Origin Story Part 5
The Restaurant & Wine Years Begin
Hello! If you are just picking up the Grape to Table newsletter, thanks so much for joining to learn more about wine, food, and travel. But right now we are in the midst of my origin story (haha) – so please see the first four newsletters to catch up on the story.
For those in the midst, we left off the origin story with a cliffhanger, haha: me on the verge of opening a restaurant (the Glass Onion) in Charleston, South Carolina. And in March 2008 that’s exactly what happened.
And to some it up I’ll quote a far greater writer than me…
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…”
– Charles Dickens
I recognize that it’s a cheeky thing to do, using this much abused quote, but gosh, it truly sums it up. Looking back, we were so young, foolish, and hopeful. We had this egalitarian vision of opening a neighborhood restaurant that featured local produce and seafood and naturally farmed meats, and then offering all of this at reasonable prices. The idea was a sort of southern diner complete with ordering at the counter and paying at the register. We were going to pay the same fair hourly wage to our front and back of the house staff and pool tips. Now perhaps you understand my obsession with that quote…”it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity” – yes it was!
And by and large we accomplished many of these goals with some editing along the way. In the beginning, the guys focused on the kitchen, and I was out front (somehow sneaking in time to bake some pound cakes for our very limited dessert menu).
We all worked every minute that we were open (Monday through Saturday), and then we miraculously rejuvenated just enough on Sunday to do it all again the very next week. We started off very simple with just a few starters, a few entrees/sandwiches, some sides, and two desserts (my pound cakes and Chris’s bread pudding that we proclaimed as “world famous”). We had three wines – a white, a red, and a rosé. We had Abita beer and Miller High Life (that I bought at the grocery store next door as we could not hit our minimum with the Miller distributor!). We did not have a liquor license as that seemed unnecessary with the neighborhood restaurant vibe. Oh, and we were closed on Saturday nights! We were iconoclasts to say the least.
We were lucky as the community embraced us from the beginning. We were unlucky in that the bottom dropped out of the economy in 2008, and after a brief honeymoon period we were faced with some scary, slow times. But somehow we survived. We had a very small staff and a relatively reasonable rent, and we just got by.
By the spring of 2009 I feel like we had hit some sort of rhythm. We had received a bit of positive press, and the economy felt marginally better. I found two front of the house managers (shout-out to Carrie and Nikki!), and I was able to spend more time baking. Our savory and sweets menu expanded, and we even expanded our wine list.
There are some moments in life that simply stand out clear as day (even years later), and such was the moment when a local wine distributor (Harry Root of Grassroots) approached me about our wine selection. Anyone who knows Harry can attest that he does not mince words, and this moment was no exception. I can still see him standing in line to order (so crazy we made folks do this!), and I walked up to say hi. After some pleasantries, he said something to the effect of – "So when are you going to get some wines in here that stand up to the quality of the food?”
I was not offended but rather took it to heart. Like I said, our menu had evolved from a couple of po boys and a couple of “plates” to the following menu that I miraculously found via some sleuthing in the archives of an old junky email…
The Glass Onion
*All our meats are natural, hormone free products.
*We are proud to serve beautiful South Carolina shrimp!
*Our vegetables come from as close to home as we can get.
March 12, 2009
Soups, Salads and Other Stuff
Jennie Ruth's Deviled Eggs $.75 each
Local Turnip Soup with Brown Butter Croutons $4
Chuck's Chicken and Sausage Gumbo $8 Big/$5 Little
Duck Liver Mousse with Housemade Pickles $6
Whole Fried Quail with Buttermilk Dressing or Local Honey $9
Fried Chicken Livers with Wedge of Local Bibb Lettuce and Buttermilk Dressing $6
Straight from the Garden Salad $5 Add Blue Cheese $1
Shells and Cheese $4
Fried Oysters with Brie $8
Plates
Piglicious Jambalaya with Wedge of Local Bibb Lettuce $10
Mussels and Local Shrimp with Bertollini’s Cavatelli and Garlic-White Wine Sauce $15
Whole Crispy Chicken Leg with Mashed Potatoes and Sea Island Red Peas $10
Pan Roasted or Blackened Flounder with Grits and Cole Slaw $14
Carolina Shrimp in Brown Pork Gravy over Anson Mills Grits $14
Fried Catfish Plate with Two Sides $12
Fried Shrimp or Oyster Plate with Two Sides $14
Grilled Shrimp with Black Beans and Rice $14
Fried Chicken Wing Plate with Two Sides $10
Overstuffed Sandwiches
Grilled Pimento Cheese $6
Roasted Chicken Salad Po Boy $8
Stew's Meatball Po Boy with Housemade Mozzarella $8
Fried Catfish Po Boy $8
Fried Oyster or Shrimp Po Boy $11
1/2 & 1/2 Po Boy $12
Sides
Cornbread
Anson Mills Grits
Housemade Pickles
Cole Slaw
Braised Local Greens
Mashed Potatoes
Sea Island Red Peas
Potato Salad
Black Beans and Rice
Piglicious Jambalaya
Sweets
Sarah's Banana Split Pound Cake $4
World Famous Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce $5
Bowl of Locally Made All Natural Vanilla Ice Cream $4 Bowl/$1Scoop - Floats $3.50
Fresh Baked Cookies $1
I have to say that this menu still makes me hungry reading it today! And the prices! Well it was fourteen years ago… In addition to finding this historic menu, I also found a press release from the spring of 2009 announcing a featured wine of the month and describing our wine list as “green” – which I defined as focusing on small production wineries that used environmentally friendly practices. Then I found a memo to my managers from the spring of 2010 proclaiming: “Now, our wine list is not only ‘green’ but also ‘local’. All of these wines come from small, locally owned distributors and are mostly from smaller, family owned wineries.” Clearly the gears were turning in my slowly emerging wine brain!
We had also begun to host special dinners – everything from a beer dinner with our friends at the Charleston Beer Exchange in the spring of 2009 to our first Julia Child birthday dinner in the summer of 2010 and a wine dinner with Oregon winemaker Jerry Sass in the fall of 2010. I am honestly not quite sure how we managed to do so much. And in addition to all of this programming I had decided that in 2010 it was time to start writing our cookbook! (In case you wondered I am an Aries through and through – so perhaps this explains some of this endless drive and ambition).
With the cookbook I was lucky in many regards. This was something we all wanted, and I had a staff I trusted so I was able to work from home a couple of days each week scaling our restaurant recipes down to home size and testing each one. My partner Chris’s wife (Suzanne) had been an English major and agreed to help out with the editing. My assistant manager Zachary was an accomplished artist and began working on illustrations. We envisioned it to be a slightly elevated version of a community cookbook (you know the old plastic bound books!).
At the time, Amazon had a self publishing division called CreateSpace (that was actually an offshoot of a local Charlestonian’s startup and was based in North Charleston). We decided that between the guys’ delicious recipes, my cookbook writing experience, Suzanne’s editing skills, and Zachary’s art, we could basically do this ourselves! Once again, what could possibly go wrong? (Insert laughter here.)
To be continued…
