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:

• Big Bon Bodega Pooler Grand Opening Party! 🎉

• DOKI DOKI Ice Cream’s Scoop on the Top Restaurants in Town 🍨

• Master the Art of Homemade Tzatziki with this Easy Recipe! 🥙 

• Stay Cool with Ice Cold Drinks and Pizza at this Local Hangout! 😎 

THE MAIN DISH

Local bodega brand celebrates with grand-opening party at new Pooler location 🥯 🍕

The Big Bon Family has big plans.

This evening, the culinary conception of founder-owner Kay Heritage will officially fête the brand’s Pooler bodega, which opened for business back on June 6 in The Commons at Savannah Quarters. 

Fittingly, that day exactly marked a year since Shahin Afsharian joined the BBF as its managing partner, COO, and chef.

“We joke that this is my anniversary present,” he said of the new restaurant.

“We didn’t plan it that way, but it was pretty special,” said Heritage with her signature sweet smile.

From 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. tonight, Heritage, Afsharian, and their team will host an open house party at Big Bon Bodega Pooler, featuring music by The Fabulous Equinox Orchestra.

So much to celebrate with so much more in the works.

CHEF’S CRAVINGS

DOKI DOKI - Shannon Koprivich & Wilson Webel

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?

Incredibly, Doki Doki Ice Creamery is not even a year old, yet it feels like it has shared the Bull Street block with its Southern Cross Hospitality flagship The Collins Quarter for far longer, filling a needed niche for cold treats between Leopold’s and Culver’s. This week’s Chefs’ Cravings come courtesy of Doki Doki’s executive pastry chef, Shannon Koprivich, and production assistant of all the gelatos and ice creams, Wilson Webel.

SK: My current favorite right now is The Wyld. Frozen Pain Killer, absolutely. Their Pain Killer Slushies are probably the best in Savannah proper, and I do their crispy rock shrimp tacos, the fried green tomatoes 🌮 Pretty much anything on that menu, I’ll eat it all. 

WW: I like late-night snacks, and I like to go to Savoy Society. They have halloumi sliders.

SK: Oooh, they are yummy.

WW: They are out-of-this-world 🌎

SK: Their martinis are also so good.

WW: They do have really good espresso martinis 🍸

SK: Have you had the pickle martini?

WW: No.

SK: So good. Late Air is super, super-yummy. Their menu changes pretty often, but the last time I was there, their crudo plate was perfect, and their wine list is always top-notch.

WW: I like Hitch’s fried banana pepper rings. Those are killer. For dinner, I’m a big fan of Bella Napoli. 

SK: For sure. 

WW: Definitely their seafood pasta special when they have it 🍝 It has lots of crab and scallops in it. It’s so good. They also have really good wines there.

SK: We also all eat at Ukiyo pretty...

WW: Often, yeah.

SK: Shameless plug for Southern Cross. That’s one of my favorite dinner spots.

WW: The roasted wild mushrooms, phenomenal 🍄

And for a special occasion?

SK: Elizabeth on 37th, hands down. Always. That’s my husband’s and my favorite.

WW: Ardsley Station is also super, super-good. They have a Stroganoff. And I would have to say Saint Bibiana. 

SK: Anything [culinary director] Derek [Simcik] does at Bibiana is (insert thumbs-up gesture and tongue click).

-Neil Gabbey

TRIED, TASTED, TRUE

Tzatziki 🥒🍋

THE STORY BEHIND THE RECIPE

Sometimes in summertimes, it is not always easy to find just the right side. While dozens of main dishes lend themselves to being grilled, the warmest weather months beg for colder accompaniments, especially anything that can be prepared ahead of time and refrigerated or that does not require repeated back-and-forths from the Weber to the stovetop.

Too hot for potatoes and heavy starches, ‘tis the season for cob corn and ratatouille, though those also require burners and braisers. We need salads.

This might be another one of my long walks, but I hope you enjoy what comes before the actual recipe.

For many years, a favorite weekend getaway destination was Lewes, Delaware, known as the “first town in the First State.” Nestled beneath Cape Henlopen, where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean, Lewes is colonial coastal at its finest, a collage of quaint and quiet village streets and high-quality dining, thanks to vacationer money that flows in from Philly and D.C.

