"The Oyster Eater" (1882) James Ensor

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IN THIS ISSUE
DINING AROUND WINSTON-SALEM, NC
By John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER
BISTANGO 
By John Mariani

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
By John Mariani

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DINING AROUND
WINSTON-SALEM, NC
By John Mariani


    

    As I wrote of Winston-Salem last week, the city is vibrant with the kind of industries—bio-tech, high-tech, medicine, higher education—that demand good restaurants of every stripe, and on my recent visit there I found a panoply of styles, from low to high. Plus, it’s the home of Krispy Kreme Donuts, which began there in 1937.  Here are places I wouldn’t want to miss.

THE KATHARINE BRASSERIE & BAR
Kimpton Cardinal Hotel
4th & Main Street
336-761-0203

    Located within what had been the R.J. Reynolds headquarters building, with is impressive art deco style, The Katharine, named after Katharine Reynolds, is off the lobby of the admirably modern Kimpton Cardinal Hotel, part of a chain that wants to appeal to a Millennials crowd with big rooms, big beds with Frette linens, an evening wine hour, and in-room yoga mats.  (Too bad they offer free Wi-Fi only for their Karma Rewards members.)
    The Katharine styles itself as an American brasserie with French connections and Southern underpinning, via Executive Chef Ed Witt, who seems to have put as much effort into his extensive tattoos as into his cuisine.  His résumé is impressive, including jobs at  Rubicon and Jardinière in San Francisco,  Daniel, Il Buco and The River Café in NYC, and Morso in Georgetown.

    The room, adjacent to the bar and with an open kitchen, is well lighted and the roomy booths are very comfortable, but the place can get exceedingly loud since there are no soft surfaces.
    One of the signature items here is Witt’s presentation of snails and garlic butter ($12), baked inside hush puppies with maître d’hôtel butter—as winning a marriage of French and Southern cooking as I’ve ever run across. The same applies to a French onion soup, here made with super-sweet Vidalia onions topped with bubbling Lissome cheese ($10).  A nod to the North Atlantic is to be found in the Tuesday special of hearty lobster pot pie ($34), while on other days of the week country fried duck breast, coq au vin or blanquette of veal are featured.
    Of course, there are platters of pristine shellfish ($75-$135), and, when in season meaty Jonah crab claws ($6 each). An impeccably cooked grouper (above) was well served on a bed of basil-laced light green mashed potatoes with a charred tomato snap pea relish ($26).  There are four steak offerings, including an 8-ounce bistro-style filet ($21) and a 14-ounce strip loin ($45), which, in the bistro spirit, you will want to lavish with Béarnaise or bourbon peppercorn sauce (a foie gras sauce is a $5 supplement).
    You won’t want to neglect the sides, from the creamed corn spiked with jalapeño ($8)  to the blue cheese-lavished roasted mushrooms ($8); string beans are glazed with sorghum and benne seeds ($8), yet another touch of culinary hands joined across the sea. A vegetarian would be quite happy with just such dishes.
    For dessert you may want to consider the cookie plate ($8) with a walnut brownie, coconut macaroon, and peanut butter cookies that any grown American child will savor, though the French madeleines were tasteless and limp when they should have been lemony and crisp.  A honey pecan tart with salted caramel ice cream made up for that lapse by being irresistible and not overly sweet ($8).
    House cocktails are $11, and the wine list is unquestionably one of the best and best selected in the state, with a large portion devoted to French bottlings, including a good number from Alsace, you don't often see on a restaurant menu. Mark-ups are all over the map, with some bottles hiked about 100%, but $300 for Château Batailley Cinquième Grand Cru 2005 is more like 400% and a bottle of Cakebread Chardonnay that sells for $36 in a wine shop here goes for $115.  There is also a fine, extensive beer list.

 
Open for breakfast and dinner daily; lunch Mon.-Fri.; Brunch Sat. & Sun. 

