Welcome back to Savannah Flavors, our weekly newsletter bringing you the latest delicious details from Savannah’s culinary scene every Thursday.

Here is what’s on the menu today:

• A new deli opens in the former Fox & Fig space

• An opportunity to try wine straight from the extreme altitudes of the Andes Mountains 🍷🏔

• The Big Bon Family’s favorite bites in town

• The french toast casserole recipe to get you through this cold weather

• Tried, tasted, and true at Erica Davis Lowcountry

THE MAIN DISH

Urban Deli opens in former Fox & Fig space: What every neighborhood needs

Just before noon on a breezy blue-skyed Sunday, diners were once again sitting at sidewalk tables on Habersham and Harris, catty-corner from what is arguably the most stunning of Savannah’s squares.

For now, the awning still says ‘Fox & Fig’, but on Jan. 24, Annette Baik and Jae Kim opened Urban Deli and began serving their own scratch-made sandwiches, salads, soups, and drinks in the property that was the home of the popular vegan café until this past December.

“We love Savannah,” said Baik. “We always said, ‘When the time comes, when we have the chance, let’s move to Savannah,’ and this just came true.”

In a relatively blink of an eye, the husband-and-wife team sold their restaurants and their home in Fernandina Beach and transported their successful sandwich shop concept to Troup Square.

“We moved in November, and I started renovations. The entire process took about two months,” Kim said this past Sunday, just their fourth day of service.

The couple expects that Urban Deli will operate under a “soft opening” umbrella for the next two weeks with a more widely announced grand opening in mid-February.

“We’ll just try to get all the kinks out, get everybody in sync, before St. Patrick’s Day,” said Kim and laughed knowingly. “That’s our plan.”

Together with Bonner Private Wine Partnership

Uncork Exclusive Rare Wines, Remote Vineyards Revealed!

Elevate your wine experience with grapes grown up to 9,000 ft in the Andes Mountains. 

Some of the rarest, and finest: Yet most won’t make it to the US. But wine lover and adventurer Will Bonner has made it his mission to import unique, small-batch wines that other importers overlook. 

And he’s sharing them through the Bonner Private Wine Partnership, where you'll get these exclusive wines delivered right to your door. 

CHEF’S CRAVINGS

Shahin Afsharian & Kay Heritage - Big Bon Family

Each week, I ask the folks behind the phenomenal food at our favorite places around Savannah these same simple questions:

When you are not in your restaurant kitchen, where do you go out to eat and what do you order?

This week’s Chefs’ Cravings come from the sunny smiles and inspiring brains at the heart of Big Bon Family, founder-owner Kay Heritage and chief operating officer Shahin Afsharian.

SA: That’s a hard question for me. I have lived most of my life in restaurants, so whenever I am not in a restaurant, I cook at home. 

KH: Flying Monk is my go-to place whenever I crave hot, savory broth anytime of the year or whenever I have been sick. Beef Pho with extra veggies and a good hearty squirt of sriracha to spice it up a bit! Heck yeah. 

SA: With the cold weather this past month, we’ve probably gone six times.

KH: I love going to Madame Butterfly with friends and family birthdays when I want to feel fancy without pretensions. This Asian-inspired Korean barbecue house is elegant and packed with flavor. Have you tried Togarashi Fries and Beef Carpaccio before you start grilling an amazing assortment of beef table tops? Holy smokes. There is nothing like good beef for dinner! 

SA: I like Madame Butterfly for the same factors. Even though it’s not that traditionally hundred-percent Korean, it takes her back to that sharing family attitude and interaction of cooking meats in the hot pot.

And for a special occasion?

SA: When I go out for date night, I like fine dining, so I’m still one of the followers of Stone & Webster. It has a great selection of raw bar. The seafood tower is crafted perfectly plus hand-selected oysters. The seasonal mignonettes are really really good also. We also like to share the tomahawk steak. It’s more like a family gathering there, and that’s why we like it, too. We order a bunch of things for the table and share them around.

KH: And for an amazing Italian feast? St Bibiana! Arancini and grilled octopus are must starters, with sole piccata and share that Hunter Cattle Porterhouse with your fam. Oh, absolutely please.  

SA: Fleeting has been a good one, for sure, and Bar Julian was also a favorite this last year.

TRIED, TASTED, TRUE

French toast casserole

THE STORY BEHIND THE RECIPE

Not until my wife and I returned from our years living on St. Thomas did I really start cooking. In Baltimore, we bought our first house, and in that kitchen, I cut my teeth as a home chef. 

Those were the incipient years of both the internet and Food Network, a time when culinary magazines had not yet been rendered obsolete. I will forever credit my mom for teaching me how to cook and simply how to enjoy being in the kitchen when I was little, and in my twenties, the lion’s share of my learning came from Cook’s Illustrated, Cooking Light, and EatingWell.

In the November 2006 holiday issue of Cooking Light was a recipe for Marmalade French Toast Casserole. From the first attempt, it was a winner, a sweet spin on a breakfast standard that is the foodchild of a bread pudding and a jam sandwich. 

More often than not, I baked my own baguettes to slice and ‘stale’ before assembling this casserole, but after a few years, I began making brioche or challah and tweaked the original recipe in other ways.

