If you eat out in Savannah, chances are you have enjoyed a meal made by Brian Fiasconaro. Since moving to town eight years ago, the Long Island native has plied his trade in a handful of our collective favorite restos, one of which he now helms.
Back in May, Chris ‘Chino’ Hathcock stepped aside at Husk, ending a fabulous four-year run, and he handed the big whisk to Fiasconaro, his handpicked successor and the Savannah outpost’s fifth executive chef since it opened in 2018.
“This was in a great place when Chino left, so there really wasn’t too much to do,” said Fiasconaro as we sat in Husk’s top-floor conference room a couple hours before a Saturday supper service.
“The blueprint is already here,” he said of the Neighborhood Dining Group’s flagship brand, born in Charleston back in 2010, “so it’s just a matter of making it more of my character.”
Now that he is wearing the metaphorical top toque at one of the city’s literal top restaurants, Fiasconaro hopes to create menu items that “reflect the food that [he] like[s] to eat” while “giving [his] sous chef team the opportunity to have their voices heard as well.”
Both of those aims ring true in Husk’s newly conceived fall menu.
“For a lot of the food on the menu, they have so much input.”
ROOT CAUSE
For a restaurant rooted in revering the Coastal Empire’s locally sourced cornucopia, the imminent season change means Fiasconaro and his team will pick up different produce palettes to delight their diners’ palates.
“We’re in the process of turning our menu over right now,” he said, “moving away from melons and cucumbers and transitioning into harder vegetables, squashes, carrots.”
Right before we sat down, he had been R&Ding a dish whose autumnal ingredients include Anson Mills farro, muscadines, and pecans, one that will probably premier alongside a duck, perhaps even before you began reading this.
Already added to the supper menu is a smoked pork loin ($36), starring a Hunter Cattle (Brooklet, GA) cut paired with collards from Nat Bradford (Sumter, SC) and sweet potatoes from Dixon Family Farm (Aynor, SC).
The pork loin is aged with a shio koji marinade before being smoked while collards and onions are braised in coconut milk and curry. The fit-for-fall sweet potatoes are served two ways: a purée with pears, cinnamon, and other “warm autumnal spices,” per Fiasconaro, and a garnish of thin slices formed into a nest that is then fried.
For those craving a redder meat, the prime strip loin ($48) features “beautifully marbleized strip loins from Châtel Farms (Augusta),” said the new executive chef. “A delicious aged beef jus,” Béarnaise, and Sarawak peppercorns round out the hearty plate.
Yet again, the delicious deftness is in the details, and this dish is accompanied by three distinct carrot preparations. A sauce is made from carrot juice, and carrot coins are slow-cooked in beef fat before being pan-fried in more beef fat and coated in coriander and carrot pulp dust. The main veg on the plate is a “super-hard-roasted” hasselback carrot glazed with shio koji and vinegar.
CHEF ABOUT TOWN
Fiasconaro began his culinary career at home on Long Island, first at Mirabelle Restaurant and Tavern (Stonybrook, NY) and Jedediah Hawkins Inn (Riverhead, NY) before moving to Brooklyn “when we could still afford to live there,” he said with a serious smile, his Mets hat taking a break on the table.
Over three years at The Vanderbilt, he worked his way up from line cook to chef de cuisine, but by 2016, the South came calling.
“We just wanted a change of pace,” he said of the relocation to Savannah with wife Nicole Goggin. “Also, we were tired of living paycheck-to-paycheck in New York. The accessibility to things is awesome, I was close to family, but it’s just too expensive for two working young adults.”
Fiasconaro’s landing in the 912 was a nice one, indeed, with a sous chef post at The Grey, where he cheffed for a total of four years between the main restaurant and its erstwhile offspring, The Grey Market.
In that stretch, he took a break from “high-stress” kitchens and worked at the dearly departed Smith Brothers Butcher Shop, where I first tasted his food. After Smith Bros. opened, my wife and I often biked downtown to split the roast turkey breast with sharp cheddar and chipotle mayo on a baguette, sitting at the sidewalk bistro table and watching life pass by on Liberty Street.
“I made you that sandwich,” Fiasconaro said with a nod.
He shortly returned to The Grey, again as a sous chef, at the time when its leadership was putting together The Grey Market, which he helped open and where he stayed for a year.
“I was there from six in the morning till nine o’clock at night every day,” he recalled.
Having been friends with Hathcock, the then Husk head chef “gave [him] a little nudge to come on over here,” and he joined his predecessor’s brigade as a sous chef.
After two years, Fiasconaro’s food wanderlust led him to his own neighborhood to take over the food program at Hop Atomica with friend and fellow chef Matt Molinari. In a year’s time, the pair “completely changed their whole ethos” and “the way they think about what the kitchen needs to be.”
“We gave it structure and brought in a really great team,” many of whom are still there, according to Fiasconaro.
In September of 2022, he came back to Husk as chef de cuisine under Hathcock, poised to take the reins from his good friend. Much of Hathcock’s crew has carried over, including Mike Hanlon, who has been an executive sous chef there for more than three years.
“He’s just a rock,” said Fiasconaro of his right-hand sous. “He’s someone I rely on heavily.”
SAVE ROOM FOR…
Another mainstay in Husk’s kitchens is sous chef and wearer of many hats Nick Carlisle, with whom Fiasconaro has been mad-scientist-ing some sweet treats for cooler climes.
“I think he came with the building,” Fiasconaro joked of his pâtissier partner.
“We really wanted to do a muscadine dessert,” he continued, “so we went in the way of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
The creativity comes in the form of a crème anglaise that starts with soaking Husk-made white bread in the traditional cream-and-egg mixture, and the bready base is blended.
“It becomes almost like a Wonder Bread purée,” he explained with a smile.
The dessert itself is Built like a trifle: a piece of day-old bread rests on the bottom to soak up all of the yummy moisture and is alternately layered with the anglaise, muscadine jelly, and peanut butter purée, all scratch-made of course.
The entire confection is topped with a light Italian meringue, a nod to Fiasconaro’s childhood and his inability to eat a PB&J without Fluff.
“There’s a lot of personality that goes into the building when [a new chef] takes over, just the way they act toward their staff,” Fiasconaro said about his new role. “The general attitude is absorbed by their team.”
Clearly, Husk is poised to go from strength to strength under his leadership.
Husk (12 West Oglethorpe Avenue) is open for supper weekdays from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. and for brunch and supper weekends from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
This article appears in Connect Savannah | September, 2023.