Virtual Gourmet

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The South has no lovelier city than Charleston, though twenty years ago the town was a forlorn and dilapidated as a musty yellowed antimacassar. For while many of the gracious and historic mansions had had good caretakers over the last century, most of the city was in deep need of a good rehab, a process helped, ironically, by successive hurricanes that required massive rebuilding of structures that otherwise would have drifted deeper into decrepitude.
     That restaurants have brought a wondrous vitality to the downtown area is testament to the importance of dining out at a certain level above fast and family food. Indeed, Charleston has managed to keep the worst aspects of fast food on its perimeters, though there’s plenty of fried seafood and junk food to be found around town. But in the last decade the city has acquired some superb and serious restaurants, most admirably reflecting the city’s Lowcountry culinary traditions. Some, like the darling Hominy Grill, aim for a respectable maintenance of down-home fare, from biscuits and grits to pork chops and mashed potatoes. Others, like the Peninsula Grill, Circa 1886, and McCrady’s aim considerably higher on the hog, while a place like Hank’s seafood restaurant hits tellingly in the middle, looking like it’s been around for decades, with seafood as good as it gets in or out of the South.
     A recent trip sent me back to one well-established upscale dining restaurant and two smart, modern ones that made me think the city can still absorb several more fine restaurants before the market is saturated.
     I had a splendid lunch (not an easy thing to come by in Charleston, because the better restaurants are closed at midday or offer a sandwich-soup-and-salad menu) at a smart-looking two-year-old spot named--unimaginatively--Grill 225 (225 East Bay Street; 843-266-4222; www.grill25.com),

fitted remarkably well into the entrance of the Market Pavilion Hotel. The big, open, tall-ceilinged room (right) is done in tile and dark wood, with splashes of color from oversized artwork and a lot of bright South Carolina sunshine pouring through the tall windows.
     It's an unpretentious place but not unsophisticated, with a definite air of Southern hospitality, and a solid wine list, especially strong in cabernet sauvignons. Grill 225 bills itself as "Charleston's only USDA Prime steakhouse," but the menu goes way beyond meat-and-potatoes, even at lunch when most other eateries around town are doing sandwiches and salads. They do an excellent Lowcountry blue crab chowder, but it's served with dry, overly sweet cornbread. Too cold a temperature was the only flaw in an otherwise fine shrimp and avocado gazpacho. Although there was not much evidence of sesame seeds (called benne in South Carolina), a dish of plump sea scallops with goat's cheese, fried green tomatoes and chili sauce had just the right amount of bite and tang, while Lowcountry stuffed chicken with a sausage-cornbread dressing and braised vegetables was juicy and flavorful, although too much of that flavor came from an overdose of sage. Very good indeed--in fact, downright scrumptious--was a peach cobbler with mascarpone cream and vanilla gelato, and they do a couple of "family style desserts" that serve up to 8 people, including "baked Carolina" strawberry sherbet and ice cream on a peanut cake, and fried fritters with honey and powdered sugar.
     At dinner appetizers run $8-$16, entrees $26-$32.
    tyr

