A few weeks ago, I asked my wife, "Have we been living under a rock for the past five years?" We had just polished off, with great enthusiasm, a plate of blue crab gnudi at The Establishment. "How come no one ever talks about this place?"
Later, I did a little Googling and discovered I wasn't the only one in the dark. There had been a flurry of press coverage back when the restaurant opened in 2018, but after that ... crickets.
The Establishment doesn't appear on anyone's list of the essential or iconic or must-visit Charleston restaurants. In its latest quarterly dining guide for Charleston's Menu subscribers, The Post and Courier enumerated the top seafood restaurants in Charleston. The Establishment was not among them.
It's time to rectify that.
The restaurant must be on at least some people's radar screens, for the dining room is hopping during prime dinner hours. Those gnudi ($27) may be one reason why.
They begin as tiny cylinders of ricotta and flour that are dropped frozen into boiling water and emerge ethereally light and creamy. They're enrobed in wispy shreds of sweet blue crab, parmesan and buttery breadcrumbs, and the soft richness melts away on your tongue amid a tart beurre blanc finish.
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Equally indulgent is a triangular slab of butter-poached grouper ($41) topped with a spoonful of tomato vierge, which adds a bright acidic bite. The white fish slips into big, tender shards beneath the fork, and beneath it all is a yellow corn velouté that brims with the fading sweetness of summer.
It wasn't only the food that surprised me at The Establishment. The physical footprint, for instance, is much bigger than it appears when you peek in the windows from the sidewalk. You step through the front door into a narrow hallway with old brick walls and an arched ceiling. The host stand is at the far end, and once you reach that, the building really opens up.
To the right is the front dining room with rows of four-tops, brown leather-backed chairs and tall windows looking out onto Broad Street. Farther back is a big horseshoe-shaped bar, and beyond that a second dining room with gray tile floors and a ceiling of sleek brown planks. An L-shaped chef's counter with high-backed stools wraps around the open kitchen.
The cocktail selection really surprised me, too. The Impressionist ($15) makes a great first impression with a bump of rosemary and clove against a base of gin and pear puree, while allspice dram and burlesque bitters give the Sweet Lil Nellie ($15) a spicy finish. The Illusionist ($14), a blend of Earl Grey, sweet tea elixir and fresh lemon, looks every bit like a vodka-spiked Arnold Palmer, but it's deceptively (and deliciously) tart on the tongue.
What links these cocktails is subtlety and depth, dialing back the sweetness so the spice and herbal flavors can shine. They set the stage for a meal that's subtly yet deeply flavored, too.
The Establishment bills itself as a seafood restaurant, but don't think raw bar towers or fried shrimp platters. The menu opens with a small shellfish bite garnished with caviar. One night, a briny dollop of golden osetra might top a single Prince Edward Island oyster ($6) dressed in gin-laced crème fraiche. Another evening it might garnish a tiny shrimp tart ($4) with a perfectly smooth cylinder of pastry holding a scoop of cool, creamy shrimp salad.
Beneath its golden brown sear, a thick knob of a swordfish steak ($35) is tender and sweet. It gets an extra layer of richness from a pool of brown butter vinaigrette and an arc of smooth celeriac puree topped with green peas and diced carrots.
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Dishes rotate in and out each week, and they prove the kitchen to be just as deft with ingredients that come from the land. The Bergamo ($15) is a simple but thrilling combination that layers creamy, fine-grained polenta with wilted arugula and a lightly poached egg. The poke of a knife releases a yellow gusher of yolk, and the tender greens add a bitter, slightly spiced bite with just a hint of lemon.
A week later, the polenta dish had been replaced by chicken liver mousse ($15). I have quibbles with the presentation. The accompanying slices of butter-soaked baguette should be half as thick and half as crunchy, and the tiny Mason jar in which the mousse is piped seems to belong in a different restaurant -- one with Edison bulbs and menus hand-stamped with a 2014 date.
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The real problem, though, is that the tiny container makes it maddeningly difficult to scrape out every last bit of mousse, even with the tiny spoon supplied for that purpose. One will want to scrape every last bit of what's in that jar, for it's superbly smooth, dark and delicious.
