I really fell in love with food in the late ’80s, and I chalk it all up to soup. In my senior year of high school, the trajectory of my life was forever changed by the vichyssoise at Richmond’s La Petite France.
Ever since, when dining out, I always make a point to order the soup. Ramen and pho aside, in the past few years I can think of two soups that stopped me in my tracks. Chef Matthew Tlusty’s carrot-and-dill soup with ginger cream at Julep’s New Southern Cuisine is one of them.
Funny thing, the butter and heavy cream applied with reckless abandon, the over-the-top sweet of the carrot, and even the use of dill reminds me of the decadence of the ’80s, the Reagan era, a Bret Easton Ellis novel. The pastel orange of the soup with little green flecks of dill and the careful-yet-carefree squiggle of the ginger cream garnish even resembles the design of a Swatch watch. A tiny ramekin would suffice, but I eat the entire bowl and could keep going if given the chance.
Tlusty and his signature soup, which he’s ferried with him from former restaurants Limani and Arcadia, now inhabits Julep’s menu — now in the old Shield’s Shoe store on the 400 block of East Grace Street, next to Pasture and a stone’s throw from Rappahannock.
It’s a beautiful art deco building, built in the 1920s with an interior that’s elegant and arresting, both modern and post. The front room, with its impossibly high ceilings and a few tables for small parties placed along the enormous front windows, is dominated by an ornate mahogany bar that looks as if it came from “The Shining.” The bar ultimately leads you to a curtained entranceway leading to the formal dining area. Here, you feel you’ve arrived at your destination: You planned this meal, you made a reservation, you even dressed up.
Julep’s boasts a broad and somewhat nebulous concept referred to as new Southern cuisine, with a menu capturing the essence of Atlanta, Charleston, South Carolina, New Orleans and Savannah, Georgia. On it you’ll unsurprisingly find Southern stalwarts: fried green tomatoes served with pimiento cheese ($8), Vidalia onion hush puppies ($7) and shrimp-and-grits with andouille sausage ($27).
Perhaps the new part of this Southern cuisine is the Peppadew pepper aioli with those tomatoes, and the pickled egg rémoulade with those hush puppies. I almost expected the shrimp-and-grits’ shrimp broth to read brodo on the menu. But after biting into the warm pillow of moist, sweet corn bread muffin that magically appears before me, I let the semantics drift away and let my palate do the work.
Much like that soup, the food is plated very consciously. Not necessarily tweezer-conscious plated, but more architectural. The shrimp cocktail ($12) does a bit of an injustice to its stars, the Carolina shrimp and the Cherokee tomato in the cocktail sauce. The shrimp that’s carefully positioned in a way reminiscent of a Busby Berkeley film is, sadly, a little overcooked. The mint and jalapeño brine on the shrimp gets lost once dipped into the acidic and hyper-sweet cocktail sauce.
The kale salad ($7) seems to be a nod to the trend with coarsely chopped kale ostensibly replacing mixed greens, topped with bacon bits, croutons and cucumber coins. Three strapping scallops — another appetizer — arrive charred and perfectly cooked, each perched atop little basil-laden grit-cake tuffets, adding expert texture and balance to the dish.
With entrees, the road is a little uneven and decidedly spendy. The tomato and corn cakes ($27), regardless of their illustrious narrative on the menu, resemble what a vegetarian option would look like in a more prosaic restaurant — more compulsory than inspired, with the plate broken down in thirds and equally portioned with cooked Roma tomatoes, corn cakes and greens. A fricasseelike braised rabbit and dumplings are entirely underseasoned ($26), and I find the inclusion of out-of-season fava beans with the black grouper ($28) a curious choice.
On a high note, the red snapper ($27) is savvy with both preparation and accouterments. Served crispy skin-side up, next to a glorious version of Carolina gold creamed rice and beet greens with buttered peanuts, this dish is what I would ideally like to think of when I hear the phrase new Southern cuisine.
Sitting at the bar, the sun long since set, with my little dessert of rich, dense chocolate hominy with fresh whipped cream and a glass of tawny port alone makes for a consummate moment — an absolutely worthwhile experience. That, and my word, the soup. S
Julep’s New Southern Cuisine
420 E. Grace St.
377-3968
Mondays-Saturdays 5:30-10 p.m.
juleps.net
