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:

• Chef Todd and His New Home at VFW Post 660 🇺🇸

• Alexander’s Bistro Team Names Best Asian Cusine in Savannah 🍱

• Perfect Morning Recipe for Non-Coffee Drinkers 🥤

• Quick trip to the Neighborhood Pub 🍔

THE MAIN DISH

Chef Todd Carvell has found his food home at VFW Post 660’s Canteen & Bar 🥪 🍺

Moviegoers will not have to try hard to spot VFW Post 660 in Juror #2, Clint Eastwood’s latest and perhaps last film. Many of its scenes take place at Rowdy’s Hideaway, a fictionalized haunt that, in reality, is the William A. Reed Memorial Post’s Canteen & Grill, right here on Ogeechee Road.

Eastwood’s directorial coda opened in limited release two weeks ago, and the tin ‘Rowdy’s Hideaway’ sign now hangs on the front wall of the “remastered” restaurant, just one of the post’s Hollywood hallmarks.

“We’re the whole plot of the movie,” said Todd Carvell, VFW senior vice auxiliary officer and executive chef of Post 660’s Canteen & Grill. On its Facebook page are photos or Carvell and senior vice/adjutant Justin “Hazmat” Howe seated in the Trustees Theater prior to a screening of Juror #2 at the SCAD Film Festival.

In the last decade, a half-dozen movies have been filmed here in part, including Tyler Perry’s Divorce in the Black, released this past summer, The Peanut Butter Falcon, Galveston, and Adam Sandler’s The Do-Over, whose production paid for the expansion of the post’s covered front porch.

Inside, the ceiling remains red after its turn as Velkovsky’s Bar in Halloween Ends (2022). 

“Jamie Lee Curtis sat right there at the end of the bar,” the chef proudly pointed out.

Though he would shy away from any applause and cheers, the star of this story is Carvell himself, a lifelong cook who moved to Savannah nine years ago and who came to Post 660 in 2021 to resurrect its restaurant. 

“It’s crazy how people don’t realize that we’re open to the public,” said Carvell.

If I can do anything about it, they will now.

CHEF’S CRAVINGS

Aaron Rothman, Caro Wakefield, C.J. Webster, Thomas Hamilton, Sailor Brindmore, & Tate Emo (Alexander's Bistro)☕️🍰

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?

In recent months, modifications have been made to the daily menu at Alexander’s Bistro, and chef-owner Aaron Rothman has more changes in the offing this fall. Since the long-dormant south-of-Forsyth Park corner property became Alexander’s back in 2022, the all-day eatery has been a welcome addition to the immediate neighborhood home to Betty Bomber’s, Brighter Day, Local 11ten, The Sentient Bean, and White Whale. Rothman and Co. will soon roll out their latest carte to go along with slight operational hour changes. For now, he, primary baker Caro Wakefield, right-hand man C.J. Webster, FOH shift lead Thomas Hamilton, and baristas Sailor Brindmore and Tate Emo all offer up this week’s Chefs’ Cravings.

AR: For me, it’s Sea Wolf. I love to get their vegan dog and their pickles tray. If I’m not there, I’ll be at PJ’s Thai, and I usually get the curry or the orange chicken.

CJW: I can’t say the same thing as him, can I? I would say PJ’s as well or Klom Klom. You’ve got to get the fresh Thai basil roll, omit the shrimp because I’m not here for that, but that’s just me. Those are a great little appetizer.

CW: I also want to say PJ’s. They give you so much food for a really reasonable price, it’s really well made, and everyone who works there is so nice. I like to get the peanut noodle with eggplant.

CJW: Sushi Hana for their little - what is it called? - inari, a little sashimi pieces. It’s like tofu skin. It’s really good.

CW: I also really like Nom Nom [Poké Shop], and I usually get the build-your-own.

AR: I just switched to a plant-based diet. I would probably be more inclined toward E-TANG, but they don’t really have a lot of plant-based vegan options. 

CW: He makes some really good vegan biscuits.

AR: I was telling him about that. I get guys who have cravings, and I just try it.

