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:

• Husk welcomes its new Executive Chef, Jacob Hammer 🍾

• Sobremesa’s hot take on Savannah’s best restaurants 🔥

• Homemade scone recipe made for your favorite mix-ins 🍒

• Legendary sliders from Sly’s Sliders and Fries 🍔

• Answering the most heated food debates 🤔

THE MAIN DISH

Jacob Hammer makes return to Southern food standard bearer as executive chef 🥂🦪

Jacob Hammer and I first met while he was executive sous chef of JW Marriott’s Plant Riverside District. At the time, he and his team were cooking up an Old World Christmas Dinner at Stone & Webster Chophouse whilst he was overseeing the property’s fourteen food and beverage outlets plus its banquet operations.

About a year and a half later, the North Georgia native who grew up in Savannah took the opportunity to come back to Husk to become its executive chef, succeeding Brian Fiasconaro who had succeeded longtime main man Chris Hathcock.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Hammer said of being back at the Sean Brock-begun brand and flagship of The Neighborhood Dining Group. “There’s a lot of expectation, from guests, from employees, from past employees, from the brand as a whole, but it’s refreshing to step back into a building, a restaurant where I know that everyone shares the same honest mantra.” 

On a stormy Saturday, the stately house at 12 West Oglethorpe was still packed for brunch, but I stole a few minutes to talk to the venerable restaurant’s relatively new leadership trio of Hammer, pastry chef Rebecca Elsishans, and general manager Jessica Helft. 

CHEF’S CRAVINGS

Sobremesa - Jason Restivo + Ryan Ribeiro 🍸🌺

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 courtesy of Jason Restivo and Ryan Ribeiro, fifty-fifty partners in wine, food, and experience at Sobremesa 🍷 Back in December, the former joined forces with the latter to elevate the Thomas Square sit-and-sip into a distinct dining destination. 

JR: I have a couple places that I love to go to. I think we’ll start with the neighborhood. There are so many different flavors in Starland. Just recently, I really fell in love with the idea of a salad. I generally do not eat salads in my diet week to week, and I know that’s a terrible thing to say, but I think the wedge salad over at Brochu’s is the best salad in town. It’s got these beautiful, perfectly cut lardons, an excellent soft-boiled egg, the dressing for these baby romaine hearts, everything is so delicious. No matter how busy they are, the salad comes to you in ten minutes, and it only takes about ten minutes to eat 🥗 I pop in for a Miller High Life and a wedge salad, and I walk right back over to Sobremesa.

RR: Lately, we’ve enjoyed Strange Bird quite a bit with their new flavor profiles, just the textures and the balance of the food. Everything’s right there. It’s a relaxing and chill environment. The refried butterbean mash that’s got some pepper on it and some crunchy items. It’s so good and so interesting.

JR: Before I open, one of my lunch spots is Strange Bird, and I’m always a sucker for the carnitas tacos there. Now, I’m going to Goody’s, and I’ll do the fried chicken sandwich. I don’t know what they’re doing with their tomatoes, but I love them. And then I’ll go to Bull Street Taco That’s my other one 🌮 I can’t get enough of the consistent flavors there. I’ll stick to the Baja fish, the cauliflower, and I’ve now incorporated the chorizo. I never get sides.

RR: I really enjoy Chive for a seafood spot in town, a wonderful experience. The cocktails are delicious, and the bar staff is friendly. The tuna tartare they’ve got is very good, and that Chilean sea bass filet is amazing. It’s got a beautiful risotto under it and a chili-Asian spicing that is full of flavor 🌶 The service is always good, and the environment is cool, kind of unique.

JR: My other favorite, for when I’m feeling a little too happy, is the Doublestack at Over Yonder. I’ve recently discovered the power of ranch being poured all over the french fries, so I use that toothpick that they use to hold the burger together as my fork. I eat my fries covered with ranch first, and I eat my burger second 🍟 When I’m not in the mood for a smash burger and want a little bit of temperature, I love what Green Truck has always been committed to: working with farmers. I’ve seen Josh (Yates) and Whitney (Shephard) at the Farmers’ Market on Saturdays. I knew they went, but now that I am back into ownership, I am really seeing the bigger picture of what it is to build a menu driven by what you can get locally, and Green Truck does that across the board.

And for a special occasion?

JR: I have three locations that I go to. Common Thread is one of those places for an anniversary dinner or guests coming in from out of town and you want to show off what Savannah is.

RR: When I’m not at Sobremesa, we love going to Common Thread. Alexia and I will sit down and pick out a beautiful white and probably start with their oyster round and then move into the beef tartare or beef carpaccio 🦪 The menu rotates so often that we always find new items that are really interesting. We move through the small, medium, and large courses and share each one. A super-fun experience, a great staff, and the environment is awesome and relaxing. That’s a number one pick for me.

