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Al di La - West Ashley Restaurant Review

David Heiser — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:32:30 +0000

There are some restaurants that have the kind of sparkling word-of-mouth reputation that no marketing budget can buy. A favorite of local residents and critics alike, West Ashley’s Al di La is one of those restaurants. The tiny Northern Italian-style trattoria tucked in an indistinct strip of shops just off the Savannah Hwy. near Gene’s Haufbrau is consistently one of the most highly recommended restaurants in the city.

Don’t let Al di La’s humble location fool you into thinking you’ll be able to stroll up and grab a table any night of the week. In my only previous experience dining there, it took me three separate attempts to make a reservation before I was able to sneak in. On this occasion, however, we were able to grab a table right when the restaurant opened at 6 p.m.

Al di La’s menu is broken up into the four standard courses of Italian cuisine–antipasti ($4.50 to $10), primi ($5 to $13), secondi ($16 to $19.25), and dolci (~$7). If you’re looking for chicken parmigiana or lasagna, you’re looking to the wrong place. In fact, if that’s the only kind of Italian cuisine you’ve experienced, you’re not likely to consider most of Al di La’s menu to sound Italian at all. Northern Italian cuisine places less emphasis on olive oil, tomato-based sauces, and noodles, instead favoring butter, wine and broth-based sauces, risotto, and polenta.

For our first course, we decided to start light with a Shepherds Salad ($7.25). Offering a little bit of everything, this salad includes genoa salami, spicy sopressata, ubriaco cheese (which tastes similar to asiago), grapes, and walnuts, all served over a bed of mixed greens with a citrus vinaigrette. While I enjoyed the salad, in retrospect I wish we had opted for one of their more interesting offerings like the Smoked Beef Carpaccio ($8) or Oven-roasted Pears with Prosciutto and Gorgonzola ($8.50).

As much I’ve loved just about everything I’ve had in my two experiences at Al di La, I think the restaurant shines most with its primi offerings. On this night, we chose the Tagilatelle with Porcini mushrooms, duck confit, and truffle oil ($10.25). This was unquestionably the highlight of our meal. The rich, decadent flavors of the confit and truffle oil, the wonderful aroma of the mushrooms, and the texture of the noodles (which are freshly made in-house, daily) all combine to make this dish an undeniable success. However, I was happy that we chose this as only our second course, because I think it may have been too heavy for a much larger portion. Other tantalizing options in this section include Lobster and Shrimp Ravioli ($13) and Strangozzi Spolentina with Spicy Sausage, Pancetta, Nutmeg, and Lemon Zest ($11.25)

For my main course, I decided again on duck, but in a much different form. The Pan-roasted Duck Breast ($19.25) was cooked to a perfect, tender medium rare and served in a subtly sweet and tangy sauce of apple cider and brown stock. The mashed potatoes and root vegetables were simple and well prepared. There isn’t really a lot I can say about this dish, other than the fact that it was really well executed. I enjoyed having two opposite preparations of duck back to back. Shows you how versatile an ingredient it is.

My partner chose the Prosciutto-wrapped Chicken Breast stuffed with fontina cheese, pine nuts and golden raisins ($16). My general opinion is that anything wrapped in prosciutto is always better than something not wrapped in prosciutto, and this dish did nothing to prove otherwise. The mildly salty flavor of the prosciutto and juicy chicken breast were good on their own, but the creamy, flavorful filling made the dish.

For dessert, we selected the Lemon-Olive Oil Cake ($7) with macerated strawberries and mascarpone cheese. This was a simple, delicious offering that put a nice cap on the meal.

Overall, Al di La fully lived up to my lofty expectations. The food was excellent, the service was friendly and attentive, and the atmosphere lends itself perfectly to a quiet dinner for two. If you’re looking for somewhere new to take a date and want to avoid the peninsula, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t check out what very well may be Charleston’s best Italian restaurant. For a little lighter way to start your evening, be sure to check out Al di La’s bar menu which features small plates, wood-fired pizzettes, charcuterie, and cheeses, all for about $8 or less.

Amuse - West Ashley Restaurant Review

David Heiser — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 19:30:00 +0000

After repeatedly reading about how great Amuse is for the past couple years, my girlfriend and I decided to take advantage of the current deal they are offering (a rollback to 2004 menu prices) for a casual weeknight meal. So, we headed out to West Ashley in search of 1720 Sam Rittenberg.

I say “in search of” because, if it’s after sunset and you’ve never been to Amuse, you’d be well served to hire the nearest Indian guide. We literally drove by the restaurant three times before we noticed its unlit sign hidden in a nondescript shopping plaza next to a Dollar General. When we entered the restaurant around 8 p.m., we were surprised to discover that we were going to be–literally–the only people eating in the restaurant.