The restaurant's name purportedly refers to the First Amendment and the separation of church and state -- aka the Establishment Clause. The restaurant, you see, is located on the block of Broad between Church and State streets.
Those of a certain age may also associate the term with a group of wealthy, powerful people who run everything. Both seem appropriate for Broad Street, and dining at The Establishment made me realize how nostalgic I've become for what one might call old-fashioned Charleston fine dining.
The servers are dressed head to toe in sleek black, and they know the menu well. A manager strides the floor in a snazzy gray suit. There's a big leather-bound wine book with a deep selection of old and new world bottles, which are housed in a gleaming vertical wine tower.
There's plenty to explore among the wines by the glass, including the full range of the pinot noir grape. There's a crisp but sturdy white pinot from Oregon's Left Coast Estate ($15) and a French rosé pinot from Maison Nicolas ($12) that has a touch of tannic acid and is only mildly sweet -- a great match for the seafood-centric plates.
The influences may be wide-ranging, but The Establishment seems a thoroughly Charleston restaurant. It's likely not a coincidence that the leadership team has a deep pedigree in local fine dining. Executive chef Elliott Howells can list Tides on Kiawah Island, Atlanticville Restaurant on Sullivan's Island, The Grocery downtown and Grace & Grit in Mount Pleasant on his resume, and general manager Brian Jarusik is an alumnus of Circa 1886.
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Deepening the Charleston roots is the historic setting in the James Gregorie House, which was built in 1791. It was originally a two-story brick building with a store on the first floor and family residence above, and Gregorie added a third story around 1800. Like many of the surrounding buildings, it housed law offices from the mid-19th century until well into the 20th.
Here in the 21st century, there's thankfully no chimichurri on the steaks and no chili crisp on anything. There are plenty of international notes, though. The crispy eggplant ($32) is paired with green curry, and a stack of nori is served alongside the Wagyu tartare ($19) for rolling temaki-style cones. These aren't the latest flavors of the month, and they're not in the foreground either. Instead, the dominant notes are those of good old fashioned luxury.
Take the prime ribeye steak ($67), a flavor bomb of a plate. Howells could have just finished the slab with a spoonful of Bordelaise and called it a day. Served alongside, though, is a shallow bowl of Joel Robuchon-inspired potatoes, an almost ridiculously rich purée that's silky and slick on the tongue thanks to a generous ratio of butter to potato.
It's not all flash and sizzle, either. A chef can certainly bludgeon the palate into submission with butter, truffles and salt (especially the salt), but that's not the case here. There's subtlety and balance, with the fundamental flavors of the ingredients shining through.
The "blistered" sugar snap peas ($16) are charred just enough to draw out the sweetness while keeping their crunch, and they're tossed with fresh herbs and mounded atop a nutty sunflower purée with a sparkling kiss of lemon. A duck leg confit ($38) gets a quick turn on the grill, too, which imparts a dark char on the knobby end of the leg and firms up the meat so that its dark, sultry flavor surges with each chew. Alongside, strips of summer squash and zucchini sing with acid and fresh herbs.
I still maintain that the proper way to finish a fine Charleston meal is with the aged cherry and raisin notes of a glass of Madeira. There's not one, but two, such options on the dessert menu -- the Charleston Sercial and the New York Malmsey, both from the Rare Wine Company (both $12).
I would skip the poundcake ($12), which is a tad dry even with the accompanying scoop of blackberry buttermilk ice cream, and pair the wine instead with the delicate pavlova ($12). The flat shell of crisp, sweet meringue is filled with orange-accented cream and topped with flawlessly sweet cubes of ripe local peach.
On the wall behind the big horseshoe-shaped bar, a giant nine-panel video screen glows with rustling palm fronds and the crashing waves of a dark green sea. They're scenes from a "nature relaxation" film from South Australia -- about as far from Charleston as one can get. Hanging on the opposite wall are three tall panels of a different sort -- multicolored abstract paintings of the Ravenel Bridge's iconic diamond-shaped towers.
The Establishment seems to be positioning itself somewhere in between, delivering far-off luxury in a style that feels very rooted in Charleston. The next time I'm asked to compile a Charleston "best of" list, it's a pretty good bet that The Establishment will be on it.
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