Moviegoers will not have to try hard to spot VFW Post 660 in Juror #2, Clint Eastwood’s latest and perhaps last film. Many of its scenes take place at Rowdy’s Hideaway, a fictionalized haunt that, in reality, is the William A. Reed Memorial Post’s Canteen & Grill, right here on Ogeechee Road.

Eastwood’s directorial coda opened in limited release two weeks ago, and the tin ‘Rowdy’s Hideaway’ sign now hangs on the front wall of the “remastered” restaurant, just one of the post’s Hollywood hallmarks.

“We’re the whole plot of the movie,” said Todd Carvell, VFW senior vice auxiliary officer and executive chef of Post 660’s Canteen & Grill. On its Facebook page are photos or Carvell and senior vice/adjutant Justin “Hazmat” Howe seated in the Trustees Theater prior to a screening of Juror #2 at the SCAD Film Festival.

In the last decade, a half-dozen movies have been filmed here in part, including Tyler Perry’s Divorce in the Black, released this past summer, The Peanut Butter Falcon, Galveston, and Adam Sandler’s The Do-Over, whose production paid for the expansion of the post’s covered front porch.

Inside, the ceiling remains red after its turn as Velkovsky’s Bar in Halloween Ends (2022).

“Jamie Lee Curtis sat right there at the end of the bar,” the chef proudly pointed out.

Though he would shy away from any applause and cheers, the star of this story is Carvell himself, a lifelong cook who moved to Savannah nine years ago and who came to Post 660 in 2021 to resurrect its restaurant.

“It’s crazy how people don’t realize that we’re open to the public,” said Carvell.

If I can do anything about it, they will now.

FROM PO’ BOYS TO PIMENTO CHEESE

Hailing from Lafayette, Louisiana, which he called “even better” than New Orleans and home of “the best food in the world,” Carvell started coming to Savannah “off and on” in 2007.

“My mom fell in love with this place and then made me fall in love with it,” he shared.

“My little clean New Orleans,” Carvell quipped with a bayou-sized smile.

Where he was born and bred gave him his culinary background, and all of the techniques and recipes came from cher mère.

“I learned from my mama. We do what my mama taught us,” he said.

Perhaps not noticing the missing L, plenty of folks who have grown familiar with his food over the years have incorrectly assumed that his family tree has roots in soft-serve ice cream. Instead, Sunny Carvell taught her son the Louisiana classics.

“Pretty much everything. Gumbo, all the true Cajun dishes, anything with a gravy. She taught us how to season chicken right,” he rattled off.

“She could make anything taste good,” he added, invoking her ‘throw together whatever you have’ style.

Carvell and his twin brother, Chad, moved here for the first time in 2007, and mama followed her boys. Todd Carvell managed hotels for twenty years, and that vocation moved them up to Charleston, where their mother passed away in 2012.

“I looked at my brother when the oil fields started going ‘yech’ again, and I said, ‘We got to move one more time. Where do you want to live?’ and we both said, ‘Let’s go back to Savannah.’”

About a year later, Todd Carvell “got a wild hair,” and he and some friends opened Full Lunch and Late Night, spending every last penny on the project, even their last $700 to buy groceries for the first day’s service.

“We did it on a wing and a prayer,” he said of this foray into ownership. “We always felt that if we gave people our food, they’d eat it, and we wanted to keep it affordable and fresh.”

“We were there for one year. Things went south, and we left,” Carvell shared.

Just a couple months after Full closed, he was hired by Barrelhouse South to helm its food operations, which he did until COVID hit.

“I said, ‘I ain’t doing this again,’” Carvell recalled with a long and hearty laugh.

CALLED INTO SERVICE

After COVID-era restrictions had abated, a friend contacted Todd Carvell and asked him to consider helping out Post 660. Almost immediately, an agreement was reached, and the chef reopened the kitchen to “build business.”

Prior to, the Canteen & Grill was entirely volunteer-driven behind the scenes, which meant a couple days of food service and then a couple off.

