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:

• New dinner service at Wright Square Bistro 🍝 

• Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum: Celestial Seafarers

• Best places to eat with kiddos according to Java Burrito owners 🥪

• Homemade Magic Banana Smoothie 🍌✨ 

• Foxy Loxy’s Kolache and Horchata Latte 🦊 🧋

THE MAIN DISH

Wright Square Bistro settles into weekend dinner service🥂🍇🌆

Southern charm can be found around every corner of the Savannah, in the serene and verdant squares, overhead in the live oak canopy, on the faces of antebellum buildings. Mes excuses à pockets of Charleston and New Orleans, the singularly attractive appeal here is the best any city not along the Seine itself comes to replicating the ambience of Paris’s arrondissements. 

Those strolling along West York Street as the sun sets might well think that they are in the Latin Quarter, particularly if they peer into #21.

Michael Higgins and Tod Whitaker bought what was Wright Square Café three years ago this week, at which time they immediately rebranded the marquee, replacing Café with Bistro on the front window, and reimagined the entire menu.

Back in January, the partners expanded their eatery’s operations to include Friday and Saturday dinner service, offering a carte of scratch-made Southern-inspired starters and main courses. 

The fare is decidedly elevated Coastal Empire homespun, and the bistro’s interior feels like France with two and four-tops in an attractive and cozy but surprisingly spacious dining room that seats more than two dozen diners.

Call it dinner in The Hostess City of Light.

PREPARE TO BE DAZZLED!

Together with Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum

Nine of Savannah’s top artists will captivate your senses with neon lights, performance art, motion designs, amazing sounds, and more! Help these Celestial Seafarers recognize Savannah as the catalyst for America’s National Maritime Day!

This extraordinary collaboration is for two nights only! Marcus Kenney, Will Penny and other innovative artists will immerse you in their original creations! Sip on cocktails and enjoy a rare after-dark outing in the gardens and mansion of Ships of the Sea in Historic Savannah!

General admission - $20
VIP Admission - $60
Members - FREE

CHEF’S CRAVINGS

JAVA BURRITO COMPANY- Frederika and Michael Feketé 🌺🔥🥑

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 Frederika and Michael Feketé, the founders of Java Burrito Company, whose first location in the Village at Wexford (Hilton Head) is going into its eleventh year in business and whose Broughton Street branch just turned two in April. In just a few weeks, the couple will welcome Baby number two, to join big sister Freja, who is four and a half. 

Soon-to-be two little kids + two restaurants = precious little time to go out to eat.

FF: This is a super-easy answer for us because our go-to spot is The Collins Quarter. We love the vibe there. When not pregnant, we order a bottle of Whispering Angel rosé and indulge in the panzanella salad and their salmon, which is just unbelievable. 

MF: I get the mushrooms. She does not get the mushrooms. It is a wonderful dish.

FF: We have been loving Urban Deli, which just opened recently on Habersham. They’re great, and their chicken salad croissant is fabulous.

MF: I like the pastrami sandwich. It’s got some jalapeños, and I kind of like it spicy so I go with that one. I’ve tried the gyro. It’s really good 🥙

FF: And they have a cucumber salad that is so fresh and wonderful.

MF: Our daughter, Freja, loves the ginormous peanut butter and jelly sandwich 🥜

FF: Lately, I’ve been going to Ukiyo and pretty much ordering everything. They have this spicy egg noodle dish that I’ve been getting every week. It’s so good.

And for a special occasion, say after baby makes four?

FF: I think that we will probably go to the new Club Bardo and have a drink upstairs, which sounds so amazing right now, and grab a fancy dinner in that beautiful dining room that they just renovated. We’re also really excited about The Darling Oyster Bar 🦪 that’s opening downtown. Once we’re back up on our feet, after Baby, it will be open, and we’re just super-excited to see what [Derick Wade] has going on because it’s such a successful restaurant in Charleston and it’s such a great addition to Savannah.

-Neil Gabbey

TRIED, TASTED, TRUE

Magic Banana Smoothie 🫐🍌🍓

THE STORY BEHIND THE RECIPE

Before anyone takes the cutesy name my wife and I years ago gave my morning beverage too literally or someone at the FDA reads this, no, this tropical smoothie does not imbue its drinker with actual magical powers.

That being written, what I happily call the Magic Smoothie has been such a constant in my daily dietary life that I often think that it is keeping me alive. On the rare occasion that I skip drinking one due to travel or a meal out, my body makes me well aware of its absence.

While I cannot quite recall the precise birth date of the Magic Smoothie, I can safely estimate that I have been blending up this breakfast bevvie for more than twenty years. Back in the day, I coached high school basketball and volleyball, and though I might have given off the wholly opposite affect at the time, I was a stupidly superstitious coach. I always sported a complementary color polo to the uniform my players wore that day, and my boxers were intentionally the colors of our opponent. 

I believe that embarrassing TMI nugget has remained a secret until right now.

Initially, I christened the concoction Game Day Smoothie because, obviously, I made one for breakfast the morning of every volleyball match and basketball game, believing more in its powers to predestine an outcome than crediting its nutritional value.

Long before I stepped away from the sideline, the tropical treat became my everyday breakfast, easily enough to fuel and to fill me for a morning in my classroom. In the colder months, I still enjoy a bowl of maple and brown sugar oatmeal, jazzed up with a scant handful of dried Montmorency cherries, but more often than not, the Magic Smoothie and a couple cups of tea make my mornings marvelous. 

