<a target="_blank" href="http://huskrestaurant.com">Husk Restaurant</a>

76 Queen St

Charleston, SC

Tel. (843) 577-2500

&nbsp;

Food:

Caper’s Blades Oysters, Muscadine Juice
with VA Honey Vinegar, Preserved Ginger, Citrus, Fennel Pollen

Blue Ridge Bison Shortrib with Stuffed
“Dumpling,” Mizuna, Hakurei Turnip and Sunchoke, Mustard Onion&nbsp;

Kentuckyaki Pig’s Ear Lettuce Wraps,
Savoy Cabbage and Shiitake “Slaw” with Toasted Peanuts, Cucumber-Lime Dressing

Cornmeal Dusted Catfish, Grilled Snap Beans with Red Peas and Braised Bean “Sofrito,” Virginia Sausage, Baby CollardsVirginia Heritage Pork, Field Peas with Roasted Carolina Sweets Onion and Peppers, Smoky Tomato Jus, Mustard Greens&nbsp;A Skillet of Cornbread with Allan Benton’s TN BaconWood Fired Geechie Boy Grits with Sweetwater Valley CheddarMeyer Lemon Chess Pie with Bruléed Kumquats, Preserved Lemon Salted Caramel Cake with Espresso Ice Cream, Coffee ToffeeOlive &amp; Sinclair Spiced Chocolate Panna Cotta, with Toasted Marshmallow, Graham Cracker, Salted Peanuts<div>Wines: </div>

NV Foggy Ridge
Cider First Fruit 

2011 Chateau Musar Musar Jeune 

2012 Nigl Grüner Veltliner Senftenberger Piri Kremstal&nbsp;2012 Nicolas Chemarin Morgon Les Charmes2012 Etienne Bécheras Crozes-HermitageYou
don’t need me to tell you how good Husk is. Since its opening in November 2010,
Sean Brock’s second restaurant in Charleston (I wrote about his other venue,
McCrady’s, in February) has drawn national raves from the likes of Bon Appetit,
the New Yorker and the New York Times. Reviewers swoon—with ample reason, as a
meal there this winter bears witness—over Brock’s daily-changing menu of
echt-Lowlands farm-to-table dishes. Locals extoll his virtually single-handed
resuscitation of nearly-extinct local ingredients. 

But
the other story, which seems to me equally praiseworthy, is Husk’s extensive
and far-ranging list of wines, all under a hundred bucks. Add to this the
gloriously enlightened house policy of offering to pour you a glass from just
about any of these bottles for a reasonable fee. Head sommelier Matt Tunstall,
an extravagantly mustachioed wine evangelist and transplant from San Francisco
who has become something of a local legend, just wants to make you happy. His picks
are spot-on, and our meal at Husk offered some of the most subtle and
sophisticated wine-and-food pairings I’ve sampled anywhere in recent years.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1429546077738-2015-01-10+21.08.52.jpg"> 

The first sign that Husk is serious about wine is the organization of its&nbsp;carte des vins&nbsp;by soil type: Alluvial, Limestone, Volcanic, Goldridge and Granite. From time to time, wines from Slate and Primary Rock (to highlight the Wachau, for example) pop up on the list. Tunstall told me he seeks out “no-makeup wines, made in a hands-off style, to provide a continued celebration of the earth”: an apt philosophical match, in other words, for Sean Brock’s&nbsp;cuisine de terroir. Tunstall admits that some diners may be confused by finding Chardonnays, for example, under two or more categories, but points out that the structure of the list “invites a lot of conversations about wines.”Tunstall
started us off with an aperitif, the very dry and refined Foggy Ridge Cider Serious Cider from
Virginia, or what he called “traditional Southern bubbles,” noting that South
Carolinians actually consumed more cider than beer prior to Prohibition. This
distinctly vinous and minerally yet creamy sparkling cider features a firm,
dusty finish that owes something to the thick skins of the traditional English
cider apples from which it’s made.

First
courses at Husk range from simple presentations of adorably sweet baby radishes
from North Carolina with grilled ficelle and sea-salted butter, to more
elaborate preparations like bison short rib with a pirogi-styled “dumpling”
filled with ground bison, turnip and sunchoke, to the downright exotic house-signature
pig’s ear lettuce wraps. Delicate, razor-thin Caper’s Blades oysters, somewhat
overpowered by their honey-inflected vinaigrette, were the only miss of the
evening, although the Foggy Ridge Cider First Fruit, with its combination of
vibrant acidity, pear and lemon flavors and light residual sugar, did its best
to emphasize the umami character of the oysters and paired neatly with the
preserved ginger in the dish.

Let
me linger a moment on those fabled pig’s ears and the bottle that came with
them. The acidity and stony salinity of the Nigl Grüner Veltliner
Senftenberger Piri sliced through the savory soy-based sauce of the crunchy pork, while the
wine’s citrus, melon and pepper notes provided lift and harmonized with the
sweet vinegar element of the cabbage and mushroom slaw. And the Musar Jeune,
made from young vines and aged without any oak, was simply a revelation with
the bison short rib—first of all, because it’s a remarkably inexpensive
young-vines blend from the late Serge Hochar’s fabled estate, and second,
because it made for a great match-up of flavors and textures. The wine’s red
fruit, medicinal herb and game elements complemented the warm turf tones of ground
bison and sunchoke, and its crisp acidity played beautifully against the
unctuousness of the rib meat.

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1429546157688-2015-01-10+21.15.11+%282%29.jpg"> Cornmeal Dusted Catfish, Grilled Snap Beans with Red Peas and Braised Bean “Sofrito,” Virginia Sausage, Baby Collards Vegetarians
and pescatarians take note: Charleston is a meat-eater’s playground. Pork is de
rigueur at Husk, as everywhere else in this town, and not just in main events
like the Virginia Heritage pork with roasted onion and peppers. Cornmeal-dusted
filet of catfish with collard greens features a piquant sausage accompaniment. The
skillet of cornbread, a must-order side dish, is shot through with Allan
Benton’s smoky bacon.So
for the main courses, Tunstall poured three reds and turned us loose to mix and
match them on our own. Our most adventurous pairing was the Nicolas Chemarin
Morgon Les Charmes with the catfish, a surprisingly earthy dish owing to the
cooked-down sausage and the addition of peas and snap beans toward the end of
the cooking process. Not only did the fish preparation stand up to the red wine,
but its rusticity worked well with the mineral and floral components of the
Beaujolais and the acidity of the wine freshened the palate. By the same
principle, the Etienne Bécheras
Crozes-Hermitage was sufficiently powerful to hold its own with the smoky,
leathery pork dish, made from braised pork shoulder placed in a bologna casing
with a strip of pork belly running through it (!), and it too had the finesse
and energy to buffer the fattiness of the dish.&nbsp; 

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1429545880511-2015-01-10+21.15.35+%282%29.jpg"> Wood Fired Geechie Boy Grits with Sweetwater Valley Cheddar Addendum:
My wife had to pry the bowl of cheesy grits out of my hands.

Desserts
here, should you have room, showcase the ideal salt-to-sweet ratio. By all
means try the salted caramel cake, the Meyer lemon chess pie, and the spiced
chocolate panna cotta with its crackly blanket of graham crackers and salted
peanuts. Winners all, and pork-free.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1429545910366-2015-01-10+21.45.20.jpg"> Salted Caramel Cake with Espresso Ice Cream, Coffee Toffee <img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1429545944438-2015-01-10+21.45.27.jpg"> Meyer Lemon Chess Pie with Bruléed Kumquats, Preserved Lemon

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