JR: I have to tell you, I love the ambience and what Fleeting is putting down on their menu. Fleeting’s food is so clean and so balanced, and I feel like it’s always in the right proportion. When I go to Fleeting, I can pronounce everything on the menu, I know what everything is, and it’s equally as wonderful as some of those things that I’m not familiar with at Husk or Common Thread. I usually take people to Fleeting when they have lost hope in fine dining. I know what food costs. I know what wines cost. I feel like somewhere in their program, if you look deep enough, Fleeting always gives the guests a gift right back, a perceived value in any part of their menu. It’s affordable and approachable.

RR: Local 11ten. The chef there now is doing really good work on the menu, and whenever we get items there, they’re always delicious. Abby, who works behind the bar, is super-cool and friendly. You can have a great dinner and a great glass of wine for a reasonably priced upper-end dining experience. 

JR: Husk is probably my favorite out of all of them because of the dynamic of the shellfish and the raw bar. They are positioned to maximize the great flavors of everything coming out of the ocean here, so generally when I go to Husk, it’s driven by what I can get at the raw bar with the great wines in their program 🍷

-Neil Gabbey

TRIED, TASTED, TRUE

Homemade Scones 🍒🍫🍋

THE STORY BEHIND THE RECIPE

I have been holding on to this one.

Just about five years ago, I roundly rebuked most of Savannah’s scratch-made scones after my wife and I spent three consecutive weekends on a bakery crawl. Back then, the relatively best one could buy were, in top-down rank order, at Maté Factor, Gryphon, Foxy Loxy, and Auspicious Baking Co. Sadly, few of the rest were more hockey puck than pastry, and thankfully, one is no longer in business to offer four-dollar wedges of edible soap.

My complacently confident conclusion at the time was not to spend the time and money on someone else’s scone and to bake your own, and I volunteered the recipe for my Triple T variation on a very American scone.

Interestingly, back in April of 2022, I happily wrote about the opening of the Savannah Scone Company and proclaimed Sara and Skip Graham’s “bona fide versions of the biscuit’s British brother easily the tops in town,” to quote myself.

While interviewing Sara Graham, the home baker me beamed proudly when she and I compared our respective registers of ingredients. 

Before I boast further, I will qualify that my scones are unabashedly American, made with an egg, unsalted butter, heavy cream, and granulated sugar. These are not the scones Monty Python’s lumberjacks sang about which, for all tastes and purposes, is more akin to what we New Worlders call a biscuit. Mine is a bake shop scone, light and fluffy thanks to the dough’s fatty enrichments.

If you want a British scone and if you do not want to use an egg, just bake buttermilk biscuits.

As was the case for my sandwich loaf, this scone recipe evolved over several years, tweaking the amounts of flour, butter, cream, and baking powder, primarily. The result was a pastry prescription that works every time. Plus, it is a protean: for sweet scones, the base dough does not change at all and can be amended with all sorts of mix-ins.

For more than a decade, these have been my go-to thank you treats for friends and colleagues, and the hands-down favorite has remained cherry-almond. In baked goods, Trader Joe’s Montmorency cherries are the undisputed champ and chop up easily to pair with sliced (not slivered) almonds that need not be toasted beforehand.

A confirmed chocolate lover, my wife likes the cherry-almond scones best, though the chocolate-hazelnut ones come a close second. For these, use vanilla extract instead of almond, toast the hazelnuts if they are not roasted already in the store-bought bag, and roughly chop the nuts and the semisweet or darker chocolate. 

The silver medal goes to a lemon-currant iteration, the former flavor provided by zest and two teaspoons of juice and the latter from rehydrated and drained black currants, the raisin’s much cooler cousin.

Once you have made this recipe a few times, you will see that it takes no time. More often than not, I mix everything up the night before so that all the work is done-and-dusted and the blended butter has a chance to solidify overnight in a cold fridge. The next morning, it is simply a matter of pouring the wet into the dry, adding your chosen mix-ins, and cutting the dough. 

Like all all-butter bakes, these scones are best right out of the oven, before the butter rehardens, so if any are left over, twenty seconds in a high microwave will bring it back to life. 

Better still, just have two on both Saturday and Sunday morning and freeze the rest for next weekend.

-Neil Gabbey

THE RECIPE

HARD GOODS 

• 2 c. (260 g.) all-purpose flour

• ¼ c. granulated sugar

• 2 t. baking powder

• ½ t. kosher salt

• 6 T. (85 g.) unsalted butter (cold)

• Mix-ins (variable)

  • For cherry-almond scones🍒 ½ c. chopped dried cherries and up to a ½ c. of sliced (not slivered) almonds

  • For chocolate-coffee scones 🍫 ½ c. chopped chocolate, preferably dark or bittersweet, and up to a ½ c. of toasted chopped hazelnuts or pecans 

  • For lemon-currant scones 🍋 add ½ c. of rehydrated and drained currants, the zest of one lemon, and two t. lemon juice

• 1 T. instant coffee granules (optional and depending on mix-ins)

• A few sprinkles of turbinado sugar (optional)

