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:

• There is a new restaurant in Starland Yard! 🍤 

• The Ardsley Station team & their kiddos’ favorite Savannah eats

• Pay attention to this sticky toffee pudding recipe

• Chicken schnitzel & mashed potatoes dressed with chive cream from Fitzroy 🤤 🔥

THE MAIN DISH

Sidestreet sammies and salads: Uncle June’s opens amid Starland Yard’s DeSoto Avenue expansion 🍔 🥗 

Finding a void in the marketplace is always a great starting point. Since its gates opened, Starland Yard’s inner sanctum has been the permanent home to the city’s best pizza and the nomadic stopping grounds for dozens of delectable mobile eateries.

Along the southernmost stretch of DeSoto Avenue, Crispi grills up eponymous burgers, Superbloom serves pastries and crepes and all sorts of bevvies, and soon, Nixtate will be cranking out authentic antojitos Mexicanos.

Can a brother grab a sandwich?! 🥪 

When Uncle June’s opened next door to Nixtate on Feb. 16, Reid Henninger gladly answered that question in the affirmative.

“We’re talking about a greatest hits menu of casual fare,” he said of a carte that will comprise a half-dozen sandwiches, a similar number of salads, and a few sweets, all without any “regional focus” or overt homage to Dominic Chianese’s role on The Sopranos.

“The character hits uncomfortably close to home,” Henninger explained with a wry smile. “I grew up with dysfunctional characters.”

“It’s a name that has memory quality to it, and it is rather ambiguous in its definition,” he said of the sandwicherie’s sobriquet. “It’s a personal inside joke to me.”

All kidding aside, Uncle June’s fare promises to fill a niche in a neighborhood that has quickly become Savannah’s de facto food district.

CHEF’S CRAVINGS

Ardsley Station - Tyler Kopkas, Tommy Prevatte, & Jordan Peyton 🍹🦪 🌾

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 trio at the heart of what has been one of Savannah’s favorite restaurants since the moment it opened, owner Tyler Kopkas, executive chef Tommy Prevatte, sous chef Jordan Peyton of Ardsley Station.

TK: Cotton & Rye is the staple for my wife and me when we go out. Their food is similar to what we’re doing here at Ardsley in a lot of ways, but it has its own twists. Zach and Caleb do a great job. You always have to get the wings that stick to your hands with that starchy-cornmealy-cornflaky proprietary breading. You can’t go wrong with any of the sides they offer, the mac & cheese 🧀, the cornbread, the fried Brussels.

TP: My wife and I go to The Wyld. That’s one of her favorite spots. She likes the shrimp rolls, that’s pretty much every time. I’ll get whatever fish they’re doing, usually in a banana leaf. She’s a big brunch person, so J. Christopher’s, B. Matthews, The Common, places like that.

JP: My girlfriend and I moved here from California, and out there, I really fell in love with Asian cooking and flavors. We really love E-TANG. I like the crispy spicy chicken. They fry these little nuggets and toss them in chilis. It’s spicy, but it has almost a smoky flavor to it. Their stir-fried green beans - tremendous - and we usually get a shrimp lo mein or some kind of noodle dish and, of course, the pork dumplings. You can’t go to E-TANG without getting the pork dumplings.

TP: Savannah Smokehouse, though I haven’t been there in a while. I get the mixed plate, ribs, pulled pork, chicken.

JP: I grew up in Louisiana, so I love seafood. The Crab Shack is great. I usually get the Lowcountry boil, classic.

JP: If I’m craving really good Mexican food, Taqueria El San Luis. 🌮 That place is tremendous. I usually get four tacos: al pastor, carnitas, carne asada, and chicken. My girlfriend usually goes the burrito route. If I’m craving something a little more modern, Bull Street Taco.

TK: I’m a big sweet tooth guy, so whenever I’m at Cotton & Rye, I always crush their version of a Twix bar that comes with that decadent caramel sauce and gold flakes. We find ourselves there quite a bit when I’m not here or my wife’s not chasing around Wyatt. 

Speaking of, when you are with your kids, where do you go out to eat?

TK (laughing): It’s kind of hard to go out to certain places as a family when you have a five-year-old. You try to pick places where he can go crazy and no one will notice. Wyatt likes pasta, so we go to Carrabba’s on occasion with him. He gets the pick-of-the-litter with the mac & cheese or spaghetti and a kid drink. 🍝

And for a special occasion?