TH: A few places. I go to Rancho Alegre because they’ve got a good vegetarian Cuban sampler. I just went to Sushi Hana for the second time in a week. Different rolls but also miso soup. Asian River because I hang out with everybody here, so a lot of places are going to be the same: PJ’s Thai, Sea Wolf.

(cue laughter from those in the kitchen who already weighed in)

TH: I always like the Starland area. If you’re bringing somebody into town, The Vault. 

SB: They’ve got a really good turmeric chicken.

TE: Fire Street Food, I love that place.

SB: Another place that’s super-good, I really love Le Banh. It’s so good. The shrimp fresh roll, all the ingredients are so authentic.

TH: I’ve been wanting to check that one out. I’ve been wanting a banh mi.

TE: My favorite place might be Taqueria El San Luis. Oh my good, it’s so good.

SB: We have to go there.

TE: It’s fantastic. I really like the barbacoa burrito, but I will honestly get anything.

TH: Wait, is it that orange building? Oh, yeah! I’ve been there once: amazing!

TE: I also like Olympia Cafe. Again, I’ll get anything there, but the Greek pizza is really great.

SB: Another place that’s really good is Al Salaam Deli. I go there all the time. I always get the falafel pita wrap.

TE: Naan on Broughton.

SB: Namaste. Everything I’ve ever gotten there has been so good.

TE: I had a table tip me with a bunch of E-TANG food the other night. I also work at The Alida. They had takeout and brought it up and were like, “We bought too much.” They tipped me with unopened takeout.

SB: Are you serious?

TE: The only other place I can think of, I think it’s in Bluffton, is a birria food truck. It’s called…let me look it up…La Birria Loca. Delish. It’s the best birria in this area.

-Neil Gabbey

TRIED, TASTED, TRUE

Teachata 🥤

THE STORY BEHIND THE RECIPE

This one is all me, though I may be too late to trademark the name.

I do not like coffee. Never have, never will. 

I do, however, love coffee-flavored sweets. Coffee ice cream, coffee milkshakes, the occasional Frappuccino: yes, yes, and yes. I always dissolve a tablespoon of Trader Joe’s 100% Colombian Instant Coffee in vanilla extract to add to brownie batter and cookie dough. 

A cup of black coffee? Blech. Without the cream and sugar, count me out.

I am a total tea drinker and always have been. Hot, iced, sweet, half-and-half, and Arnold Palmers make up as much of my blood as plasma. From an early age, I would mix up a gigantic glass of Lipton Iced Tea Lemon to go with a bowl of animal crackers while I watched whatever baseball game was on each summer night.

Yeah, sugar is great.

Even in the warmest weather months, I start the day with at least two cups of hot tea, more often than not an unflavored black and always loose leaf. Harney & Sons’ Organic Assam and English Breakfast are my morning all stars, both with a squeeze of honey and a shot of cold milk.

Every so often, due to the New York Times Crossword or email or a house project, I sidetrack myself mid-cup, allowing the tea to cool too much. A few seconds in the microwave does the trick, if not adding more boiling water from my electric kettle with a resteep of the leaves.

Earlier this summer, one morning totally got away from me, and my mostly full PERC narwhal mug sat sadly on the kitchen counter until the heat of the day had risen too high for another hot drink.

Though I do not like coffee for coffee’s sake, one of the best single beverages in Savannah is the Foxy Family’s iced horchata latte. Again, dairy and sweetness allow the coffee component to sit in the back seat while cinnamon is present in every sip.

That morning, I wondered if there was such a thing as an iced tea horchata latte, and if not, could there be? 

I have had a London Fog before but never cold and never with the distinct addition of cinnamon. I have home-made horchata once. It turned out okay, but blending rice and brittle quills to steep in milk was a bit much for what amounted to about four servings.

For my teachata, I sped up the process: I placed a cinnamon stick in the coolish cup of tea, already amended with milk and honey, and let it sit in the fridge for about an hour. Only afterwards did I Google ‘teachata’, which turned up some strange pineapple-flavored potable, and ‘iced tea latte’, which showed bevvies with way too much milk. 

I filled a big glass with chipped ice from our fridge’s automatic feed, removed the cinnamon stick from the tea and pushed it deep into the ice, and poured the reserved cold tea over it.

It worked. It tasted great, not overly milky like a traditional latte and just sweet and cinnamony enough.