This was confusing. Even though finding Amuse was difficult for two people who had never been there, you would expect, given all of its accolades and the great deal currently being offered, that even on a slow night there would be at least a few regulars hanging around. But, hey, if you’re the only table in the restaurant, you’re at least guaranteed to get great service.

One of my favorite things about tapas restaurants is that they allow you try new foods you’ve been afraid to order because you don’t want to commit $18 dollars to something you’re not sure you’ll like. This is especially the case at Amuse these days, because with the 2004 rollback prices, almost everything on the menu is $5 (with $5 glasses of wine to match). On this night, we sampled five different items and our bill checked in at $25 before tax & tip.

Amuse’s menu is divided between cold and hot items. My favorite item from the cold side was the exceptional seviche with blood orange. Light and refreshing, the seviche combines fresh crab meat with the perfect balance of acidity from the citrus.

Olive lovers will appreciate the smoked prawns & tapanade. Well, at least they will enjoy the three or four bites that grace the plate. I know tapas is all about small plates, but even for $5 I expect more than two prawns on a spoonful of tapanade.

From the hot side, we both enjoyed the sangiovese risotto. Boldly flavored by Sangiovese wine, the risotto was rich, warm, creamy, and perfectly textured.

Confit leg of duck isn’t particularly unique, but for $5 it’s too much of a value to resist. Amuse’s duck confit certainly wasn’t the best confit I’ve ever had (S.N.O.B.’s holds that distinction), but the skin had that same wonderful crispness covering the tender, juicy meat. You won’t find this quality of product for price like this anywhere else in town.

One item that didn’t get over well was the baby octopus & kidney beans. I’ve never had baby octopus before, but after eating that dish I still don’t really feel like I have. You see, whatever flavor the octopus had was almost totally overwhelmed by the beans. It’s not even like the beans had a particularly appetizing flavor either. In fact, they kind of tasted like–excuse me while I lose all of my credibility as a food critic here–Slim Jims. The beans and octopus were served beside a nice, light balsamic vinegar which improved the flavor a bit, but not enough to save the dish.

Overall, while Amuse didn’t blow me away, it certainly should be doing better business than it seems like it is. If you’re looking for a quiet weeknight meal, Amuse offers quality food at a really nice value. I would especially recommend making the trip out to West Ashley while the current promotion is going on.

Fiery Ron’s Home Team BBQ - West Ashley Restaurant Review

David Heiser — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:41:00 +0000

It seems strange to be writing another review about a restaurant housed in a renovated gas station, but, if the food coming out of all former gas stations is this good, I may just have to make a habit out of it.

Fiery Ron’s Home Team BBQ opened in the space formerly occupied by Bunch’s Gas Station on Highway 61 in late 2006, causing a bit of a stir among Carolina barbecue purists. Critics complained about everything from the prices, to the atmosphere, to the way they prepared their sides. However, none of that deterred Home Team’s customers. A trip into West Ashley at about any point during their business hours will rarely reveal more than a stray parking space unoccupied.

The establishment’s interior is split between the more family friendly side, where you order, and a bar area with a small stage for bands and several big screen TVs. Behind the counter, the massive chalkboard featuring a handwritten version of the menu which used to overwhelm first timers has been replaced by much more manageable printed signage, allowing customers to easily find what they want without feeling like they’re holding up the line. No longer difficult to comprehend, Fiery Ron’s menu features all the options you’d want from a barbecue joint, as well as several things you wouldn’t expect, like wraps, tacos, and salads.

Whatever you choose, prepare to be impressed. Home Team features, without question, some of the best barbecue in the city, and some of the best I’ve ever had in general. All their meat is incredibly tender and juicy. The St. Louis style, dry rubbed ribs ($13.95 for a half-rack and two sides) fall from the bone. The pulled pork, permeated with a rich, smokey flavor, is wonderful in any form, but my personal favorite is their innovative barbecue wrap ($6.95). The wrap is, essentially, an entire summer cookout captured in one tortilla, with pork, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, coleslaw, and barbecue sauce all coming together in a harmony that you really must taste to believe. Also recommended are the tacos (three for $6.95), which you can order filled with their smoked pork, chicken, or grilled, marinated steak. Go for the pork taco, topped with cole slaw, cheese, and chipotle sour cream. It’s an odd combination, but you can’t argue with the results.

One of the main criteria for judging a great barbecue restaurant it its sauce. Home Team offers three distinct choices, each a success in its own right. Their tomato and vinegar based red sauce is peppery with just the right amount of spice. Their mustard sauce is pungent and tangy without overwhelming the flavor of the meat. The mayonnaise based, Alabama style white sauce has a great, light sweetness and just may be my personal favorite. If you can’t get enough of their sauce, they also sell it bottled by the pint or quart.