No matter what time of year we visited, my wife and I looked forward to dinner at Half Full wholeheartedly. For its first seven years, the gourmet pizza bistro had made its home in a pint-sized historic property that packed in a maximum of 20 diners and was always at capacity with more eager eaters waiting outside.

Half Full’s culinary credo was succinct and superb: pizza, wine, craft beer, and two scratch-made desserts. That was all, and that was plenty because every sip and bite was perfect.

Not surprisingly, the restaurant outgrew its original location and moved into another lovingly restored historic home around the corner in 2014. The ampler kitchen space allowed for an expanded menu but only to add a few salads and to double the different pizza options. No burgers, no chicken tenders. Other places in Lewes already offer the standards.

As I forewarned, relating all this to my recipe for tzatziki was going to take a minute. We are almost there, promise.

In the last two years we visited Lewes before leaving the Mid-Atlantic, my wife and I occasionally chewed on the idea of opening a small restaurant or bakery, and Half Full’s model seemed ideal: small space plus small menu equals manageable and marketable food footprint. 

Between bites of a Smokin' Margherita, I brainstormed what I might serve at Alvie’s Pizza Bar, named after our now dearly departed pup. In order to cross-utilize dough, I surmised a slate of three separate starter dips, each served with a dough ball brushed with garlic oil and baked off for scooping up hummus, kaddo bourani, or tzatziki.

Once baby pumpkins are back in season, I will write up a Triple T featuring that second one, an astounding Afghan appetizer. You will thank me later.

For now, I will stick to tzatziki, which has not necessarily become commonplace but is far more known now than it was a decade ago. As a sauce, few can compare to how it pairs with kebab-ed anything, and a more even cucumber-to-yogurt ratio yields a heftier, more saladish side. 

One of the beauties of this Mediterranean staple is that a rote recipe is not really required. Lean this way or that with the ingredients and their amounts, and you will still have a palatable product. I suppose that my first versions were guided by recipes from Cook’s Illustrated and Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

Greek yogurt is naturally thick, but I still set mine in a strainer lined with cheesecloth. After an hour or more in the fridge, any residual whey will have run away. 

Feel free to use English cucumbers. I choose our cheaper American cousin, which I peel and seed with a teaspoon. A box grater does the job, but so does my Cuisinart’s shredding disc without the chance of scraped knuckles.

In a large strainer or small colander, toss the grated cukes with a half teaspoon of salt, cover with a plate, and let leach for about 30 minutes at room temperature. 

While the yogurt and cucumbers are resting, mince a very small garlic clove and mash it with another half teaspoon of salt, pressing down on the blade of a chef’s knife or santoku until a paste forms. If you want to cut down on the garlic’s bite, steep the paste in the tablespoons of lemon juice and olive oil that will be added to the salad regardless. Sometimes, I sub out the former for the same volume of white wine vinegar.

Herbs are essential to tzatziki, and although so many traditional iterations call for mint, I think that even a little of it overwhelms the subtleness of the cucumbers. Minced fresh dill is much more delicious, maybe with a few sprinkles of chopped parsley.

With one total teaspoon of salt in the tzatziki thus far, you may need to add a pinch more once the ingredients have a chance to get to know each other. After an hour in the fridge, you have a super summer chilled salad that goes great with any grilled meat or fish.

If you have leftovers, add another small tub of yogurt, whazz it up in a food processor with a little more olive oil and white wine vinegar, and use it as a condiment. Crumble some feta over fresh-cut fries dusted with fresh thyme and lemon zest.

-Neil Gabbey

THE RECIPE

HARD GOODS 

• 2 medium cucumbers, peeled and seeded 🥒

• 1 very small clove of garlic 🧄

• ¼ cup diced fresh dill

• 1 teaspoon Kosher salt, plus more to taste

• Ground white pepper, to taste (optional)

WET GOODS

• 10 ounces (approx.) Greek yogurt (2 single-serving tubs)

• 1 tablespoon olive oil 🫒

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice or white wine vinegar (or half of both) 🍋

DO THIS

1. Place the yogurt into a strainer lined with cheesecloth, set atop another bowl, and refrigerate for at least an hour

2. Peel and seed the cucumbers and slice into pieces that will fit into a food processor’s feed tube

3. Shred the cucumbers

4. Toss the shredded cucumbers with ½ teaspoon salt in a strainer or colander set atop another bowl, cover, and leave at room temperature for at least 30 minutes

