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Restaurant of the Year

Deidre Schipani

Wade Spees
The Post and Courier

The new look at Charleston Grill is lighter and less formal but every bit as elegant.

Charleston Grill

224 King St., downtown

577-4522

www.charlestongrill.com

$$$$-$$$$$

In a city blessed with many remarkable restaurants, talented chefs, the bounty of the sea, access to the farm and a state committed to the "locavore" mentality, how do you choose the restaurant of the year?

Simple, it chooses you. Your experience will be a transformative one. The flavors of your meal will ring as true as your welcome. You will be surrounded by what Danny Meyer calls the "hospitality dialogue." You begin a "conversation" with a staff and a kitchen that are committed to both nourish and nurture. The ingredients are elevated to another level in their freshness, quality and skilled preparation. The staff possesses the "excellence reflex" as described by Michael Romano — an "overarching concern to do the right thing."

You stop to savor the flavors, you extend a fork for your companion to share in inspired combinations, you think about the dishes and when will you eat them again. This is what takes place when the restaurant in your universe of many restaurants is the masterpiece of form.

"Revive" is the word to describe our 2008 Restaurant of the Year. In February 2007, the Charleston Grill closed its doors to rethink, reimagine, redecorate and refuel this property that had a stable of talent but suffered from the "special occasion syndrome." Their mission was to reposition the restaurant from a fine dining, special-occasion destination to a refined and recognizable establishment that will garner your business on a regular basis.

The new look delivers casual elegance. The handsome space is one of dark paneling anchoring a light and airy dining room, softened by diaphanous fabric "panels" and punctuated by a perfect rose bloom on your table. It's fragrance-free, and that is what you want as the sensory aromas of your meal should command all the attention of your nose.

Cozy banquettes are the perfect stage to enjoy the theater of your own meal and vicariously participate in those on your sight line or just indulge in the intimacy of your alcove. It's privacy with a view.

The Grill has a refined sense of place, and both its artwork and its menu distill and clarify that awareness. Chef Bob Waggoner and his staff went to work on the menu. It is now divided into four "quadrants," and they set the compass points for your dining experience.

"Pure" allows the ingredients to stand on their own, coaxed only gently by supporting seasonings or cooking techniques. It is here you will find chilled Maine lobster with sweet Meyer lemon, micro greens and chervil vinaigrette, osetra caviar with classic blini, dry-aged Colorado lamb chops, or a 22-ounce rib-eye steak.

"Lush" takes its cue from French haute cuisine, with sauces of reduction and stratification, ingredients of fleeting seasonality, compositions of complexity and the interplay of color and texture that makes the food at the Grill art you can eat.

"Cosmopolitan" packs up your tastebuds and takes them on a field trip. Mexican empanadas are plumped with French-inspired duck confit, tuna and hamachi sashimi are glossed with Southeast Asian-inspired lemongrass oil and crunch with black and orange sea salt. Risotto, minestrone and tart Nicoise dabble in the Mediterranean.

"Southern" puts a contemporary spin on regional classics such as iceberg lettuce wedges with blue cheese dressing, crab cake with creek shrimp, sauteed red snapper or Kurobuta pork tenderloin and pork belly combination.

Feel free to move through all of the compass points of the menu. Mix a Lush with a Southern, partner a Pure with a Cosmopolitan. This is a market-driven menu and will change with the seasons.

The staff at the Grill are thoroughbreds. Excellence begins with your reservation. You hear the smile in their voice. Upon your arrival, there is that sense that they were expecting "you." Throughout the meal, confident and expert service keep company at your table.

Under the watchful eye and gracious demeanor of Mickey Bakst, they waltz through your dinner service with grace and rhythm. It's a culinary ballet with Mr. Bakst as the choreographer.

Culinary excellence, knowledgeable service and gracious hospitality characterize the Grill experience.

And behind all this is Waggoner and his kitchen staff. As the architect of this menu, he is a juggler. Complexity and subtlety coexist in equal parts of culinary harmony. A duck dish, served in a sangria-inspired sauce on a bed of foie gras ravioli, demonstrates his sense of flavor combinations and texture. The "sangria" theme was carried out with a garnish of roasted red grapes and the essence of mint perfumed your mouth as you ate this dish. The skill in the kitchen kept the foie gras intact within its pasta shell and the playfulness of the chef could be seen in "foie gras ravioli."

Wade Spees
The Post and Courier

Charleston Grill’s appetizer of roasted rabbit loin, smoked bacon, Vidalia onions, a hoe cake, tasso gravy and corn coulis offers a contemporary interpretation of Southern cuisine.

The crab cake is extraordinary. The purity of the crab, the briny sweetness of the lump crabmeat, and the brace of the lime vinaigrette hit all the right notes.

What is remarkable about this restaurant is the quality of the ingredients. You are treated to fresh products, cooked with precision and artfully presented. There is nothing superfluous on your plate.

The Kurobota pork tenderloin and belly married tenderness and succulence under the crisp shell of a "chicken fried" belly. It was frying, perfected. The coating formed almost pastrylike layers enrobing the "bacon" within.

A roasted baby beet salad is served with Brillat-Savarin cheese. This French triple-cream cheese is the ice cream of the fromage world. It anchors the sweet, earthy flavors of the beets and is balanced by the acidity of the orange vinaigrette.

Sommelier Rick Rubel and assistant wine director Sara Kavanaugh have assembled an outstanding cellar. Their wine program truly has something for everyone.

Look for breadth across all the wine regions from New World wines to Old World wines. It's a well-organized list by color, body, depth, region, vintage and nonvintage. From cult wines like Screaming Eagle to the revered Romanee-Conti; from the house of Angelo Gaja to Williams Selyem; oenophiles and the occasional wine drinker will find a glass of liquid pleasure across all price points.

Like the cool jazz of Quentin Baxter and Friends, the menu here is one in harmony with ingredients and cooking competence. The tone is pitch perfect from the musicians to the kitchen staff to Bakst and his team at the front of the house.

A prelude to dessert was a hibiscus-infused tisane with fresh raspberries, whose perfume wafted up through the floral notes of the hibiscus and refreshed our palate for dessert.

Desserts are equally compelling — a lemon souffle, an assortment of chocolates, fondues for two, homemade ice creams, creme brulee and a sundae.

As dessert concludes, the chef sends out mignardises, which are small, delicate candies and pastries very much in the tradition of French dining.

This was a meal made for memory. The very best ones always are.