Arrive Magazine - January/February 2011

Going South Bar Americain (New York) 152 W. 52nd St., Manhattan; 212-265-9700; baramericain.com

Bar Americain (Mohegan Sun) 1 Mohegan Sun Blvd., Uncasville, Conn.; 860-862-8000; baramericain.com

Birdsall House 970 Main St., Peekskill, N. Y.; 914-930-1880; birdsallhouse.net

Hungry Mother 233 Cardinal Medeiros Ave., Cambridge, Mass.; 617-499-0090

Nebo Lodge 11 Mullins Lane, North Haven, Maine; 207-867-2007; nebolodge.com

The Redhead 349 E. 13th St., Manhattan; 212-533-6212; theredheadnyc.com

Tipsy Parson
156 Ninth Ave., Manhattan;
212-620-4545; tipsyparson.com

54 Arrıve • January/February 2011 • arrivemagazine.com
one of Food & Wine’s 2009 Best New
Chefs, has boiled peanuts on the menu.
New restaurants that opened last year
include Po’ Boys & Pickles in Portland,
Maine, and Hill Country Chicken and
Lowcountry in New York. Bon Appé-
tit named Resurrection Ale House in
Philadelphia one of the top 10 places in
the country for fried chicken. And—get
this—there are so many versions of fried
chicken in the Brooklyn neighborhoods
of Williamsburg and Greenpoint that
New York magazine, in a feature titled
“The Fried Chicken Craze of 2009,”
dubbed it Buttermilk Brooklyn.
So, yes. The North is onto these dishes.
And we are embracing the flavors of the
South not as a trend but as an important
part of our American heritage.

“Awareness of regional food and the importance of regional foods is here to stay,” says John T. Edge, the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi. “I think it is the next step in our American education about food culture.”

If the fried chicken at The Redhead is my homework, I’m definitely OK with that.

The True South

Ted Lee may think that fried chicken reached the pinnacle of its popularity in 2008, and New York magazine proclaimed it so in 2009, but I say crispy-on-the-outside, juicy-on-the-inside fried chicken never gets old.

The version at The Redhead is killer. It’s brined for eight hours, soaked in a buttermilk bath and fried just before it’s served. It’s pull-apart tender and moist, with bubbles of golden crunchy goodness and a hint of spice.

Meg Grace, The Redhead’s chef, used to cook at the Modern in Midtown. While she was still working there, she and her partners, Rob Larcom and Gregg Nelson, opened The Redhead as a bar—a neighborhood spot with a tin ceiling, wood floors and a big, red banquette in back. She started serving a prix fixe menu on Thursday nights only. To the owners’ surprise, the Southern dishes were the most popular.

“Shrimp and grits and fried chicken weren’t supposed to stay on the menu,” Grace says. “But it became really obvious that it would be a mistake to take them off.”

The popularity of fried chicken also came as a shock to Matt Hutchins, the chef at Birdsall House, a cozy tavern with a 1940s art deco feel in Peekskill, N. Y. Hutchins, originally from Florida, served an all-local farm-to-table menu when the restaurant opened in early 2010. By the fall, however, he was serving an almost entirely Southern menu, from fried chicken with collards and black-eyed peas to blackened shrimp and grits.