NDG NEWS
March Press Updates (4.12.12)
Read what the press has been saying about HUSK and McCrady's Restaurant's.
Download the PDF.
Award-Wining Restauranteur Inspired by Norfolk Childhood (10.7.11)
An upbringing along the picturesque Norfolk coastline provided the perfect inspiration for David Howard, whose latest venture has been rated the best new restaurant in America.
The 53-year-old admits that from the age of nine he wanted to be a chef and set himself the goal of letting his culinary skills take him from Norfolk to the rest of the world.
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Neighborhood Dining Group’s Original Restaurant
CHICAGO’S Celebrates its 20TH Anniversary in Georgia (9.9.11)
20 years after its inception, Chicago’s Restaurant’s enthusiasm and commitment to the future is just as fresh as on its first day in business. With a long term staff (General Manager Jeanne Wittner has been there 19 years) and a devoted clientele, this family-friendly eatery has become a neighborhood institution. Chicago’s is part of Neighborhood Dining Group (NDG)—the restaurant management company behind South Carolina’s Charleston gems McCrady’s and Husk, which have both received glowing accolades from national culinary publications. Most recently, Husk was named the 2011 Best New Restaurant in America by Bon Appétit magazine. Chicago’s has been going strong and steady serving it’s loyal customers for two decades,
an accomplishment that brings NDG president David Howard as much pride as any award.
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HUSK NAMED BON APPÉTIT MAGAZINE’S2011 BEST NEW RESTAURANT (8.16.11)
Bon Appétit magazine's September 2011 issue names HUSK restaurant in Charleston, SC "The Best New Restaurant in America," and prominently features Executive Chef Sean Brock's signature Skillet-Roasted Chicken on the cover. The issue spotlights the magazine's annual Top Ten Restaurants of the Year list. This honor comes as HUSK enters its eleventh month of business in a year marked by tremendous acclaim and media accolades—highlights of which include being named Best New Restaurant in the South by Southern Living (January 2011); a feature story by The New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton (February, 2011), and many others.
"We are humbled to receive such an honor. Our team has worked extremely hard over the last eleven months and this is the ultimate recognition of our efforts," says David Howard, President of Neighborhood Dining Group..
Opened in November 2010, HUSK epitomizes Southern Hospitality through its commitments to Southern foodways and a relaxed dining experience. The farm-to-table restaurant is in housed in a beautifully restored pre-Civil War mansion located in the heart of historic Charleston. The second story piazza, overlooking Queen Street, is one of the Peninsula City's most popular al fresco dining spots. The restaurant's entryway is site of a 10-foot tall blackboard listing every ingredient and its strictly southern supplier (all ingredients used at HUSK must originate south of the Mason Dixon Line)—a locavore philosophy Brock embodies, literally. Easily identifiable by his oft-worn "Make Cornbread Not War" baseball cap and vivid garden patch tattoo that covers his left arm, the 33-year old chef is shaping modern, southern cuisine by revisiting traditional cooking methods and personally propagating heirloom seeds on the brink of extinction at his 1.5-acre plot at Thornhill Farms located in picturesque McClellanville, a fishing hamlet outside of Charleston. HUSK's menus are refreshed daily but feature creative riffs on classic southern foods and antebellum recipes interpreted with proteins indigenous to the region and seasonal local produce.
