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 "Fleeting experience” at the Thompson Savannah 🍝✨

• Savannah’s Best 🥩 to ☕️ according to the Uncle June’s Crew

• Baked beans recipe made for summer cookouts 🌭🇺🇸

• Zunzi’s and the six napkin sandwich 🏖

• Flavor Face-Off: What do you think of these food related debates? 🧐

THE MAIN DISH

Chef Dinner Series at Thompson Savannah presents Tuscan cuisine pop-up 🍝 🍷

“We tossed around a few different ideas for the name of the pop-up, and we settled on Effimero,” explained Thompson Savannah executive sous chef Cameron Dempsey.

On Tuesday, June 18, Fleeting will turn into a trattoria as Dempsey and his team serve a three-course á la carte menu that unites the foods of rustic Tuscany and the American Southern coast at the boutique Eastern Wharf property’s rez-de-chaussée restaurant.

Italian for ‘ephemeral’, Effimero is an intentional play on the host restaurant’s moniker.

“We lean into the idea of a ‘fleeting experience’, only temporary, because we change the menu quite often,” said the chef who has been in charge of creating the entire Fleeting carte for about the past year now, “though this is the first time I’ve taken on an out-of-the-ordinary pop-up.”

Seatings are available from 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., and Dempsey anticipates capping capacity for 160 covers in what promises to be a Big Night.

CHEF’S CRAVINGS

Uncle June’s - Reid Henninger, Myah Berkley, Sahil Rangari, and Mitchell Wright 🍷🌃

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?

If you have not yet tried a sandwich or a salad at Uncle June’s, one of the two newish permanent eatery containers at Starland Yard, your loss. This week’s Chefs’ Cravings, apropos to the month, come from its owner Reid Henninger and his crew of front-of-container Myah Berkley and line cooks Sahil Rangari and Mitchell Wright.

MB: I live really close to Bull Street Taco, so I go there a lot 🌮 I normally go with their bowls or their taco combo of three tacos.

SR: I don’t really go out much, but I like Brochu’s. The cauliflower, almost like a pita-puff kind of thing, and they stuff it with cauliflower. It’s really good.

MW: When I’m not here?...(pause for humorous effect)...I like to go home. I’m big on the [Crystal] Beer Parlor and Foxy [Loxy]. It used to be the cheeseburger club, but I don’t think they make it anymore 🍔

As much as I try not to insinuate myself into Chefs’ Cravings, it was at this moment that I excitedly told Mitchell that the amazing servers and kitchen crew at Crystal Beer Parlor will still make its classic cheeseburger club, though it is no longer on the menu: easily one of the city’s best sandwiches.

RH: I’ll give you two. One’s going to be predictable. I really like Late Air for wine and food. It’s a very well-run place. I love the atmosphere. A sleeper pick is The Steakhouse [on Whitemarsh Island]. It’s like walking into the set of a David Lynch movie, but the steaks are out of this world. They do a double-cut bone-in tomahawk ribeye 🥩 At a hundred bucks, it’s a steal. All the steaks are really fresh, and they’re awesome.

-Neil Gabbey

TRIED, TASTED, TRUE

Texas Baked Beans ⭐️

THE STORY BEHIND THE RECIPE

I never liked baked beans. Not attributable to any one Blazing Saddles-esque experience, their disflavor to my personal palate was born largely out of their unappetizing appearance. Whether at a picnic or in the school cafeteria, a monstrous tray of monochromatic mushy navy beans made for poor self-promotion.

It always looked more like punishment rations than a savory side for a grilled burger or dog, and this visual eater was in no way tempted by a slurry of brown sugar and barbecue sauce.

To be fair, growing up in Western New York did not put me in the regional vicinity of the best baked beans. For all I know, whatever I saw way back when was no more than heated-up store-bought tins of Bush’s or Heinz.

When we lived in Baltimore, the occasional weekend saw us drive over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to spend a night or two in Easton or St. Michaels. For pace, charm, architecture, strolls, and food, these towns were glorious getaway spots that we have happily ‘replaced’ with St. Simons and St. Augustine since we moved to Savannah a decade ago. 

Walking around Easton one summer noontime with our dearly departed pup, Alvie, we took an outside table at The BBQ Joint, recently opened by award-winning chef Andrew Evans. Four years ago, Evans stepped away from the restaurant, which soon reopened as Rude BBQ.

Fourteen years and 650 miles away, I cannot recall why I ordered a side of Texas baked beans that day. I hated baked beans. Maybe I saw another diner happily digging into some I might have even asked the counter attendant what all went into this version 🫘

Whatever it was allowed a wholesale change in my comestible estimation of this classic so long as ‘Texas’ was in its title.

The BBQ Joint’s beans looked unlike any I had seen theretofore, a medley of colors and flecks of far more than just a bunch of beans in a thick broth. Its aromatics were precisely that; plus, there was visible evidence of smoked meat swimming around with the legumes and veg.

This rendition tasted even better than it looked, and since that day, I have tried to replicate these Texas baked beans using Betty Crocker and Southern Living’s recipes as starting points, though I have to say that what follows is really my own contrivance. 

First off, I use canned beans because the dry bean soak-rinse-boil is a bother and because canned kinds are ubiquitous and cheap. About the actual beans, I like to use two or three different varieties, usually black, navy, or pinto; cannellinis and kidneys are too big and often have too tough a texture.

I do not go full James Beard with a salt pork starter. Whatever leftover slices of bacon I have in the freezer will suffice, or I have the deli counter cut me a thickish slab of an interesting ham that I cube-dice.

Loyal readers of Triple T know that my wife and I are spice lightweights, so my recipe eschews any hot capsicums, and I feel that now is the time to condemn formally the bell pepper.

