The last restaurant review from our Kiawah - Charleston vacation is the hardest to write about...so I procrastinated. But here goes! Since the 29th of September was Susan's birthday and it was a night we picked to eat out, she had the honor of choosing where we went. Luckily, she picked one that had been recommended to us highly by a trusted source.
The menu (http://www.thefathen.com/) was nothing short of awesome! So many dishes looked so good we crafted our game plan the day BEFORE we went. We thought the best way to truly enjoy this mix of "comfort food with a Lowcountry, French flair" would be to order appetizers, a mid course of two entrees we would all share and then our individual entrees.
We arrive at the little restaurant for our 6pm reservation and to find it already pretty crowded. They seated us at a table for four (with Connor's high chair pulled up on the corner) right in the middle of the dining room. The place isn't big - a nice sized bar area and a main dining room with maybe ten or twelve tables. It's got a country casual feel to it and there were families and couples dining around us.
According to the preset plan, we ordered French Onion Soup, Crab Soup with cream and sherry, Steamed Mussels in aioli sausce and a platter of sausages. The onion soup was okay but watery. The crab soup the same, lacking the thick richness we love. The mussels on the other hand were awesome. Large and sweet in the most amazing aioli sauce of garlic, herbs, lemon and a white wine butter sauce. This sauce was so good we all took bread to it and sopped up every last bit. I don't remember the sausage at all.
The intermezzo course we ordered to share was the duck confit and the braised short ribs. I think these were stand outs. The short ribs fell off the bone and had the deep, deep flavor you can only achieve by cooking them for ridiculously long times. They had been braised in a veal broth and served with mashed potatoes and garlic spinach. The confit was excellent with a crispy outer skin.
About this time during the dinner Connor thought perhaps he no longer wanted to be out to dinner and that perhaps it was time to go back to the house and have a bath. So debating what to do, we opted to have our third course - the entrees - packed up to go and finish this meal at home. The four dishes we ordered were the meatloaf made from ground beef and pork with mashed potatoes, red eye gravy and collards; the flounder nicoise was sautéed with brown butter, fresh herbs, lemon, capers, olives, tomatoes and served over bacon cheese grits; coq au vin braised in red wine with bacon lardons, pearl onions, mushrooms and haricot verts; and the seared sea scallops with peas, butternut squash, roasted tomatoes, spinache and a buerre blanc sauce.
The issue was the time it took to get home and get everything situated, not all the dishes stood up to the tribulations of the evening. Alan's meatloaf was quite good as was Susan's chicken. But the flounder was inedible and the scallops were a no go. It's hard to judge this restaurant based on the circumstances. Would great food have survived the drive home and still showed their excellence? Were some of these dishes really not that great to begin with? We won't know until we go back and try again...something we'd all be interested in doing. So, until next time Fat Hen!
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