Chef Sean Brock: ‘I’m proud to be a hillbilly’ (6.28.11)
Chef Sean Brock has a reputation. He chuckles about his collection of moonshine. It is no secret he is a fan of Kentucky bourbon; his friends include Julian Van Winkle of the Frankfort distilling family. He is a compulsive seed-saver, dissatisfied with today’s hybrid vegetables; he seeks out varieties long forgotten, grows them out, and then showcases their beauty, their taste, their sensuality at his restaurants....read more
Interview with Chef Sean Brock – Charleston, SC and a recipe for Hoppin’ John (6.20.11)
How many different varieties of rice can you think of? How about different peas? If you are like most people you will probably be able to name a dozen types of rice and maybe half a dozen types of peas. Would you be surprised to learn that there are over 100,000 varieties of rice, of which 40,000 are cultivated varieties and that Thomas Jefferson cultivated over 20 varieties of peas at Monticello?...read more
On Whiskey and Grease: Pappy Van Winkle (6.16.11)
You never know where you're gonna find the greatest bourbon on the planet. Like last month, I was on a cooking team at a barbecue contest, and one of the guys on it with me was a pretty famous chef. His name is Sean Brock, and his restaurant, Husk, in Charleston, S.C., only serves stuff grown, raised or made below the Mason-Dixon Line....read more
Overfishing: Five Chefs Talk Sustainable Seafood (6.13.11)
This week we asked Sean Brock (Husk, Charleston, SC), Laurent Manrique (Millesime, NYC), Troy Guard (TAG, Denver, CO), Spike Gjerde (Woodberry Kitchen, Baltimore, MD), and Jacob Sessoms (Table, Asheville, NC) to react to the above graphic which shows the degree to which overfishing has affected our oceans. Here's what the chefs had to say:...read more
Eat This Tonight: Heirloom tomato salad, gazpacho, and tomato pie (6.10.11)
Summer is upon us and that means heat, linen, and sunburn. But June also marks the beginning of the local tomato season. No matter how you pronounce it, tomatoes are a summer food staple whether they are sliced, diced, or rested gently atop a fat burger. This week, they were just beginning to harvest tomatoes out on Wadmalaw and Johns Islands, which means the freshest local tomatoes will be showing up on local menus this week....read more
Regional Comfort Food Meets Modern Technique (6.8.11)
Sean Brock is a James Beard Award-winning chef famous for his revolutionary take on Southern cooking. He has two restaurants in Charleston, SC: McCrady’s, which combines classic Southern cooking with new molecular gastronomy techniques, and Husk, which focuses on regional food and draws from Brock’s roots in rural Virginia. Eater.com recently featured Brock’s perspective on the trend of bringing heirloom ingredients and cooking techniques into a modern era.
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Independent We Stand - "Farmers Are Rock Stars." (6.6.11)
Sean Brock on Bringing the Past into Modern Southern Cuisine (6.6.11)
Yesterday afternoon Sean Brock, chef at Charleston, South Carolina restaurants Husk and McCrady's, made time during his drive through the Appalachians to explain in some detail his goal of bringing back old southern cooking and ingredients. There was much talk of family — of grandma — and of the passion and rigor that mark the soft-spoken chef's "gospel."...read more
The F.E.D. Father's Day Guide (6.11)
Sure dad says spending time with you is the greatest gift to be had. But just in case he secretly hankers for an actual present, we pulled together gift suggestions for all kinds of fathers....read more
The New Seafood Renaissance (6.11)
If you thought overfishing was making the high-end pescatarian meal extinct, think again. A new guard of chefs is creating a welcome breed of sustainable seafood dishes that are as eclectic as they are delicious, and serving them up at a slew of hot restaurants, raw bars, and urban fish shacks.