Also new is Tristan (55 South Market Street; 843-534-2155), which was opened almost two years ago   to no great applause and little business. The owner, supposedly a millionaire trumpet player (not many of those around), wisely decided that a creative but well-grounded chef was needed and has been extremely fortunate in hiring a few months back the redoubtable Jimmy Sneed, whose own restaurant (now closed) The Frog and the Redneck, gave Richmond, VA, a dining venue as good as any in the South. Sneed’s bounced around since F&R’s demise, and there have been tempting appeals for his talents from Las Vegas. I fervently hope he stays put in Charleston, not just because the city can use a chef of his caliber, but because he understands modern American cuisine as well as any in the country and will bring the city additional gastronomic authority.
    Sneed is nothing if not restless, but he’s smart enough to know that you use the best ingredients without fussing with them (the highly colorful Sneed would use a more highly colorful term). So you get a combination of sassy style, bright ideas, and classic technique on every plate. I don't know why the word "fresh" is repeated next to so many items on the menu, unless less-than-fresh is offered elsewhere in town; but Sneed would never serve anything but the best ingredients in the market. So we began with a sweet red pepper soup with fresh crabmeat that is all about what appetizers should be--a savory little jolt of flavor that tingles the palate but in no way blankets it. I've watched Sneed make this soup elsewhere and it's as simple as a soup can be and still comes off as an achievement. Equally good, with a slightly sweeter edge, was a cream of potato soup with Edwards' Virginia smoked bacon. Sneed sautés grouper cheeks with Nantucket bay scallops of fine quality and serves it with a curry pasta and sausage butter--this last item compromised the delicacy of the scallops. Steamed mussels in a light saffron broth could not have been improved, the mussels not too large, their taste sweet, their texture neither too firm nor too soft. And sautéed veal sweetbreads with seared foie gras, spinach and sweet corn sauce was a delicious example of contemporary Lowcountry cooking in a master's hands.
     Braised lamb shanks in a black olive sauce took a turn towards Provence with excellent results, while my favorite dish of all that evening was cobia simply grilled and served with a perfect ratatouille that also evoked Mediterranean flavors at their best.
      The premises show a lot of money was poured in, including a "waterfall bar". The wine list is a hefty 400-labels strong, making it one of the best in Charleston. Appetizers run $6-$14, entrees, $22-$32.

Now at the Charleston Grill (Charleston Place, 224 King Street; 843-577-4522; www.charlestongrill.com) for four years, Robert Waggoner has refined his own style and grounded his own kitchen so that the restaurant is now one of those don’t miss dining experiences in Charleston. His training in European kitchens that include Pierre Gagnaire, Charles Barrier, and Mark Méneau gave him the basis of a classical education that manifest itself when Waggoner was chef at Nashville's finest, The Wild Boar. Upon joining the Charleston Grill, his food seemed a bit too French and calculated to impress at first, but now he is fully in synch with his clientele, which is a cross between well-heeled South Carolinians and well-traveled visitors.
The L-Shaped dining room, within the Charleston Place complex of hotel and stores, is just low-lighted enough to be romantic and just well-lighted enough not to be stuffy. There’s plenty of highly polished dark wood and rich fabrics throughout, all fronted by a lively and elegant bar/lounge, and the room has long been known as a prime attraction for jazz aficionados. The Vintner's Room (above) is absolutely beautiful. The wine list is one of this restaurant's greatest strengths, with both breadth and depth in every category, from an impressive number of Champagnes and California chardonnays to French premier crus and the hardest-to-find cult cabernets out of Napa, plenty of large format bottles and a sizable number of Heitz Cellars Martha's Vineyard vintages, Ravenswood zinfandels, and William Selyem pinot noirs (which go particularly well with Waggoner's cuisine).
The menu is a well-crafted mix of French and American ideas, so I let Waggoner choose my meal for me, beginning with a braised mushrooms soup scented with truffles and thyme and garnished with a crème fraîche laced with Courvoisier cognac. Very fine jumbo lump crabmeat and freshwater shrimp were combined in a galette with a concassée of heirloom tomatoes with a melted butter composed of roasted bell peppers, capers and thyme. A "foie blonde" chicken liver tart with stone ground grits and asparagus in a warm sherry vinegar-and-hog jowl vinaigrette sounded a lot more enticing than it tasted.

     The savory aspects of a ragout of elf mushrooms, artichokes and pearl onions with shaved parsnips in a mushroom broth add enormously to a simply braised barramundi fillet, and I loved Waggoner's respectful rendition of a Lowcountry casserole (it's called a cassoulet on the menu) of black-eyed peas, duck confit, lamb ribs, duck sausage and braised pork belly--the ultimate in downhome cookery sublimated into bourgeois cuisine. For something simpler, go with the Coloradi lamb--roasted chops in a Provencal tapenade marinade and grilled tenderloin over Bell peppers in a fennel, garlic confit and walnut jus. Well, maybe not that simple. Pastry chef Vinzenz Aschbacher complements Waggoner's menu with sumptuous desserts like a demitasse of praline mousse and espresso brûlée, a quintet of chocolate desserts, and a good old fashioned carrot cake with mascarpone icing with a newly fashioned Saigon cinnamon reduction and blood orange sorbet. There is also a selection of French cheeses available (South Carolina not offering much in this category).
   Prices for appetizers run $8-$14.50, entrees $28-$38.

