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:

• How John Benhase balances being a chef and a dad

• Discover your ideal wines by taking the Naked Wines quiz 🍷

• The favorite eats of Cotton & Rye’s chefs

• Try this mouthwatering Ginger-molasses cake recipe with vanilla buttercream frosting

• Tried, tasted, and true at Vittoria Pizza 🍕

THE MAIN DISH

Chef Dad: John Benhase balances two baby boys and a new culinary venture in the new year

Perhaps there is such a thing as being too busy.

Since John Benhase returned to Savannah in 2018, no grass grew under his feet. After gaining invaluable kitchen experience and building his résumé, he and his wife, Sarah, traded the ATL for the SAV as he became one of our local Food Fab Four who conceived and realized Starland Yard.

All the while staying “full-on” at The Yard, Benhase joined Brandon Carter and resurrected the stately Krouskoff manse at 122 East 37th Street, adding Common Thread to FARM Hospitality Group’s flock in January of 2021.

By the end of that year, Benhase did what so many of us want and need to do: he took stock and decided to bring ‘work’ and ‘life’ back into balance.

“With Starland Yard and baby coming and all things, there was just too much to juggle,” he admitted, which meant stepping away from Common Thread roughly a year after it opened to unrivaled reviews.

CHEF’S CRAVINGS

Caleb and Peanut Ayers, with Zach Shultz - Cotton & Rye

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 talented culinary trio at Cotton & Rye, chef-owner Zach Shultz and husband-and-wife wonder couple executive chef Caleb Ayers and pastry chef Peanut Ayers.

ZS: I have two young kids, so I don’t get out much anymore. When I do get out, I love starting with breakfast at Collins Quarter. I love the vibe there, just a great feeling, a great way to start the day. I go for one of their benedicts, sometimes a special, and a coffee. They have a good coffee program.

PA: The focaccia at Stevedore. I’ll get one of those, and we just sit in the car and polish it off.

ZS: For lunches, I love Black Rabbit for a sandwich. I get the same thing every time. I always get their half turkey and a half salad.

PA: Right down the street at Shuk, I do crave the sabich, the little pita with fried eggplant and I don’t even remember what all is in it. That, occasionally, I have a strong craving for.

ZS: I love going to Hirano’s. I grew up eating there. I love sitting at the sushi bar and grabbing a quick lunch. I don’t go too crazy typically because it’s the middle of the day, just a couple rolls. And E-TANG. I love going to E-TANG.

CA: E-TANG’s my choice also. Their twice-cooked pork is great. Their crispy spicy fish filet or their crispy spicy frog is really good. If I’m looking for something quick to go, their dan dan noodles are a great lunch. Their hot and sour soup, their xiao long bao, the soup dumplings, are really good. All their dumplings are made in-house, and you get to watch them make it.

ZS: I love their eggplant.

CA: All the basic stuff. The string beans they do are great. It’s the best Chinese in Savannah easily, and everything is, from our standpoint, being professionals, done properly.

ZS: I just love it because it’s authentic. It’s quick. It’s always open.

CA: Brochu’s is a very nice one. I’m particularly fond of their fried green tomato sandwich.

ZS: The fried green tomato sandwich. They have great oysters. They do a rillette dish which is kind of like their version of our pimento cheese, but it comes with this pillowy salty beautiful bread, which is delicious. Their desserts are always sweet, salty, and fantastic. Brochu’s burger. Don’t sleep on that either.

And for a special occasion?

ZS: We do love going to the dinner bar at The Grey. If I do get a date night and Caroline and I can get away, we start our night there. A heavy snack at the dinner bar, drinks, maybe work our way inside for dinner, but it’s always a great way to start.

-Neil Gabbey

TRIED, TASTED, TRUE

Ginger-molasses cake

THE STORY BEHIND THE RECIPE

I have never been chocolate’s biggest fan. At this point in my dessert-eating life, I will delightedly devour a chocolate chip cookie or, better still, one of Gallery Espresso’s brownies, but otherwise, chocolate does not do it for me.

Even as a kid, I was the weirdo who asked my mom to bake a carrot cake for my birthdays.

When it comes to sweets, I think it is my German roots and Western New York upbringing that make me crave flaky pastry, baked fruit, and flavors other than chocolate. Whatever it is, make mine molasses or maple, cinnamon, honey, or toasted nuts.

Trying to replicate a singular cake my wife and I shared at a honey festival in tiny Goult, France, I stumbled upon a ginger-molasses cake posted on thehungryhounds.com. Though the end result was far from what I was hoping to recreate, this may be the best cake I have ever eaten in my life and has become my go-to, particularly at this time of year. Just call it Winter Cake.

My wife, a card-carrying chocolate lover for life, agrees. This moist cake and its rich molasses flavor will make you forget about chocolate. 

