appetizer, if you will, for a landmark anniversary this spring, when The Noble South will mark 10 years in operation. Rainosek said it means a lot, especially since that span includes surviving the disruptions created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re just very happy to be kind of closing in on such a big anniversary,” he said. “Not a lot of places make it to that and it seems like it’s flown by and, you know, we’ve had obviously this huge global event in the middle of it. We’re happy to survive that and, we’re happy that we’ve been able to employ some people and become a part of the community, like we have.”

“After we opened, there was close to 30 place that opened within the first couple of years after we did, if you count everything in this part of downtown, from hotel restaurants to Chik-Fil-A moving down here, everything that wasn’t here before,” he said. “It’s been cool to see it grow up. We’ve always taken the mindset that the more people we can get down here, the better for everybody. I think that’s certainly held to be true. We’ve been very lucky to have developed the relationship with the city that we have.”

He hopes the show’s ongoing attention on the Mobile area will benefit that community as a whole.

“We had a really positive experience with it,” he said. “We enjoyed working with their team. We look forward to having new customers brought into the restaurant through this. You can try these dishes as well as everything else that we do.”

“We’d like to give a big thank you Mobile for all their continued support,” Rainosek said. “And we look forward to, entering our 11th year as strong as ever.”