The New Kid on the Block: A Review of Rose’s Luxury
I don’t do restaurant reviews often, because let’s be honest: the pros usually get around to it before I do, and I generally don’t believe in saying anything unless you’re adding to the conversation. But I’m so excited about this new addition to our neighborhood that I just can’t resist! Tuesday night was our actual anniversary, but since we’d already spent a fortune in Savannah, we’d agreed to make a traditional Balinese meal at home. I was actually kind of excited about it. But when Courtney came home from the grocery store at 7:00pm with less than a third of the ingredients we needed, I knew we were going to have to move on to Plan B. Luckily I’d recently read about Rose’s Luxury, a new addition to Barrack’s Row that opened two and a half weeks ago and is already getting rave reviews on Yelp and from some of the city’s top critics! I have a feeling walk-in tables with no wait won’t be easy to get for long.
Anyways, we cleaned ourselves up and walked the five blocks to Rose’s. Slightly separated from most of the restaurant bustle on 8th St., Rose’s is in an old row house that has been beautifully renovated in the rustic style I love. You can sit at one of the many small tables hugging the walls, or at the counter overlooking the open kitchen. With exposed brick and wooden beams, hanging Edison bulbs and non-matching dinnerware, you feel very much as if you’re sitting at a Capitol Hill dinner party, and I think that’s exactly what they’re going for.
The menu is comprised primarily of small plates, plus two “family style” options that are designed to shared. Yes, most of the $12-13 small plates are a bit pricey for the amount of food you’re served, but not a single dish placed in front of me was short of great. We decided to skip the family style options this time around because there were so many of the small plates we needed to try. Four small plates and a dessert were the perfect amount of food for two.
Before you even start your meal, you can look forward to a mini loaf of their freshly-baked potato bread served with a generous dollop of butter dusted in potato skin and chives. It’s almost like a popover in loaf form, with an airy center and a crusty edge. I took it as carb-loaded omen of good things to come.
Our first small plate was the pork sausage, habanero and lychee salad, which was a straight up house party for your taste buds. It’s served deconstructed with a puff of mousse-like “dressing,” and you’re instructed to “stir it up real good until it’s nice and sloppy”. I was skeptical at first when I saw the abundance of raw onions, the one and only food that I have yet to learn to love. But once you stir it altogether, the flavors meld and the onion is nothing more than a subtle footnote alongside the coconut milk and habanero. With peanuts and crispy fried garlic to add crunch to the juicy lychee, the dish is a complex marriage of textures and flavors that you just don’t want to end.
Next came jelly jars of popcorn soup with grilled lobster. We just couldn’t resist this dish, which our waiter described as “liquified Orville Redenbacher aerated and poured over grilled lobster”. Imagine a spoonful of heavy cream flavored with movie style popcorn butter, warmed and poured over chunks of lobster and topped with kettle corn. It’s slightly sweet and so decadent you won’t mind that you’re only given a tiny portion.
The pickle-brined fried chicken with honey and benne seed was new to the menu last night, but you wouldn’t know it, as they seem to already have it down to an art. As we ate the wonderfully breaded pieces of chicken, we were taken back to our days of dipping chicken McNuggets in honey, but in a way that satisfies the adult palette. My only complaint is that they served an odd number of nuggets to a couple, a move that could threaten even the happiest of marriages.
Our final small plate was a strawberry pasta with homemade ricotta and black pepper. When I asked about the dish, our server told us that they’d come up with the concept after realizing that tomatoes and strawberries share a similar acidity, so why not try making a strawberry marinara sauce. Apparently the initial plan was to use 100% strawberries, but it turned out too sweet, so they modified the recipe so that the sauce is 3/5 strawberry and 2/5 tomato. It’s sweet in a subtle way, and tastes so fresh. The new restaurant is already incorporating diner’s feedback to perfect their dishes, an excellent sign of things to come.
There’s always room for dessert. We finished our meal with the foie gras french toast with cinnamon toast ice cream, because really, who can resist a description like that? At $15 for a couple of bites, it’s not something I’d order every time we go, but it was certainly a wonderful treat. The foie gras is grilled and is probably some of the best I’ve had, not pasty like some I’ve experienced. It’s served atop a small square of pan-fried french toast and topped with a dollop of cinnamon ice cream. The savory, the sweet… what can I say, this dish just works.
So there it is, we tried five dishes and I loved them all. Everything we tasted was both innovative and extremely well-executed, two things that don’t always go hand-in-hand. When I asked where the heck they come up with this stuff, the answer involved collaboration and possibly LSD. I’m picturing the foodie’s version of a jam sesh. Although unfortunately the price point won’t allow me to visit as often as I may life, we will certainly be back to see what’s on their next album.