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Queen Anne's Revenge
It is all about the Pirate and his Ship! Known as the Queen Anne’s Revenge, Blackbeard, the Pirate, sailed the high seas and ravaged the North and South Carolina coasts! With the latest discovery of the anchor from the ship, it brings to mind one of the finest restaurants in the Southeast. ...read more
Top Sommeliers of 2011 (3.13.11)
Why He Won: He's bringing attention to the importance of terroir by organizing his wines by soil types: alluvial, limestone, gravel and so on. "One of the first things winemakers talk about is soil. So for my list, I busted out my old geology book, looked up all the soil types and organized the wines by those categories." ...read more
Magazine honors local advanced sommelier for innovative wine list at new Husk restaurant (3.12.11)
Like many of his peers, Clint Sloan got a job waiting tables after becoming a student at the College of Charleston. He worked first at Portside Cafe, then at Sticky Fingers, finally graduating into the world of fine dining at McCrady's in 1999....read more
Best New Restaurant (2.15.11)
HUSK Restaurant was proud to win "Best New Restaurant" in the Charleston City Paper's "Best of Charleston". We also took home the following awards; Clint Sloan=Best Sommelier; Sean Brock=Best Chef; and Queen Anne's Revenge=Best Daniel Island Restaurant! ...read more
A Southern Chef Doesn’t Stray Far (2.9.11)
SEAN BROCK is a Virginia boy who attended the Johnson & Wales cooking school on this beautiful, historic peninsula where the Civil War began, moved around the South in apprenticeship, and in 2006 returned as the executive chef at McCrady’s, the city’s oldest restaurant. Late last year, amid a marsh fire of publicity that continues to roar, he opened a large and lavishly appointed new one, Husk, devoted to the excellence and promise of Southern ingredients...read more
Working Both Ends of Farm to Table (2.9.11)
SEAN BROCK’S obsession with the South’s culinary heritage grew out of frustration. When he took over McCrady’s in 2006, he was unable to get the variety and quality of local food he wanted, so he decided to see what he could do himself...read more
The South's Best New Restaurants (2.1.11)
The archetype of what chef Sean Brock does best: heirloom Southern food prepared with a connoisseur’s sensibility and a deft culinary touch...read more
A great chef considers the Old Fashioned (1.24.11)
CHARLESTON, S.C. — “You sure you don’t want a cocktail?”
Sean Brock, the executive chef at Husk Restaurant, proposed the question for the third time, and so it seemed I should finally accept.
Brock, who was named the best chef in the Southeast by the James Beard Foundation last year for his work at McCrady’s restaurant (where he continues to serve as executive chef), recently opened Husk in a renovated house in downtown Charleston...read more
Does Husk live up to the hype and prove that the South's food is the best in the world? (1.12.11)
It's safe to say that the opening of Husk has been the most anticipated and hyped of any new Charleston restaurant in years. The buzz around this venture from the Neighborhood Dining Group, which also operates McCrady's and Queen Anne's Revenge, has been driven by the growing celebrity of Executive Chef Sean Brock, who has headed the kitchen at McCrady's since 2006 and took home the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southeast in 2010...read more
Eating Out: The magic of McCrady's (1.10.11)
On Friday, without an intern to rely on, I spent the afternoon contacting chefs around town to find out what was on the specials menu for our weekly Eat This Tonight feature. It's really a bad idea for me to do such a thing. I'm far too easily swayed. A few text messages swapped with McCrady's Chef Sean Brock and I was already considering changing out of my pajamas (I work from home on Fridays) and heading downtown for a decadent plate of truffles and eggs. I had almost talked myself out of going when I showed my husband a picture of the dish, and he said, "Let's go!"...read more
The Neighborhood Dining Group raises money for Haiti-- Charleston CVB (2.10.10)
Due to the overwhelming support of the community and the matching funds of The Neighborhood Dining Group ownership team, $24,000 was raised for the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund between January 15 and January 30, 2010. McCrady’s, Queen Anne’s Revenge and The Buccaneer in Charleston and Chicago’s in Roswell, Georgia, all participated in the fundraising efforts...read more
HUSK Opens! - (11.08.10)
Spearheaded by Executive Chef Sean Brock, Husk is a refined interpretation of ingredients sourced only from the South – in the words of Chef Brock, “If it ain’t Southern, it ain’t walkin’ in the door.” Leading the restaurant’s day-to-day operations is Chef de Cuisine, Travis Grimes. A native of Charleston, Chef Grimes has worked at McCrady’s since 2003, helping to elevate the restaurant to one of the most-watched establishments in the country. Chef Grimes runs the Husk kitchen and oversees the menu, working closely with Chef Brock to ensure the menu’s authenticity and commitment to traditional Southern techniques is upheld.
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