Look on any moderately medical website to see the mango’s health benefits: antioxidants for stress, fiber for the G.I., potassium for blood pressure control, and vitamins A and C for immunity. Pieces of SpongeBob’s house boast a similar list as well as B6 and digestive enzymes, and for years, I have tossed in a heaping teaspoon of Benefiber and a tablespoon of Siggi's Vanilla Swedish Style Whole-Milk Drinkable Yogurt.

No wonder my aging insides immediately know on the days that I have forgone this delicious elixir.

On our weekly shopping list, two half gallons of pulp-free not-from-concentrate orange juice are constants plus a half-dozen bananas, fairly large and relatively ripe. About once a month, if that, I restock the frozen mango and pineapple chunks: Kroger sells the three-pound bags of Private Selection for nine bucks apiece, which pares down to pennies per day. 

In case you are even considering using fresh fruit, dismembering a body has to be easier than getting your money’s worth out of a fresh mango, and using frozen parts, critically the banana, creates the milkshakey froth in the final product.

Because I have made the magic smoothie almost every day for more than two decades, I have gone through more than my fair share of blenders. Perhaps stubbornly, I remain a Cuisinart home cook, and I have burned through a SmartPower and at least three Compact Portables. My latest loyalty purchase has been the best by far: Cuisinart’s Hurricane Compact Juicing Blender. Now and then, I have to tilt this model to make the blades beat up the inevitable air pockets, but those instances are partially my fault for putting in too much frozen fruit.

The smoothie craze that began before 2000 has not appeared to subside one bit, and there is no reason it should. Then again, fans of Triple T know well my food frugality, if you will, so you knew this was coming. Even though this is my breakfast, I could not, in good conscience or economics, plunk down more than seven dollars a day at Smoothie King or Tropical Smoothie for the same 24-ouncer I make at home for less than two bucks - which includes the amortized biannual allowance for a new blender.

Along the way, I never hopped on the açai train, and only a few times did I try any other berry combinations, always returning to the magic tropical medley. Sick of it after all these years, you ask: au contraire, mon food frère. I look forward to it every day. It is that good.

Stay in your PJs, make your own Magic Smoothie, and put the money you just saved in your own Blender Fund. 

-Neil Gabbey

THE RECIPE

HARD GOODS 

• 1 frozen banana (medium)

• Handful (4-6 pieces) of frozen mango 🥭

• Handful (6-8 pieces) of frozen pineapple 🍍

• 1 heaping teaspoon Benefiber (optional)

WET GOODS

• 12 ounces orange juice 🍊

• 1 tablespoon Siggi's Vanilla Swedish Style Whole-Milk Drinkable Yogurt (optional)

DO THIS

1. Peel and freeze several bananas 🍌

2. Add the orange juice and vanilla yogurt (optional) to a blender

3. Snap the frozen banana into three or four chunks and put in the blender

4. Add the mango and pineapple chunks to the blender

5. Add the Benefiber (or other supplement, optional) to the blender

6. Depending on the blender model, pulse as many as twelve times to break up the large chunks of fruit

7. Blend on high for just under a minute or until the mixture has emulsified

BEEN THERE. ATE THAT.

Foxy Loxy Cafe 🦊🥐📚

We developed our fondness for the Foxy Family before we moved to Savannah. Our first-ever visit found us on Broughton Street in a wide-open loft above what was then Atwell’s Art & Frame. Not two blocks away was Coffee Fox, which became base camp for breakfast and bevvies.

When we made the decision to move here and began exploring neighborhoods south of the town’s touristy tracts, Foxy Loxy became our free-internet home-away-from-rental. On a house-hunt long weekend, I had my final job interview in the Bull Street sip-n-surf institution’s front room.

Since settling in in Ardsley Park, the flagship location of Jen Jenkins’ coffee-centric brand, which opened in 2011, has remained a frequent favorite of ours, one that evokes memories of our first days as full-fledged residents. 

The house, the magical back garden, everything about Foxy Loxy feels like Savannah. 

Back in January, Rufus Friday became CONNECT Savannah’s new publisher, but because of my workaday teaching schedule and his beyond-busy busyness, he and I had not yet met in person. When we made a weekend plan to get together over a morning pastry and a cuppa-something, still being new to town, he asked us to name the place.

Foxy.

I did not tell Rufus this that morning, but my wife and I had just been there the previous evening after splitting a birria burger at Strange Bird. We popped in on the way back down Bull to check out their sweets. The Hello Dolly bar that, for whatever reason, has grown sadly smaller and more elusive in recent years was yet again AWOL, so I opted for an iced horchata latte.

I am not a coffee drinker. For me, it is tea, but the blend of pulverized and steeped cinnamon, rice, and almonds in espresso is what every coffee beverage aspires to be. The only ‘problem’ with Foxy Loxy’s rendition is that they do not have one of those Trenta cups.

I savored another one on Saturday morning as the three of us sipped and chatted for hours in the courtyard. When we sat down right after Foxy opened, we were the only three out back. By ten o’clock, there might have been one open table.

Though I need no convincing to tuck into an Auspicious almond croissant, which was Rufus’s choice to accompany a cup of Earl Grey, it had been many minutes since I had had a kolache. The Foxes’ signature house-baked Texas-Czech pastries come with a variety of fillings, some sweet, some savory, and the sausage-cheddar is my favorite. The hunk of smoked sausage makes for meaty mouthfuls, like a totally ensconced pig in a blanket for Andre the Giant. 

Like the iced horchata latte, I only wish that the kolache lasted more than four bites.

My Foxy Loxy go-tos were great, as I knew they would be, but even better was being able to share this special spot with a new Savannahian and fast friend.

-Neil Gabbey