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 literal Lulu of a new location 🍭

• The Sly’s Sliders and Fries team chef cravings 🍣

• Melt in your mouth Spatchcock roast chicken

• Holy Shuk. What a sandwich!! 🔥

THE MAIN DISH

Lulu’s Chocolate Bar settles in with second bar and main operations on Whitemarsh Island 🍨🍫🍰 

You know those times you walk into Target for a roll of tin foil and a three-pack of Trident and you walk out with an overflowing cart and a receipt as long as your arm?

I guess the same is possible for Savannah’s most celebrated entrepreneurial bakers.

“We were in the market for a bakery case,” recalled Lulu’s Chocolate Bar co-founder Janine Finn, “and I said, ‘Hey, this place is for lease.’”

‘This place’ was 4700 Highway 80 East, the five-year home of JThomas Kitchen, a three-part property already outfitted with a culinary kitchen and separate dining room.

Finn had visited Josh Thomas’s eatery often with her Aunt Diana, a Wilmington Islander, and back in July, she saw the auction announcement for the eponymous chef’s equipment when he decided to close. 

‘Ummm, how much will you take for the whole lot?’

“Tuesday night was the auction. I was flying from Maine, so I couldn’t help. She had to bid on fifty things,” Finn continued, crediting best friend and Lulu’s co-founder Rebecca Radovich for her cookery clearance coups. 

“It was all online, eBay-style,” Radovich said. “Every item ended at a different time.”

“She got like ninety-five percent of the things we wanted, including all of the furniture, walk-in coolers, and we got our bakery case,” said Finn.

“I can be a little competitive,” Radovich said with a smile.

They needed a bakery case and came away with a building and everything in it.

CHEF’S CRAVINGS

Sly's Sliders and Fries - Laura & Scott Wester 🍱 🌮

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 Laura and Scott Wester, who bought Sly’s Sliders and Fries in 2019 and have evolved what was already one of the city’s best and tastiest eateries into a ‘mini mecca’ institution. Joining in the conversation are their talented and dedicated team members Emma Lewis, Ian Mansfield, and Dee Scarver, all of whom have been at Sly’s for at least six years.

SW: We’ll go first. We have a number of places. Hirano’s for sushi, the tiger🔥

LW: It’s the TST for me.

SW: Tacos + Tequila because it’s fast good food and margaritas. 

LW: The cauliflower taco, I love it. Emma loves Tacos + Tequila, too. It’s always a friendly atmosphere.

EL: Yeah, I love Tacos + Tequila. I go there way too much: the cauliflower taco.

SW: Flying Fish. The fish is great. The atmosphere is great. Their lunch specials are great.🐟

LW: I get the fried mahi sandwich. It’s…oh (finishes sentence with a big smile).

EL: I like Ben’s a lot. Their veggie patties are really good, but I switch it up every time I go there. 

DS: I like Sandfly Bar-B-Q. The Brunswick stew is what I get the most.

IM: I go to Fire a lot, and I also go to Naan on Broughton. I normally get a lot of sushi at Fire, or I get the pad thai. At Naan, any yellow curry.

And for a special occasion?

SW: We go to Circa.

LW: We both like the trout. We fight over it. 

SW: She’ll get the mussels. 🐚 

LW: Oh! The mussels with the fennel, delicious!

EL: Circa as well. The brasserie side is so fancy.

IM: Honestly, our special nights, we go to places like Five Guys 🍟

-Neil Gabbey

TRIED, TASTED, TRUE

Spatchcock roast chicken 🐓☀️

THE STORY BEHIND THE RECIPE

I completely agree with the adage about a roast chicken: no other dish better tests the quality of a restaurant or its cheffing crew.

Before Netflix gave Phil Rosenthal a bag of cash and renamed his globetrotting epicure tour, an early episode in the first season of I’ll Have What Phil’s Having took the title eater to Chez l'Ami Louis in Paris’s 3^e arrondissement to sample its legendary poulet. 

As Rosenthal touts, a roast chicken is more than a mere meal. It is a “national treasure.”