5. Mince the garlic

6. Sprinkle the remaining ½ teaspoon salt over the garlic and press into a paste using the broad side of a chef’s knife

7. Place the garlic-salt paste in a small bowl with the olive oil and lemon juice (or white wine vinegar) and let steep for 15 minutes (or more)

8. Use a plate and press down on the cucumbers, still in the colander, to squeeze out as much water as possible

9. Use a spatula to combine the cucumbers, yogurt, garlic paste with steeping dressing, and dill

10. Refrigerate the salad for at least an hour before serving

11. Drizzle a little olive oil over the top with a few more pieces of chopped parsley

BEEN THERE. ATE THAT.

Hop Atomica 🍻🍕

It had been a minute, actually several months, since my wife and I had last eaten at Hop Atomica. In truth, we had not recently revisited the cozy corner neighborhood beerstropub for any reason other than other similar restos had struck our shared fancy in the moment 🌅

If I am not mistaken, the eatery has undergone a few culinary changes and menu pivots since it opened in the summer of 2020. Long-gone are the tacos and most of the original sandwiches, including a Korean beef and cheese that was delightful, in favor of two salads, two sammies, and three starters in what is a pizza-focused bill of fare. 

This all makes perfect sense because the kitchen is compact, anchored by a do-everything wood-fired pizza oven, and if I may quote what I wrote four years ago now, “this is food that is meant to accompany beers, not the other way round.” 

Again paraphrasing myself, I readily admit that we are not Hop Atomica’s target patrons because we do not drink beer, but on a Chamber of Commerce Saturday evening, the prospect of a quick bike ride up Broad Street and some pimento cheese al fresco sounded fantastic.

On the spacious patio, too few umbrellas offered respite from the setting sun, and once our food arrived, so did the flies. Because we had ridden our bikes, we did not have our battery-powered bug fan on hand.

Nevertheless, how nice it was to sit outside at an establishment that is so clearly part of the neighborhood. Most of the patio tables were occupied, and after six o’clock, a steady stream of folks who had evidently waited out the heat poured inside to be poured something cold.

Loyal BTAT readers know that I am cheap, which means that I have a hard time paying 20 bucks for a pizza, and honestly, we already have our favorite pizza places. We opted to split some proper pub food: the house-made pimento cheese, served with wood-fired bread ($10); the Caesar, topped with Auspicious Baking Co. croutons and anchovies ($10); and an order of wings with blue cheese ($13).

The barkeep nicely reminded me that the wings are smoked and then finished in the oven, not fried, and quickly echoed my request that they be made crispy.

While we waited for our food, my wife and I really enjoyed the playlist pumping out of the patio speakers: a deep cut by The Cure, Jain, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs 🎶 This is lame, I know, but were Hop Atomica not across Victory Drive, we would be here often just because it is a place every neighborhood needs.

One can only imagine that the imminent denizens of the Procida condo complex on the corner of Broad and East 39th will be frequent eaters across the street.

The pimento cheese was very good, creamy and appropriately light on the eponymous pepper pieces 🧀 Unlike the usual ratio served at most restos, there was more bread than dip, and we wanted more of the latter. The slices of garlicky toast were soft on the inside and made for easy scooping and spreading.

The salad was a fairly familiar iteration, though the bite-sized romaine pieces proved to be much nicer than fighting with huge leaves. Like the pimento, I wanted a bigger portion with a few more anchovies as well as some softer croutons. No fault of Hop Atomica, I cannot be the only eater out there who hates a crouton that cannot be forked. Who’s with me? 🥗

Sitting idle for 10 minutes while we finished the cold courses, the wings remained piping hot. One plastic ramekin of rather runny blue cheese was not nearly enough for the huge, meaty, and smoky sextet. The flavor was fantastic, even if I am still a sucker for a good ol’ fried chicken wing 🍗

In the opening lines of Annie Hall, Woody Allen’s metaprotagonist Alvy Singer retells the joke about two elderly women eating dinner at a Catskills resort. One says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible,” and the other one replies, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions."

The food at Hop Atomica is good, easily good enough for return bike rides sooner than another year’s time, but for the dip, salad, and wings, I would appreciate more of each.

-Neil Gabbey