A roasted red mixed into gumbo: sure. Raw slices of yellow or orange with some hummus: okay. A green pepper: never. Pointless.

Instead, I blister a poblano in the oven, along with two cloves of garlic slathered in olive oil and wrapped in foil 🫑 These beans need smoke not spice, and the deep green native to Puebla is a protean pepper that works wonderfully in the sweet sauce. 

After the chosen pork has crisped up in a skillet, add the aromatics and let everything sweat for at least ten minutes. Meanwhile, drain the beans and whisk together the sauce ingredients in a bowl before all three separate components are mixed together for a low-and-slow simmer.

As I type this, a brined bone-in turkey breast is smoking on my Weber kettle grill, and my beans have been on high in a Crock-Pot for the last few hours. Both should be ready right about the same time.

I have to go in and prep the Brussels sprouts: perhaps a future Triple T.

-Neil Gabbey

THE RECIPE

HARD GOODS 

• ¼ pound bacon or thick-cut deli ham, diced 🥓

• 1 medium poblano 🫑

• 2 cloves of garlic, tops sliced off but skin left on 🧄

• 1 medium sweet onion, diced 🧅

• 2 15-ounce cans beans (black, pinto, or navy), drained and rinsed 🫘

• ¼ cup light brown sugar

• 2 teaspoons New Mexico chili powder

WET GOODS

• ¼ cup barbecue sauce (sweet tomato-based)

• ½ cup ketchup 🥫

• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard

• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

• 1 tablespoon molasses

• ½ to 1 cup water 💧

DO THIS

1. Preheat an oven to 400°

2. Lightly coat the poblano with cooking spray and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet

3. Place the peeled garlic cloves on a small piece of foil, drizzle with the olive oil, wrap up loosely, and place on the same baking sheet

4. Roast the poblano until the entire skin is blistered and brownish-black, about twenty minutes

5. Remove the poblano and garlic from the oven

6. Place the poblano in a brown paper bag and unwrap the garlic foil

7. Put a skillet over medium heat and crisp up the bacon or ham

8. Seed and peel the charred skin off of the poblano and dice the flesh

9. Once the bacon or ham is crisp, add the onion and poblano and sautée for ten minutes

10. Press the roasted garlic out of the skins and into the skillet

11. While the pork and veg continue to sautée, whisk the brown sugar, chili powder, barbecue sauce, ketchup, yellow mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and molasses in a large bowl

12. Add the beans and the pork and veg to that bowl and stir to combine

13. Pour everything plus a half cup of water into a slow cooker set to high and let simmer for at least four hours

BEEN THERE. ATE THAT.

Zunzi’s 🌊⛱

As most locals know, Savannah’s homegrown internationally inspired sandwicherie became nationally renowned in the summer of 2012 when Zunzi’s Chicken Conquistador made it to the final three on Adam Richman's Best Sandwich in America.

For nearly another decade, the unique eatery created by Johnny and Gaby DeBeer thrived and then some in its postage-stamp shop at 108 East York Street, the queue always spilling out from under the counter-shack and the adjacent parking lot patio filled with happy diners devouring marvelously messy mouthfuls beneath rainbow umbrellas.

Total credit to the DeBeers for making the model work in that petit property for so long as business experienced endless booms, and the same to Chris Smith, who bought the brand back in 2014 and has since expanded the eatery’s empire. 

Small wonder this casual coastal concept now has homes in Atlanta, Tybee, and Hilton Head, which opened in May, as well as the flagship location opened in 2021 on Drayton, a colorful Art Deco delight tucked between the two Perry Lane Hotel buildings.

This brand deserves that site and all of the traffic it welcomes.

My wife and I watched all of those episodes of Adam Richman’s sammie tourney, mostly because we were on a first-taste basis with its two respectable entrants from Baltimore. Despite a few attempts on concert trips up to Philly, we never did eat the eventual winner, DiNic's Roast Pork, because the line was always too long.

The price of sandwich fame, I guess, which speaks to Zunzi’s eventual need to relocate and to expand.

On one of our scouting trips to Savannah before we made the move in 2015, we waited our turn at the original resto and ordered its famous Chicken Conquistador, which lived up to its billing, just as it did the other day.

On Memorial Day, we biked downtown and stopped first to refill a few spice jars at The Spice & Tea Exchange -  shout out to the now-retired Andy and Sandy Finkle! - before taking seats at a high top under the tessellation of sailcloth shades and in the direct line of a fan on full-blast.

Because we eat at Zunzi’s only a few times a year, there was no reason to order a different sandwich, especially now that it is served with house-made voodoo-esque chips, though we did tack on an order of Falafel Bites with a side of Ziki ($8).

The six golf-ball-sized falafel are lightly fried and densely packed with chickpeas and herbs, not alimentary art but plenty good and served with enough dilly dip for three orders.

The star sandwich ($16) is still shareable though undoubtedly smaller than it once was, both the bun and the portion of chicken not nearly as colossal but still just as tasty. The chicken is grilled perfectly and is made remark

able by the trademark Shit Yeah! sauce and Zunzi’s dressing. You could fill a humdrum roll with veg and those sauces and still have a sublime sandwich.

Even half requires at least six napkins.

What partially atones for the smaller sandwich is the plentiful portion of gratis chips served with the curry-forward Dank Sauce, quite possibly the best scratch-made chips in town.

Having built on the DeBeers’ model, Smith and Co. simply know what they are doing from the fantastic fare to the attentive and friendly table service. With the beachy bar, music playing, Chinese fan palms in giant planters, and string lights running from pillars to posts, Zunzi’s feels like a perpetual patio party.

-Neil Gabbey