 

MOZELLE’S FRESH SOUTHERN BISTRO

878 West  4th Street
336-703-5400

    Why owner Jennifer Smith should bother to add the word “Fresh” to her restaurant’s name is beyond me, for one bite of just about anything on Chef Matt Haithcock’s menu at Mozelle’s will tell you that they are buying the best ingredients they can and making everything from scratch.  The food is beautifully plated, care is taken with texture and temperature, and the eclecticism of the menu works in the restaurant’s favor as a casual but smart place, bright with colors of orange and avocado green against creamy walls and a congenial counter bar.
    This is a place where you’ll get excellent fried chicken, which is fried boneless, with peach, chutney, Mac-and-cheese and green beans—$19, quite a bargain at dinner, $11 as a hefty sandwich at lunch. There’s also good prole food like the “Gourmet Meatloaf” ($19), bacon wrapped with havarti cheese, tomato marmalade, spicy collard greens and cheese grits, which proudly epitomize contemporary Piedmont cookery.  Even more to the point is the marvelous tomato pie ($17), which is almost like a pizza within an American short crust, served with cheese-rich stone ground grits and lima beans (above).
    The Southern spring rolls ($11) might have come out of a good Vietnamese kitchen, here packed with pulled pork, shiitake mushrooms, Napa cabbage, collards and a nutty sesame ginger sauce, and you’ll see just how cannily Haithcock can play with Southern tradition when you taste his black-eyed pea fritters ($9) with bitter collard green pesto, crisp bacon, and an assertive sambal aïoli made with chive oil.
    Desserts revert to the American larder with bourbon pecan bread pudding oozing caramel sauce ($7) and a coconut cream pie ($7) that could have come straight from the most modern edition of The Joy of Cooking.
    It is difficult to imagine anyone wouldn’t enjoy dining on a sunny day at Mozelle’s—the service staff itself will lift your spirits—and it’s a fine indication of how very close Winston-Salem is to the culinary scene of much larger cities.

Open for lunch Mon.-Fri., for brunch Sat & Sun., for dinner nightly.

 

SPRING HOUSE RESTAURANT, KITCHEN & BAR

    Located in the historic 1920s Bahnson House on “Millionaire’s Row” and once used as the city’s public library, Spring House enters its fifth year as one of Winston-Salem’s fine dining restaurants wholly free of pomp while remaining genteel in the most disarming sense.   Owners Lynn Murphy and his wife, Lynette Matthews-Murphy, have infused a congenial hospitality in every detail and corner, including the beautiful Library Bar, the sun room, and, in good weather, tables outside on the spacious lawn.  The place retains the look of a great house with broad staircases, French doors and fireplaces, white oak floors, and four upstairs bedrooms. Inside the kitchen there is a “Chef’s Table” where chef/co-owner Tim Grandinetti (left) displays his considerable showmanship in lavish multi-course dinners.
        Otherwise the regular menu is long and has something for everyone, each dish piled high with food and garnishes, from the house salad towering with juicy roast duck, caramelized onions, mushrooms, potato and goat’s cheese ($25), to the shrimp, crab, and roasted corn beignets with a red beet sauce and horseradish condiment ($11.95).  A dish called “The Colonel” is composed of crispy buttermilk fried chicken and “sawmill gravy” with smoked tomato and pimento cheese grits ($19.95), while the crusted pork chop ($23.95) comes with brown sugar whipped sweet potatoes, pickled shrimp and crab salad with smoked tomato rémoulade.  Chef Grandinetti is a generous and jolly fellow, and no one leaves Mozelle's hungry or unhappy.

Open Mon.-Sat. for dinner

 

THE TAVERN IN OLD SALEM

    It really is requisite for anyone visiting Old Salem to eat at this utterly charming,  butter yellow 1784 tavern that will give you both an historic sense and a true taste of what Moravian food culture was like.  Of course, this being a big tourist destination, half its menu is composed of sandwiches and burgers of a kind no Moravian ever cooked, but if you stick to the front of the menu, you’ll eat heartily and well, starting off with impossible-to-resist snowflake biscuits and pumpkin muffins served with warm apple butter ($2.75).  A goat’s cheese salad manifests Moravian abundance with griddled pears, candied pecans, cranberries, zesty red onions, sweet tomatoes and a white peach vinaigrette ($8), all served by a staff in period costume, who, fortunately, do not try to mimic a Moravian accent.
    All the main courses I tried were delicious: Chef Jared Keiper boils bratwurst in beer then grills it and serves it with house-made sauerkraut, green beans and demi-glace ($9.75); the tavern chicken pie is quite literally a large slice of pie pumped up with abundant chunks of chicken and a rich creamy sauce suffused with the flavors of herbs and spices, served with Redskin mashed potatoes and green beans ($9.50); braised Angus beef pot roast comes with those same potatoes and beans and the beef is slowly cooked and swims in a brown ale gravy till it almost falls apart ($10.50).
      For dessert go with a very simple, traditional chess pie that is not as sweet as they too often are.
    The wine list is adequate to the menu and very decently priced, too.