I have taken a few little liberties with the recipe, notably halving it to make a deep single-layer six-inch cake, lest the two of us turn the treat into an ill-conceived week-long dessert endurance contest. Also, adding one extra yolk yields a mouthwateringly moist crumb.

Depending on your sweet tooth's taste, dust the cake with powdered sugar before serving or frost with a full-on vanilla buttercream, which blends beautifully with the ginger-molasses bite.

-Neil Gabbey

THE RECIPE

HARD GOODS

• 1 T. freshly grated ginger root (or more)

• ½ cup (108 grams) brown sugar

• 1 ¼ cups (160 grams) all-purpose flour

• ½ t. ground cinnamon

• ¼ t. ground cloves

• ¼ t. pumpkin pie spice (optional)

• Pinch kosher salt

• 1 t. baking soda

• Sprinkle granulated (white) sugar (optional)

WET GOODS

• ½ c. blackstrap molasses (regular unsulphured molasses can be used)

• ½ c. canola oil

• 1 t. vanilla

• ½ c. boiling water

• 1 whole egg + 1 egg yolk

DO THIS

1. Preheat an oven to 360°

2. Spray a 6”x3” cake tin with Baker’s Joy and line with parchment paper

3. Bring water to a boil and dissolve baking soda 

4. In a large prep bowl, hand-whisk together grated ginger, molasses, brown sugar, oil, and vanilla

5. In a small prep bowl, lightly hand-whisk together flour, spices, and salt

6. Pour the baking soda water into the molasses mixture

7. A little at a time, hand-whisk the dry goods into the wet

8. Whisk the whole egg and then the egg yolk into the (what will be loose) batter

9. Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin

10. Lightly sprinkle the surface with granulated (white) sugar

11. Bake for 40 minutes or until a tester comes out almost clean

12. Let cool completely before turning out and turning over onto a small plate

13. Once cool, dust or frost

BEEN THERE. ATE THAT.

Starland Yard: Vittoria Pizza

Because I make a mean Sicilian-esque at home, we do not go out for pizza often. When we do, Option #1A is a pepperoni pie from the premier parlor in town, Pizzeria Vittoria Napoletana at Starland Yard.

A few Fridays back, the late-afternoon temps were in the sixties and the sun was still bright, ideal for idling over an early dinner outside. My wife placed our order at Vittoria’s little window while I wandered over to the food truck queue to consider a go-with. After all, pizza deserves an appetizer or a side. 

On occasion, we go pro and polish off two of Kyle Jacovino & Co.’s perfect pies, but when discretion dictates the better part of our appetites, we prudently pair one pizza with fries: za’atar from Loki Food Bus, yuca from Chazito’s, or french from Ark Royal or Pie Society.

This time, we went scantly less carb-tastic, and I opted for Chazito’s avocado fries ($9), accompanied by the slightly spicy house-made eponymous sauce. Fried up in two minutes, the serving is five clean wedges - one whole fruit plus another quarter - coated in a bronzed cornmealy crust that is not, in fact, cornmeal: one of the esteemed Latin eatery’s little secrets.

We slid into two stools at the Starland Yard bar whose overhead heaters quickly became necessary and nice and tucked into the avocado fries, warming up with this pizza pregame. The few flecks of chili flake in the breading bring some heat that is largely offset by the creamy green center that cuts like room-temperature butter.

Only one wedge remaining, my wife’s phone buzzed, and she happily announced, “Pee-tzah!”

When we moved to town almost a decade ago, there was a paucity of quality pizza possibilities. In just the last few years, we have been treated to the additions of two species of Squirrel’s, Graffito, Treylor Park Pizza Party, and Big Bon’s Savannah Square. Though Green Fire closed on Drayton and moved out to Pooler, Mellow thankfully reopened on Liberty.

Among this Margherita multitude, Jacovino’s Vittoria still stands out as Savannah’s finest, largely due to a bready base that does not need any toppings. With its bubbly, blackened outer edge, the chew of the crust is incomparable, the product of a sourdough method that uses only organic heritage grains in a minimum of a 24-hour fermentation.

The red sauce that the pizzaiolo humbly calls “pretty simple stuff” tastes anything but thanks to the Italian plum tomatoes from Bronx-based Gustiamo, a “major importer who goes to Italy probably eight or nine times a year to find the best quality tomatoes,” per Jacovino.

“She brings it from outside of Campania straight to the Bronx, and then she ships it to us,” he continued.

“Beautiful tomatoes, salt, basil. That’s it.”

Though the market pie specials always sound decadently delicious, we stick with the standard, loaded with pepperoni and dressed with charred bits of basil, because we eat this pizza only once every couple months ($16). 

Roughly eleven inches, its six pieces are plenty for the two of us, but I tend to devour mine like the owl in the Tootsie Pop commercial. 

Next time, we will order two.

-Neil Gabbey