One of the universal staples of a successful barbecue meal is an assortment of home style side dishes. Some may scoff at Home Team’s mac n’ cheese, which is really penne pasta in a thin cheese sauce, but they more than make up for it with their other offerings. Their poppy seed cole slaw is absolutely delicious, their creamy, stone ground grits have a buttery corn flavor, and I am yet to meet someone who didn’t love the mashed potatoes.

Finishing a meal at Home Team is sort of bittersweet; you may have made a mess and be covered in sauce, but you’ll find it a little difficult to bring yourself to wash that beautiful smokey smell off your hands and brush the last taste of the meat out of your mouth. I may be a Yankee, so you can tell me I don’t know barbecue if you’d like, but you still need to give this place a try for yourself. If it isn’t apparent by now, Fiery Ron’s Home Team BBQ comes with my highest of recommendations.

Miyabi Kyoto - West Ashley Restaurant Review

David Heiser — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:41:00 +0000

Everybody loves hibachi restaurants. There really isn’t much to not like. Shrimp, chicken, steak, fried rice, and sauteed vegetables. Simple, straightforward, fairly difficult to screw up, and with a little entertainment to boot. The only downside to the Japanese steakhouse industry is that, because they’ve found a formula that pleases the masses, it has eliminated nearly all elements of creativity. Even the show, which is supposed to make hibachi unique, is almost exactly the same everywhere I go. Miyabi unfortunately falls into this pattern as well.

The food was mediocre. Nothing was bad, but nothing particularly impressed me either. I wasn’t a big fan of their teriyaki sauce and thought the chicken was a little burnt. Enough white sauce does a good job fixing almost any flaw, though. My main problem with Miyabi, however, was the cost. You get so much food whenever you get hibachi, so it’s kind of hard to justify complaining about the price, but comparatively Miyabi just isn’t a good value. I, along with everyone at my table, ordered the shrimp and chicken teriyaki dinner which ran us $17.25 (with tax) a piece, without any beverage but water. Ouch. I also found our chef to be fairly dull. I understand that he probably serves 20 tables a night, but his jokes just sounded way too canned and I didn’t feel like he did enough to interact with his audience. Even worse, he refused to flip a shrimp into my friend’s mouth on his birthday because it was “against company policy.” Lame.

If you’re going to get hibachi do yourself a favor and go to Kim’s Korean & Japanese Steakhouse in West Ashley on Old Towne Rd. by Manny’s. In my opinion, it is far and away the best value of all of the local hibachi places when you take into account both quality and quantity of food. A massive teriyaki chicken dinner at Kim’s is only $11.75 before tax. You can’t beat it. Just pray you don’t get the one really annoying chef with the high pitched voice.

Manny’s Neighborhood Grille - West Ashley Restaurant Review

David Heiser — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 21:00:00 +0000

The Charleston City Paper’s most recent dining guide claims that “Everybody loves Manny’s,” but I can attest that at there are at least four of us who don’t.

Friday night, three of my friends and I were looking for a place that specialized in cheap, casual, man food. I had heard several positive opinions on Manny’s and had been hoping to try it for a while. I want to try to withhold judgment on an establishment that so many people are so high on, but my first experience at Manny’s was pretty bad.

The dining area is set up like any normal sports bar/grill. There are plenty of TV’s around and each booth has its own personal TV which diners can put on whichever channel they want. They also have NTN trivia which is always a fun distraction (particularly for us because we dominated that night).

The menu is huge and features a variety of Greek, Italian, and American options. In fact, we had to ask our server twice to give us more time to decide what to order because there were so many sections and items to choose from. In theory, this should mean that there is something on the menu for everyone, which would make Manny’s a great place to bring a group of friends who can’t agree, but this only applies if the food is good. I found it to be hit or miss.

I ordered the lamb souvlaki platter with Greek potatoes ($10.49). The Souvlaki was pretty good, if not a little dry. It was seasoned well and I thought the tzatziki sauce complimented it nicely. A couple side notes on the tzatziki, I believe Manny’s was made with sour cream, whereas it is traditionally made with yogurt, which I prefer; I also thought Manny’s tzatziki could’ve used more dill. The Greek potatoes were well received by all of us who had them. I thought they had just the right amount of spice. The platter was also served with a few slices of pita bread. Although it was a little awkward, I managed to make a few small sandwiches out of the souvlaki, potatoes, pita, and tzatziki, which in my opinion would make a pretty awesome wrap for some Greek restaurant to sell.