On this side of the Atlantic, the same stands true, and even if ordering chicken at a restaurant seems unimaginative, in the hands of a professional, that roasted bird may be one of the best entrées you have ever eaten out.

For years, a roaster has been a staple supper in our house, at least once a month its redolence lingering for a few days afterward, its bones picked clean and frozen for my next batch of stock. 

You know what there was before the worldwidewebternet? My mom, and I know that she talked me through my first attempts at executing this relatively routine recipe.

Up until our move to Savannah, my usual preparation was pretty basic: clean the bird, place it breast-up in a small roasting pan, brush it with some olive oil, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, and slide it into a 425° oven for an hour and a half. Easy. 

For the last several years, though, I have opted for the spatchcock method, which reduces the cooking time, and the salt-and-baking powder dry brine, which makes the skin crisp as a potato chip.

As long as you have proper poultry shears, removing the backbone is the matter of a minute. This can be done with ordinary kitchen scissors or even a sharp boning knife, but the shears are worth the twenty bucks. Only once or twice have I removed the bird’s breastbone because with a little slice and plenty of pressure you can snap it so that the chicken lies flat enough.

Prior to the dry brine, I line a rimmed baking sheet with a couple layers of wax paper and top those with some paper towels on which I rest the roaster. Use a dessert fork to mix the kosher salt with the baking powder in a small bowl. Unless you want a bitter, metallic seasoning, make sure that you do not mistakenly pick up the baking soda and try to find baking powder that does not contain sodium aluminum sulfate. Rumford, Trader Joe’s, and 365 are safe.

After generously dusting every centimeter of skin with the mixture, place the baking sheet in the fridge for at least eight hours. An overnight dry brine is even better, but I usually do these prep steps before heading off to work. 

Plan for between an hour and ninety minutes lead time, depending on the size of your roaster. Any chicken under four pounds, technically a fryer, will be ready in under an hour, but I like a proper roaster, something tipping the scales at six pounds or more. That fixes us up with dinner for two nights, at least, plus pieces to hand-feed to Guster, our cat. 

Because paper towels soaked with chicken juice will not do well in the oven, move the dry-brined bird to another rimmed baking sheet, this one lined with aluminum foil and parchment paper for easier clean-up.

Recommended temperatures for roasting a chicken range widely, so I have always split the difference. My oven has a convection roast setting, though I often forget to use it and simply punch in 425°. 

If you really want to, you can add diced fresh herbs to softened butter and spread this under the breast skin, though this is a messy and unnecessary business. I sometimes brush the surface with a tablespoon of melted butter mixed with a tablespoon of olive oil, but the skin will brown up nice and crisp without any additional fat.

Also discretionary and customizable are aromatics. Right before sliding the chicken into the oven, I put thick slices of both a sweet onion and a lemon under the cavity with a few sprigs of rosemary and marjoram. Some apple wedges and sage leaves work nicely, too.

By far, the best part of roasting a chicken is that all of the work is on the front end. Once the bird is in the oven, you now have about an hour to make your sides and a bowl of honey-horseradish, that vastly under appreciated Spanky’s condiment that is a bird’s best friend.

Certainly, use a meat thermometer to check for doneness, anything north of 165°, but the skin’s color will tell you almost everything you need to know. The chicken will stay hot even after a twenty-minute rest before sectioning it and slicing the breasts.

Thankfully, my wife does not eat the chicken skin, so before we plate up, I peel it all off and devour it as an appetizer. Is that wrong? 

-Neil Gabbey

THE RECIPE

HARD GOODS 

• 1 chicken (5-7 pounds) 🍗

• 3 T. kosher salt + ¼ t. (for honey-horseradish dipping sauce)

• 1 t. baking powder (without sodium aluminum sulfate)

• ½ lemon (optional) 🍋 

• ½ sweet onion (optional)

• 2 sprigs marjoram (optional)

• 2 sprigs rosemary (optional) 🌿

WET GOODS

• 1 T. melted butter (optional)

• 1 T. olive oil (optional) 🫒

• ¼ c. horseradish sauce (Kraft or Inglehoffer)