I was hardly encouraged by the scene at Geisha as I pushed my way past the nicotinos lined up outside the front door in the cold and into a long, claustrophobic downstairs lounge without an inch to move around in amidst a singles crowd crushed up against the bar and begging for a table at this glamorous new restaurant on the upper east side. Intensely loud, with awful disco music booming off the low ceiling, Geisha is, within weeks of opening, the new hot spot in the neighborhood, and as I squirmed towards the staircase, with fifty different perfumes sucking up the oxygen, I truly wondered if the owners, Vittoria Assaf and Fabio Granato, intend this to be a place to meet and drink at or one to sit and eat in.
      So I was very happy that the upstairs dining room is a far more convivial place, with a David Rockwell design that takes full advantage of what is a fairly narrow room that ends in a tall window (left) overlooking East 61st Street. The room has been admirably padded to cut down on noise, despite wooden floors and undraped black wooden tables. So conversation is easy and civilized in a space done with back-lighted Japanese photos. The tables are set with mats, the glassware is clunky and cheap, and you get both forks-and-knives as well as chopsticks. As soon as you are seated--by very affable hostesses--a waiter dressed in an Oriental satin tunic (which looked a little funny on our waiter, who resembled Jim Carrey) offers you menus quite easy to navigate: Sushi and sashimi are separate, and the rest of the modern-style Japanese food is listed under appetizers, salads, main courses, and side dishes. The executive chef at Geisha is Michael Vernon, who spent seven years at Le Bernardin, while sushi duties are performed by John Maza, a Hawaiian previously chef at Sansei Restaurant on Oahu. These would be enough to ensure that Geisha is a serious Japanese restaurant, but Assaf and Granato, who also own several Italian restaurants in NYC, including Serafina Fabulous Pizza and Serafina Sandro, have hedged their bets by hiring the great Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin as consultant to the menu, and his imagination and attitude towards ingredients is admirably shown in dishes that are light, focused on a principal ingredient, and beautiful without being flamboyant.
     The sushi we chose--kampachi yellowtail sashimi and fluke nigiri-sushi ($3-$9 per piece)--was first-rate in texture and temperature, and a spicy tuna roll with cucumber, Kaiware sprouts, with scallions was a fine spark to the appetite, as was a caterpillar roll of freshwater eel, toasted sesame seeds and creamy avocado. Platters for sharing are available from $50-$100.
     Vernon does not allow his seriousness of purpose to get in the way of a little whimsy, so I think you'll thoroughly enjoy his grilled shrimp "lollipop," marinated in coriander, ginger and scallions and served on a sugar cane skewer. Black tiger shrimp dumplings sound fearsome but are very delicate Oriental ravioli with shrimp and coriander stuffing with roasted pumpkin and a lovely, slightly spicy green curry broth. The Geisha tuna sandwich is a terrific idea, with rare tuna accompanied by green papaya slices and a mango slaw in a sweet soy vinaigrette.
      These starters go well with the extensive array of sakes offered, from several Honjozo and Junmai examples by the glass, and some very rare specialty Daiginjo sakes by the bottle, up to $149. Otherwise the wine list is nothing to get excited about, with too many familiar labels and a few, like Château Cheval Blanc '93 ($225), that would get wiped out by just about anything on the menu. There are also a dozen or so specialty cocktails, mostly based on vodka.
      The difficulties of marrying western and eastern flavors are equally as troublemaking for a western chef as for a Japanese, so I was thrilled to see such fusion brought off with such striking results, especially Geisha's roast lobster served with udon noodles, portobello mushrooms and very good asparagus--one of the best dishes I've eaten this year. Almost as wonderful was halibut sautéed with coconut curry spinach and served in a shrimp sambal sauce. As I noted, the main ingredient--in this case a snowy white halibut--was uncompromised by flavors that just one tip too many of the teaspoon might have thrown everything off. But the balance here was superb. A taro root purée and warm spinach roll accompanied a grilled rack of lamb that came in a definite third in my rankings.
      Too often fusion restaurants get the desserts all wrong, trying to make odd Oriental flavorings into winning sweets. But those at Geisha seem very much a part of the whole menu, with a yuzu-mille feuille with kumquat confit a paragon of what such a dessert should be. Ginger crème brûlée was fine, but though much was made of something called "Green Tea Matcha Frozen Parfait Made from a Tea Ceremony Quality Tea from the House of ITO KEN," it didn't add up to much and tasted very bland indeed.
      With main courses starting at $19 and going up to $33 (for the lobster), Geisha is definitely pricing itself right for a young crowd that is fairly adventurous about their dining and fairly knowledgeable about what Japanese food is all about these days. If Geisha seems like two venues on one site--a downstairs bar scene and an upstairs place to find some very exciting cuisine--its culinary reputation may one day beg the owners to unify things a bit more.