TK (with a big smile): Ardsley Station! 🥂 

TP: Actually, the last real ‘date night’ we had was here, before I was hired. 

TK (still smiling): He was shopping us. 

TP: And the Chart House on River Street, back when we had actual date nights.

TK: I’m a Seattle guy, so I enjoy seafood, too. The guys at Common Thread do an awesome job with everything they do, bringing in the freshest local oysters and their crudos. Their menu rotates pretty frequently, but probably a year and a half ago, we ordered a squid ink noodle dish with shrimp and crushed cashews, kind of a riff on a Thai peanut shrimp dish. It was damn tasty.

-Neil Gabbey

TRIED, TASTED, TRUE

Sticky Toffee Pudding

PAY ATTENTION 🚨 sticky toffee pudding is the best dessert.

Fork drop. 

THE STORY BEHIND THE RECIPE

While its name alone sounds old and British, neither may be true. Whether first gobbled up in the U.K.’s Cumbria region in the 1970s or in (gasp!) Canada back in the 1940s, sticky toffee pudding is a relatively young confection. Whatever its origin story, you need to add it to your menu.

Back in 2008, my wife and I enjoyed a fabulous dinner at The Arbiter, a bygone gastropub in London SW6, and a house-made sticky toffee pudding was on the dessert menu. Years of watching everything produced by the BBC and ITV had taught me that ‘pudding’ was far from Jell-O cook-and-serve gloop. In British food parlance, the word commonly connotes dessert, more specifically a cake served with a sauce, à la the more familiar but far less tasty yuletide classic plum pudding.

That first taste was epiphanic, and over the last fifteen years, wherever STP is on the menu, I order it. In our house, it is in the regular rotation of baked treats, especially for special occasions and holidays.

Few folks who have ever tried my version have been able to guess its not-so-secret ingredient, but the best part is no one cares upon enlightenment because the taste is so terrific. What makes this cake uniquely sweet is dates, reconstituted with hot water and a little baking soda and puréed into a loose paste that becomes the batter’s base.

Loyal readers are already aware of my affinity for Jamie Oliver, and his recipe remains a reliable starting point, though I am humbly pleased with how my tinkering has bettered the batter and the overall outcome. His cake calls for white sugar while many others opt for brown. I use a bit of both to make everyone happy.

The Naked Chef’s ratio of butter, brown sugar, and heavy cream works fine for the toffee sauce, which is a quick confectioner’s caramel without the hazard of seized sugar, but there are endless iterations out there that are all fairly foolproof. My main enhancements are a splash of vanilla and a pinch of sea salt.

The recipe makes roughly 1000 grams of batter, and I have baked it both as one cake and as eight single-servings. If you prefer the former, use a 6” x 3” round cake pan or a 9” x 2” and adjust the oven time, and once baked, you might want to go the extra mile by poking the cake hundreds of times with a bamboo skewer: this allows the toffee sauce to seep in prior to service.

Using eight-ounce ramekins makes for more work on the front end but prepares perfect portions. Do this dessert a favor and serve it in a bowl so that the toffee sauce can make a silky sweet moat around the cake, which tastes best warm and will keep-and-reheat for days.

STP virgins will hear its name and screw up their brows, more dubious of the word ‘pudding’ than enticed by the word ‘toffee’. Have courage. When you serve up caramel-colored cakes draped in glossy toffee and not puddles of gelatinous mud, you will be hailed a dessert hero. 

Anyone with a sweet tooth will love sticky toffee pudding, and most will tell you that you do not even have to bother baking the cake next time: just hand out big bowls of toffee sauce.

-Neil Gabbey

THE RECIPE

HARD GOODS 

• 8 ounces pitted dates

• 1 t. baking soda

• 1 ¼ c. (160 grams) all-purpose flour

• 1 t. baking powder

• ¼ t. kosher salt

• ¼ t. pumpkin pie spice blend 🎃 

• ¼ t. ground cinnamon

• 1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter (divided), 1 stick softened 🧈

• 1 c. (216 grams) light brown sugar (divided)

• ¼ c. (50 grams) white sugar

• 1 t. sea salt

WET GOODS

• 1 c. boiling water

• 2 eggs 🥚 

• 2 T. vanilla Greek yogurt

• 2 t. vanilla (divided)

• ¾ c. heavy cream

DO THIS

1. Put the dates in a non-reactive bowl with the baking soda 

2. Pour the boiling water over the dates and let them soak for at least 20 minutes

3. While waiting, whisk together the flour, baking powder, kosher salt, pumpkin pie spice, and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl and set aside