WET GOODS

• 1 large egg 🥚

• ¾ c. heavy cream plus 1 T., divided

• Either 1 t. almond or 1 t. vanilla extract

DO THIS

1. Preheat an oven to 400°

2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper

3. Slice the butter into small chunks and set in the refrigerator

4. With a fork or small whisk, lightly mix one large egg into ¾ cup of heavy cream and set in the refrigerator

   • For almond-based scones, mix in one teaspoon almond extract

   • For vanilla-based (or chocolate-coffee) scones, mix in one teaspoon vanilla extract

   • For chocolate-coffee scones, dissolve one tablespoon of instant espresso powder in the vanilla before incorporating both into the dough

5. Gently whisk together the first four dry ingredients in a large bowl

6. Into the dry mixture, finger-press or pastry-blend in the butter until the floury mass looks like tiny pebble-like crumbs

7. Add the wets to the flour-butter mixture

   • Do not wash out the egg-cream measuring cup

8. Using a wooden spool or stiff spatula, combine until a dough ball nearly forms

9. Add the chosen mix-ins and bring together with a dough scraper or your hands

10. Turn the mass out onto a lightly floured counter 

11. Without overworking it, shape the dough into a square or a circle about an inch thick

12. Use a bench scraper or a sharp knife to cut the dough into wedges or whatever shape you like, understanding that the size will affect the cooking time

    • If you opt for the traditional triangles, this recipe yields six 130-gram scones

13. Place the scones on the parchment-lined baking sheet

14. Add the remaining tablespoon of cream to the egg-cream measuring cup 

15. Brush the tops of the scones with a little heavy cream and dust with turbinado or coarse sugar crystals

16. Bake at 400° between 12 and 18 minutes, depending on the size

17. For a finishing touch on the fruit scones, mix up a simple glaze of ½ cup confectioners’ sugar, one teaspoon vanilla or almond extract, one teaspoon lemon juice, and one tablespoon heavy cream and drizzle on top once they have cooled down a bit

BEEN THERE. ATE THAT.

Sly’s Sliders and Fries

Since my wife and I first set foot in Savannah more than a dozen years ago now, nowhere have we eaten more often than at Sly’s.

Tiny sammies and fresh-cut fries that do not break the bank? Every day if I could.

In 2019, original owners Matt Baldwin and Dave Hamer sold the Thomas Square staple to Laura and Scott Wester, who have done little to fix what was anything but broken. The prices have remained remarkably unchanged and reasonable, even after a global pandemic completely jacked the cost of eating out, and the majority of the menu items are still there a decade in. 

Still tossed in Sly’s salty signature spice mix, the fries’ die cut is a size larger than they first were, which means a less abounding basket but far fewer potato fragments. 

That first time we walked in and saw a slider homage to George Costanza’s ultimate comeback line, I knew that Sly’s would be a winner, and in the last decade, the mecca of miniature mouthfuls has been my most frequently recommended resto, especially to my students.

After a sunny spring Sunday that saw me spend too much time cleaning up the yard, I was thrilled that my wife suggested saving the planned leftovers - taquitos, guac salad, and creamed corn, by the way - for Monday night and “doing something simple instead.”

That meant a quick trip up to Sly’s to sit and sup outside on Abercorn as the sun hovered over the houses on Bull Street and beyond.

Let it not be lost that Sly’s is open on Sundays, a fact that was clearly appreciated that evening by a steady stream of obvious regulars. A few filed in and out with brown-bagged takeaways while most queued up, ordered, and sat inside to await their trays of tastiness.

Quite often, my wife is more than satisfied with a full order of hand-cut fries, and though I would love to go Man Versus Food on four Artisan Sliders and two Slider Dogs with my own full fry boat, I am doubly removed from my twenties and max out on one of each and a half fry.

Because I had just recently made burger sliders at home and because Sly’s sammies are so unique, I was not in the mood for The Boardwalk. In my personal rotation are the Pain Don’t Hurt (roadhouse style smoked brisket, red barbecue sauce, tobacco onions, and pepper jack cheese) and the Lil Sandy (smoked pulled pork, angel barbecue sauce, slaw, and tobacco onions), but it had been a few hours since I had eaten any fried chicken: one Bullet Club, please.

Sly’s fried chicken breast is crisper than crisp, paired perfectly with swiss cheese, a slice of bacon, lettuce, tomato, and house-made ranch. Sure, it is a small sandwich, but it beats any similar chicken bite that folks are waiting for in double-wide lines.

After it debuted, the Perro Cubano has been a standby for me. The tiny iteration of the Havana classic has all the standard sándwich mix to ingredients, though I ask for no pickles. Pulled pork on a mini hot dog with melty swiss is made more marvelous by the herb mayo.

Although my wife nicely offered to pick Sly’s up for us, I love going there, and bringing boxed fries home never does them any favors.

Whether you eat in or take out, ask for the fries to be ‘extra crispy’ 🔥 You will thank me later.

-Neil Gabbey