 Open Tues.-Sat. for lunch and dinner.

 

MARY’S GOURMET DINER

723 Trade Street
336-723-7239 

 
  There’s not a little whimsy in attaching “Gourmet” to Mary’s Diner, now six years in business, for while all the traditional no frills chairs and tables and the “sit-down-and-eat” ambiance are what you might expect, they are enhanced beyond anything you might imagine by vast murals by local artists of justified reputation, including Liz Simmons, Laura Lashley (below), Daniel VonSeggen, Jason Blevins and John Blackburn.  On one wall is stretched the “Garden of Eden.” On another “Culinary Warrior Women.”  Stars twinkle, colors pop, dinosaurs stroll with lions, and wit abounds.
    Mary’s began on a smaller scale but business bloomed so well that they were forced to get bigger and offer even better. Breakfast is served six days a week, out of an old bank building in the burgeoning Arts District.
    The Mary in question is Mary Haglund, and nothing goes in or out of that kitchen that she doesn’t deem the best she can buy and serve, and do it at very reasonable prices: a square deal for a square meal.
     “Over the years, many people have found it hard to believe the food isn’t rigged with some ‘special’ ingredient,” she says, “Perhaps it’s the LACK of strange ingredients that blows people’s minds and taste buds.” Whatever it is, I was enchanted with the place and the food, from the billowy “build your own” omelets to the plump breakfast burrito ($10.75) and the griddle-fried cornmeal cakes with thick-sliced bacon or sausage ($10.50).  The "cat's head biscuits" (right) at Mary’s are knock-outs—big as a baseball, fluffy, buttery, they’re light and airy but with just the right textural heft and that tangy hint of buttermilk.  Pour on some pork gravy and you have a breakfast as good as any in the South ($10.50), and one to hold you till dinner.  The grits, as you can guess, are simply cooked but taste of corn, topped with seasonal greens, tomatoes, two fried eggs and feta ($10.95). 
    Down the bottom of the long menu Mary lists her purveyors, all from North Carolina, like Homeland Creamery Dairy Products from Julian, Ward’s  Happy Chicken Eggs from McLeansville, Sanford Milling Company Flour in Henderson, Plum Granny Farm Produce from Greensboro, King and Kranies Coffee from Winston-Salem.  It would never occur to her to serve anything else, and her loyal clientele know that.

 

Open daily.

  

FOOTHILLS DOWNTOWN PUB

638 West 4th Street
336-777-3348

    You can’t get fresher beer than at Foothills Downtown Pub (evoking the Piedmont) because right there is where it’s made—they give tours—and as a brew pub they are as serious about their food as they are about their beer.  In a big room flanked by the brewery and a good long counter behind which stand expert bartenders who pour dozens of their products with as much care as an Italian barrista makes a cappuccino.
    Each month Foothills features a different special beer, which includes Sexual Chocolate in February, Hopjob Session IPA in May, Oktoberfest in August and Frostbite Black IPA in November.  To go with such plenty, you sit down to a big table, with strangers if you care to, and chow down on fried pickle chips with Ranch dressing ($5.99), loaded-up Pub nachos ($8.99) with beer cheese, really delicious wings (right) with three sauces ($8.99) and larger platters of pork ribs roasted in Carolina Cream Ale ($17.99). The Reuben's   slow-cooked (below) beef is very moist on beautifully toasted rye, with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and Thousand Island dressing ($9.99). Bratwursts come with fresh sauerkraut ($14.99), and burgers taste the way burgers should—of first-rate, lightly compacted ground beef, with a choice of sensible toppings, which includes the Dirty South Burger with pimiento cheese, bacon, tomato and fried pickles ($12.99). Don’t forget the fat, crispy, greaseless onion ring stack either ($5.99).  With the prices here so low, I guess they must make it up in beer sales.  Yeah, they do.
  
By any stretch Foothills serves up  damn good food, and the beer adds a great deal more pleasure to the reason you come here.  I also applaud the fact that in a state that mindlessly allows citizens to carry guns into a bar, Foothills posts a sign saying they don’t want you in there if you’re packing heat.  Of course, they got some nasty letters and boneheaded phone calls, but it’s the protesters’  loss for missing out on food and beer this good.

Open daily for lunch and dinner.

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