4. In a separate bowl, cream the softened stick of butter with ½ cup brown sugar and all of the white sugar until it is thickened like frosting

5. Add one egg at a time to the butter-sugar mixture and mix until fully incorporated

6. Add 1 t. vanilla and the yogurt (do not worry if the mixture appears slightly ‘curdled’)

7. Preheat the oven to 350°

8. Cut parchment paper rounds for the bottoms of eight 8-ounce ramekins and lightly spray bottoms and sides with Baker’s Joy

9. Strain the softened dates, saving the soaking liquid

10. Purée the dates in a food processor, adding as much as ½ cup of the soaking liquid so that the paste is the consistency of hummus

11. With a rubber spatula, alternate folding the date purée and the flour-spice mixture into the butter-sugar-egg mixture until the batter is uniform 🥣 

12. Measure between 120 and 125 grams of batter into each ramekin and tap on a countertop to help it settle and to remove any air pockets

13. Place the ramekins onto a parchment-lined baking sheet

14. Bake for between 25 and 30 minutes ⏰, testing toward the former with a toothpick

15. While the cakes are baking, place the remaining stick of butter, remaining brown sugar (108 grams), heavy cream, remaining 1 t. of vanilla, and the sea salt in a medium saucepan or saucier

16. Set the pan over medium-low heat and whisk to combine once the butter melts

    • The toffee sauce will thicken as it heats up and reduces slightly

    • Remove from the heat after 20 minutes

17. Remove the cakes from the oven and let them rest for at least ten minutes

18. Turn out the cakes into individual serving bowls and ladle the toffee sauce over them

BEEN THERE. ATE THAT.

The Fitzroy 🍸

For no real reason, my wife and I had not been back to The Fitzroy in at least two years, so on one of these recent chilly nights, its classy coziness called to us - that and the promise of chicken schnitzel.

Though the ‘winter’ temps in Savannah never really necessitate much more than a sweater and scarf, a date-night dinner near a roaring fire was what we wanted, and we knew that this star in the Southern Cross Hospitality constellation would satisfy.  

Tucked up at the northern end of Drayton, The Fitzroy may unfairly fall off the locals’ collective resto radar, but on a Thursday evening, only a couple downstairs tables remained open at seven p.m. Only ZZ Top ripping through “La Grange” detracted from the snug ambience. Mercifully, as the tables filled up, the volume of the classic rock went down and morphed into The Talking Heads.

As luck would have it, a retooled menu had launched that day. Thankfully, the Chicken Schnitzel was still among the mains, though with reimagined sides of mashed potatoes dressed with chive cream and crowned with a composed arugula salad ($24).

Knowing that one entrée would be enough to split, we took our server’s recommendation and ordered one of the new starters, the Fried Brussels Sprouts tossed with a house-made maple sriracha aioli, topped with fresh scallion slivers, and sprinkled with white sesame seeds ($12).

Thank you, Colton.

In no way did the schnitzel disappoint. No longer the size of a manhole cover, the portion was plenty and is still a steal, a more mature rendition of The Fitzroy’s former fried fowl. Crisper than crisp, the 1:1 bird-to-breading ratio is exactly how you want it, sitting atop silky, smooth mash slathered with chive cream. Surprisingly, the salad adornment was the saltiest component of the dish.

But back to those Brussels: mercy. Without hyperbole and with nothing but love for Erica Davis Lowcountry’s recipe, these were the best I have ever eaten.

What Colton brought to the table was a mountain of sprouts, domed in a large bowl. My wife and I laughed at the generous serving. She said something about being “enough for a table of four,” and I said something to the effect of “taking some home.”

Yeah, right.

At first, there was no need to eat the sprouts; their aroma alone was intoxicating. Many still bearing a bit of their stems, the cabbagettes had been halved, which allowed them to bloom wide during frying, looking like little burnished menorahs. 

Not one remained a compact orb, the leaves crisp and the hearts yielding easily to the bite. A little maple sweet, a little sriracha kick, and just the right amount of unctuousness made each mouthful marvelous. 

As we giddily alternated between the two dishes, my wife posited, “Why do people like crispy food?”

While I am sure the answer is out there somewhere on the worldwide webternet, put down your phone and get down to The Fitzroy for some phenomenal and fancy fried fare.

-Neil Gabbey