A few weeks ago, a dear friend and former colleague gifted me a home-made challah that his wife had baked, and my wife had the brilliant idea to turn the gorgeous bread into a glorious french toast casserole. Real friends bake for each other.

Cooking Light’s list of ingredients comically calls for just three tablespoons of softened butter that, somehow, are supposed to be spread over both sides of 24 pieces of french bread. Yeah: try a full stick, at least.

In my most recent renditions, I eschewed spreading the butter entirely and, instead, made a simple butter-brown sugar caramel, half to coat the base of the baking dish, much like a cheat first step in a cinnamon roll recipe, and the remaining half thinly spread over the top layer. The butter content in brioche and challah obviates the need to slather the slices at all.

I also cut the milk volume down to two cups because the original amount, mixed with six eggs, often overflowed the 9x13 baking dish, and ¼ cup sugar was plenty for a custard that was going to mix with a full jar of marmalade. Cinnamon is always a welcome guest at a baked fruit party, so I tossed in a teaspoon.

Speaking of the marmalade: the original preserve called for certainly works well with the recipe, though I found that cherry preserves bakes up beautifully between the bread. While the sweetness will vary depending on the conserve-of-choice, I imagine that any would suffice.

Like I do with brownies, which will be a future ‘TT&T’, half of the bake is topped with chopped nuts. My half. If cherries are your jam, go with sliced almonds. For the marmalade version, pick pecans or walnuts.

THE RECIPE

HARD GOODS

• ½ c. (1 stick) unsalted butter

• ⅔ c. (135 grams) brown sugar

• Pinch of kosher salt 

• 20-24-ounce loaf of challah bread, cut into several slices

• 1 12 or 13-oz. jar cherry preserves (or orange marmalade)

• ¼ c. white sugar

• 1 t. cinnamon

• Few gratings of fresh nutmeg

• Nuts: sliced almonds, chopped pecans, or chopped walnuts (optional)

• Confectioner’s sugar (optional)

WET GOODS

• 6 large eggs

• 2 c. whole milk

• 2 t. vanilla extract

DO THIS

1. Melt the butter over low heat in a small saucepan and remove from the heat

2. Whisk the brown sugar and the pinch of salt into the melted butter until a basic caramel emulsifies

3. Coat a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray

4. Pour approximately half of the basic caramel into the prepared baking dish and spread evenly to the edges

5. Arrange the bread slices into a single layer covering the caramel and using torn pieces to fill in any gaps

6. Spread the jar of preserves over the top side of the bread slices evenly to the edges

7. Arrange more bread slices atop the preserves filling in any gaps with torn pieces, essentially making a jelly sandwich

8. In a large bowl, whisk the milk, eggs, white sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg

9. Carefully and evenly pour the liquid custard over the bread, allowing it to seep down

10. If need be, gently press on the bread with the backside of a fork to make sure the custard soaks through

11. Pour the remaining half of the basic caramel atop the bread and spread evenly to the edges

12. Sprinkle the top with nuts (optional)

13. Refrigerate for at least an hour and up to eight hours before baking

14. Preheat the oven to 375°

15. Place the baking dish on a parchment-lined baking sheet

16. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until top browns

17. For service, dust slices with confectioner’s sugar (optional)

BEEN THERE. ATE THAT.

Erica Davis Lowcountry

My wife joined me on a recent weekend errand to Home Depot because I had salted and sweetened the deal with a flunch, our Portmanteau of ‘fun’ and ‘lunch’, at nearby Erica Davis Lowcountry.

Since it opened in 2019, a charming resurrection of the dilapidated former home of Charlie Teeple’s Seafood, this local-loved and family-friendly eatery has been a favorite of ours, especially for a Saturday lunch or an early Friday evening dinner at one of their outdoor tables.

We envy the Thunderbolt throng and wish that this resto were in our neighborhood. If so, we would eat there far more often and would certainly sample much more of the menu. As it is, we always split the fantastic fried flounder platter with sides of smoked molasses Brussels and Savannah red rice.

No apologies for our predictable palates.

In the low-50s, it was too chilly to sit outside, so we wisely walked in right at eleven o’clock and were the first ones there, snagging seats against the big garage-door windows. Before 11:30, two tour buses had pulled up and emptied out, and only two tables remained open.

Though we usually enjoy the outside ambience, the interior of Erica David Lowcountry is just as coastal cute as it was the day it opened, off-white shiplap siding accented by oil-rubbed-bronze fixtures.

Because of the chill in the air, I started with a cup of the crab stew, a buttery cream-based southern chowder filled with stringy claw meat and a customary suggestion of sherry ($4.95)

Yet again, the flounder portion was ample for the two of us, lightly breaded with fine, sweet cornmeal and fried perfectly. The tartar sauce is nice but not necessary to flavor the fish ($15.95). As usual, though we are not truly regulars, our sweet servers brought us an extra plate so that we would split in style.

I humbly maintain that these sprouts are the best side in the city and should be served in a movie popcorn bucket, which would still not be enough. The tiny whole and half brassicae bulbs were fork-tender, and we used our fingers to pick up every last molasses-coated charred leaf.

The big ice-cream-scoop serving of Savannah red rice was chock-full of sausage chunks and still stacks up to Munchie’s version as the best that I have eaten in the last several years.