“New York’s most famous bartender joins a couple of his best friends in a `periodic bacchanal’ that starts with martinis before dinner on Friday, wine with the meal, and Scotch afterwards. Being a stickler for detail, Dale DeGroff cites 10:00 PM to 4:00 AM as Scotch time. At precisely 4:11, he likes to hear Rhapsody In Blue, on the piano. Then a cleansing ale (Anchor Liberty, from San Francisco), a hearty Burgundy with breakfast (he once accidentally treated himself to vintage port), and Bloody Marys to soothe the morning. Then lunch, and to bed at 5:00 PM on Saturday. In an allusion to the biography of aviator-author Beryl Markham, he and his friends call themselves `The Straight On Till Morning’ group. By then, they’re flying.”—Michael Jackson, “Soon It Will Be Scotch Time,” Malt Advocate: The Magazine of Intelligent Drinking.

A group of four Australians in Darwin have announced plans to open a restaurant called Lewinsky’s, which they hope to make into a chain.

* On March 25 Atlantic City’s Borgata will hold an “Under the Super-Tuscan Sun” wine dinner prepared by Luke Palladino in the private room, tasting all vintages of Luce, 1993-2000, from Robert Mondavi and Marchesi de Frescobaldi. $150 pp. Call 866-MYBORGATA.

* From April 1-4 the 19th annual Saveur Texas Hill Country Wine & Food Festival brings together Saveur magazine editors, celebrity chefs, and international wine and food figures to Austin, TX. Events are individually
priced from $25 to $125 pp. For details visit http://www.texaswineandfood.org/

* From April 16-18 Chef Christine Zambito of The Sanderling hosts the "Spring Food & Wine Celebration"
with wine and culinary demos ($20 each), plus 6-course wine dinner at the Left Bank; Wine seminars conducted
by Michael Highsmith of Robert Mondavi Winery, Carter Nicholas from Barboursville Vineyards, and Clement
Brown from Virginia Distributing Co. $30 pp. An all-inclusive package is available at $240 pp. Call 800-701-4111
or visit www.thesanderling.com

* On April 18 Señor Fred in Sherman Oaks, CA, features an AIWF Mexican dinner with wines from Baja California. Chef Andre Guerrero and Juan Carlos Leon will cook a 5-course meal, at $65 pp. Call 818-789-3200 or 310-535-6090 or visit www.senorfred.com

* On April 22 Boston’s Radius will host a Château Montelena wine dinner featuring 5 vintages paired with 5 courses. $275pp. Call 617-426-1234 or visit www.radiusrestaurant.com.

MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Editor/Publisher: John Mariani. Contributing Writers: Naomi Kooker, Kirsten Skogerson, Edward Brivio, Robert Mariani, Mort Hochstein, Lucy Gordan. Contributing Photographers: Galina Stepanoff-Dargery, Bobby Pirillo. Technical Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.

John Mariani is a columnist for Esquire, Wine Spectator, Diversion and the Harper Collection. He is author of The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink (Lebhar-Friedman), The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink (Broadway), and, with his wife Galina, the award-winning new Italian-American Cookbook (Harvard Common Press). To purchase from amazon.com, click on the image below.