For the rest of the summer, I have made a teachata almost every day, extracting every last bit from the leaves that have made my first two cuppas because I am cheap. If anyone in Starbucks R&D is reading, give me a call.

-Neil Gabbey

THE RECIPE

HARD GOODS 

• 1 teaspoon black loose leaf tea 

• 1 cinnamon stick

WET GOODS

• 12 ounces boiling water

• 1 tablespoon honey or simple syrup (or more to taste)

• 1 tablespoon milk (or more to taste)

DO THIS

1. Make a large cup of tea, steeping the leaves in the boiling water for 3-4 minutes

2. Add the honey (or simple syrup), milk, and cinnamon stick to the tea

3. Cool in the refrigerator for about an hour

4. Fill a large glass with chipped or cubed ice

5. Pour the tea, including the cinnamon stick, over the ice

BEEN THERE. ATE THAT.

Green Truck Neighborhood Pub 🥬🍅🧅

Not only because it is just eight blocks from our house, the city’s standard-bearer for burgers should have been the subject of a BTAT column before now. I suppose that I was holding onto this one knowing that Green Truck Neighborhood Pub needed no pub from me. 

Since it opened in 2010, Josh and Whitney Shephard Yates’s community-oriented farm-fresh burger bar has won enough ‘Best of’ accolades to create that border that runs the length of the restaurant’s south wall. 

Though some prices have risen with the times, not much has changed on the front-and-back menu of starters, salads, sandwiches, and signature burgers, nor should it have: Hunter Cattle Company (Brooklet, Georgia) grass-fed beef, humane-certified chicken, locally sourced vegetables, small-batch brews, and those fantastic fries.

I would be lying if I did not admit that I was not wholly sold on Green Truck when we first moved to town. I loved that it was blocks from our house, but its popularity kept us from eating there more often, a lengthy line often queued up even before six o’clock. For years, I wished it had expanded with an outdoor patio to meet obvious demand.

Also, I was not a fan of the homemade ketchup, sorry, and I had fallen head over bun for Circa 1875’s burger, the thick patty with the green peppercorn gravy. 

During what were the most difficult times for folks in the food and beverage industry, we began eating at Green Truck more often in 2020 not because we are altruists but because the Yateses were able to start serving outside. At least once a month, takeaway burgers and fries were edible solace. 

Plans for a large-scale renovation that were announced last spring were put on hold, but the food has remained reliably remarkable.  

When in dinner doubt, Green Truck has become one of our more common go-tos, and we sit under the little tent, eating quickly before the flies descend. On inclement evenings, we steal stools at the bar.

A few weeks back, my wife and I did just that as the clouds gathered late one sleepy Saturday afternoon. Still early, there were plenty of seats both out front and in the dining room, but we sat at the bar, a wise move as rain began to fall just a few minutes later.

We are nothing if not creatures of eating habit, and because we are not at Green Truck more than once every couple months, our orders are usuals: a Classic (cooked) topped with pimento cheese, lettuce, tomato, and onion and a side of fries for me ($15.50) and just an order of fries ($4.75) for my wife, always served in a tall beer glass. One of these days, we will go rogue and try another of the creative sandwiches or huge salads.

We always ask for the fries to be crispy, and we happily pay the extra six bits for two sides of really great house-made ranch, which beats the brakes off the custom ketchup, though my wife has started to appreciate its uniqueness. 

Just one of the mouthwatering merits of a Greek Truck burger is its obviously handcrafted origin: no two patties are ever alike. That night, my Classic was noticeably thicker, and the generous helping of pimento cheese was even thicker still, slowly melting from the meat’s residual heat. I cannot help but wish this was a shredduce place, but that is my personal preference.

Thanks to both the Hunter Cattle beef and how it is cooked, it is a great burger, and yet again, the fries were perfectly crispy. 

By ten to six, the dining room was packed, and only one bar seat was unoccupied. As “Off the Wall,” the King of Pop’s most underrated song, segued into Rick James’s “Give It To Me, Baby,” I polished off the final bite of burger.

Again, Green Truck needs no additional affirmation from me, but we will eat there once a month as long as we live in Savannah.

-Neil Gabbey