Other things ordered by our group included the gyro platter, which its purchaser enjoyed, but I thought was even drier than the souvlaki. My other two friends got the buffalo chicken sandwich and the gyro and were satisfied, but didn’t seem to be distinctly impressed.

The real problem we had with Manny’s was the service. The platters came with a side salad which was delivered quickly to one of us, but mine was forgotten for several minutes until I reminded our server. Later, when one of us asked for a side of barbecue sauce, it was forgotten as well. By the time he eventually got it we were mostly done with our meal. They also still charged him for it. In addition, I know that it’s not that rare for restaurants to charge for additional sauce, but the 80 cents for a side of tzatziki one of my friends requested seems a little ridiculous. Everything was generally slow and lackadaisical.

Normally, as somebody who has worked in/with restaurants for a long time, I tip very well, but even I couldn’t bring myself to leave more than 10% that night. I do plan on giving Manny’s another chance at some point and will definitely make a note of posting again if my opinion changes, but for now I can’t recommend it to anyone.

Quick Favorites - Gyros

David Heiser — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:40:00 +0000

If there is any one food that I wish I discovered earlier in my life it would be the gyro. For those of you who are unfortunate enough to have never had one, gyros are made with a beef/lamb blend, tzatziki (a yogurt sauce made with cucumber and dill), lettuce, tomato, onion, and wrapped in flatbread. Yes, I know you can also technically get a chicken gyro, but really I think you’re losing a good deal about what makes a gyro unique.

When it comes to Charleston there is really only one place you should be going for gyros. If you’re going anywhere else it should really only be because you are desperate and can’t get to King/Calhoun.

Let’s get started:

Papa ZuZu’s (pictured) - King St. near Burns Alley - Downtown: This is it. This is where you should be getting your gyros. If you’re a college student you have absolutely no excuse for not getting lunch here at least a couple times a month. Their gyro meat is the best, their tomatoes are always perfect, and the portions are big enough to satisfy all but the absolute hungriest eaters. Their tzatziki sauce is the best in town as well, if you want extra (which you will) it will cost you an extra .50, but it is well worth it. As far as prices go, it’s reasonable but not cheap (from a college student’s perspective). You should expect to spend between $7-8, which is up a bit from what it has been in the past. If you’re planning on getting takeout, it’s best to call ahead because the restaurant itself is pretty tiny and they are almost always busy. If you do want to dine in, you can always play Battleship or read a copy of The New Yorker which they have lying around.
Olympik Restaurant & Bakery - 1922 Savannah Highway (past most of the auto-mile on 17-S) - West Ashley: A pretty traditional Greek restaurant out amidst some of the worst traffic in the city. Their gyro is good, but a pretty distant second to Papa ZuZu’s. Their meat was good, but I wasn’t a huge fan of their tzatziki sauce. One area where they do beat Papa ZuZu’s though, is their side dishes. I know this list is only about the gyros, but Olympik has really good Greek potatoes (which are basically seasoned roasted potatoes). As indicated by the name, Olympik is also a bakery and has some deserts that all looked extremely good (most notably the baklava) even though I didn’t have the opportunity to try them. Pricier than PZ’s for what you get, but still not too bad. It’s mainly a sit down restaurant, so expect to spend around $10-12.
Old Towne Grill & Seafood - King @ Market - Downtown: The oldest family run restaurant in Charleston is basically tied with Olympik in my opinion when it comes to gyros. I liked their tzatziki sauce better than Olympik, but I think I would give Olympik the edge in meat. They are the priciest of the bunch, but if I wasn’t only craving a gyro or was with other people who wanted more options then Old Towne would be my top choice of the three. It doesn’t have a ton in the way of ambiance, but they have a pretty good selection of traditional Greek dishes.
Pita Pit - King near George - Downtown: I’ll say one thing as a precursor, I’ve been to Pita Pit once since they changed ownership and I used to go for lunch about 3 days a week. The new “adult” ownership really has made the place feel more corporate (basically they aren’t playing mid-90’s rap music and looking like they may have just smoked a J in the back room) and it generally has lost some of its appeal. They also raised prices. That being said, the place is a chain so I’m betting that the food quality is close to the same as always, though I’m betting portions are smaller as that usually happens when more business minded ownership/management steps in. Anyhow, the Pit’s gyro meat was decent and their tzatziki sauce was surprisingly good. It comes rolled up like everything else there and isn’t going to win any points for authenticity, but it’s not bad if you need a quick, cheap lunch.
East Bay Deli - East Bay in the Blockbuster plaza - Downtown: Gyro was pretty bad, I’m only mentioning them on the list so you don’t bother ordering it if you’re there. Some of their sandwiches there are okay though so the place does have some worth.