• ⅓ c. honey 🐝 

• Juice of half a lemon

DO THIS

1. The night before or the morning of dinner, remove the chicken’s backbone 🚨 

   • If you wish to, remove the chicken’s breastbone and ribs or

   • Make a visible slit in the breastbone

2. Clean the chicken in cold water, pat dry, and place on a rimmed baking sheet lined with wax paper and paper towels

3. Using the heels of both hands, press down on the chicken’s breasts until the breastbone snaps and the chicken flattens out

   • Splay the legs wide and tuck the wing tips under the breasts

4. Mix the 3 T. kosher salt and baking powder in a small bowl

5. Dust the surface/skin of the entire chicken 🐔

6. Place the baking sheet with the chicken in the fridge for at least eight hours and up to twenty

7. Preheat an oven to 425°

   • For a small chicken, do this at least 60 minutes in advance

   • For a large chicken, do this at least 90 minutes in advance

8. Remove the dry-brined chicken from the fridge and place on a second rimmed baking sheet lined with aluminum foil (optional) and parchment paper

9. Place the chicken in the preheated oven

10. Test the internal temperature

    • For a small chicken, after 45 minutes

    • For a large chicken, after 60 minutes

11. When the proper internal temperature is reached and the skin is brown and crispy, remove the chicken from the oven and let it rest for at least 20 minutes before carving ⏰

12. For the honey-horseradish dipping sauce, whisk the honey, horseradish, lemon juice, and ¼ t. kosher salt until fully blended

    • Refrigerate until dinner is served

BEEN THERE. ATE THAT.

Shuk Savannah - Mediterranean Cafe & Bar 🌊🐚

Whenever we return to town from one of our one-night concert trips to Atlanta, I never feel much like cooking, which my wife is fine with because she never feels much like doing the dishes.

Still happily recovering from Guster’s nearly three-hour “We Also Have Eras” show and the drive home, we wanted something other than a burger, a pizza, or tacos. The early evening was warm enough to sit outside, so long as we avoided those wearing their green garb from the day before.

Since Shuk opened in the fall of 2022, I have been back only a handful of times and had never ordered the sabich ($15).

This is where I admit my fault and write my apology.

Holy Shuk, what a sandwich 🥙

By itself, the sabich lives up to the restaurant’s Israeli marketplace moniker, the best and freshest parts of the produce department over-stuffed into a puffy warm pita. The fried eggplant slices are the crispy and salty star, so much so that I wanted at least two more, but each component plays its part and makes for a medley of mouthfuls for which teeth are barely needed.

In some dishes, diced cucumber can be ho-hum. Here, the English cuke is so yummy, bright, fresh, and crunchy, tossed with chopped cherry tomatoes, parsley 🌿, and Shuk’s house-made sumac vinaigrette.

Deeper bites lead to the soft and unctuous tahini egg salad, the slightly sweet mango amba sauce 🥭, and the kicky harissa chili paste.

Because the sabich’s fixings are ample, I understand that they are layered, if you will, into the pita. In one respect, that makes the sandwich even more unique and enjoyable: each mouthful varies in texture and flavor, and the eater can strategically balance bites.

On the other hand, the heap of harissa paste on the bottom could use a cool companion to mellow out those final bites. My wife threw in the napkin once all she could see between the pita was red.

While I continue to bemoan living in the Land of the $15 Sandwich, this particular $15 sandwich comes as close as any to living up to its price tag. I would argue for a tiny side of something, but I suppose that the sabich already contains an entire salad course.

As a side, we ordered the Hummus #1 ($12), subbing out the pita for more veg, which is my wife’s usual at Shuk. The hummus is great, silky smooth and flavorsome, though this serving was oddly topped with as many spiced chickpeas as there were dollops of dip. Thankfully, they were tender, buoyed by a moat of olive oil.

No matter how much ‘extra’ crudite is served, and this holds true at every Mediterranean eatery, the slices of cukes and carrots 🥕 are never enough.

Each time I return to Shuk, I am struck by the attractive decor and airy atmosphere of what may well be the best-designed resto in the city. On a warm March evening, sitting inside the lovely patio and looking out on Habersham and Garvin Hall made fantastic food even better.

-Neil Gabbey