“We brought consistency to it, consistent hours and obviously better food, so people know if they go at eight o’clock at night, they’re going to get a good meal,” Carvell explained.

Operations are such that Post 660 can now pay its crew of cooks, though the bartending staff remains entirely volunteer, including Chad Carvell, right beside his chef twin brother in the kitchen and on the floor.

“I’d be dead without him,” said Todd Carvell, who initially ran just the kitchen but now manages the entire catalog of the Canteen & Grill’s food services: the bar, the six-day-a-week restaurant, all catering contracts, and the calendar’s slate of special events.

All of that generates the primary funding for the post that is 92 years old and that has been in this building since 1984.

“All the money we make here goes to helping homeless veterans, keeping veterans from being homeless, all that,” said Carvell. “That’s our main purpose.”

Recollecting his Louisiana days, Carvell said that the “VFW’s always been a part of my life on a social level,” playing bingo and going to events, but that “it never was full-time like it is now.”

“Now, I’m all up in it because the mission is great,” said the chef. “It’s why we do what we do.”

The post’s spacious side room is rented out to anyone in the community for baby showers, holiday parties, quinceañeras, and reunions, and during the week, it hosts line dance lessons, karaoke, Coastal Empire Wrestling matches, and River Street Poker events.

This past Monday, Chef Carvell and Co. put on a Veterans Appreciation Lunch, setting up the buffet after the parade downtown and offering free pulled pork, mac ‘n’ cheese, and green beans to all veterans with everyone else charged only five bucks.

“We have so much fun, but that’s the reason we do what we do: so that we can take care of the veterans who took care of us. None of us would be sitting here without all our veterans,” he said.

PASS A GOOD TIME ON OGEECHEE ROAD

The menu Carvell created for Post 660’s Canteen & Grill is replete with really good bar food, and the most expensive item is a dozen chicken wings ($18), easily some of the best in the city and offered in a dozen different toss sauces.

The chicken sandwich, fried or grilled, has been a mainstay since Day One, and the most recent change came about a year back, when more composed salads were added. Weekday lunch specials are $11 and include sides and a soft drink.

All of the appetizers are less than $10, and the 50-50 beef-pork burgers top out at $14, the same price for the most expensive platters. In 2018, while cooking at Barrelhouse South, Carvell’s creation won the Burger & Buds competition.

“The burger’s my pride and joy,” he said. “We get that meat ground fresh from Ogeechee Meat Market.”

Unless another hurricane rolls through, the second Friday of each month is Steak Night: 14-ounce ribeyes, also cut-to-order at Ogeechee Meat Market, served with a starter salad, baked potato, green beans, and a baked dessert for $20.

“You can’t get that anywhere, and I cook every steak.” Carvell paused for effect. “I don’t trust anybody else,” he said through another big laugh.

Call or email Chef Carvell to reserve a spot and a steak by Wednesday that week. Just recently, he grilled 120 ribeyes in one night to feed a dining room that seats about a third that. A few Wednesdays back, more than 200 guests attended a party and ordered off the menu.

As for items that have Carvell’s Cajun twist: “Everything.”

“All the seasonings have Cajun influence, very proprietary,” he said and laughed again. Full Sauce, a concoction that started as an 18-herbs-and-spices crawfish dip and named for that bygone restaurant, is served with sandwiches and fries.

Speaking again of Louisiana, every April, May, and June – and maybe adding March in 2025 – the Carvells head back to Louisiana to a friend’s crawfish ponds to pick up hundreds of pounds that they boil out in the back pavilion.

Two Saturdays ago, our good friend and stalwart Savannah citizen Tom Kohler introduced us to Todd Carvell, having invited us out for lunch at Post 660.

“That’s my favorite kind of marketing: the customers who come here bringing other people here,” said the chef.

As my wife and I finished the last bites of a Bravo, Lima, Tango – figure it out – Chad Carvell brought out his brother’s lunch and bussed our table. Out back, the Seventh Day Adventist service was wrapping up. Todd Carvell said that any military organization in need of a meeting space is more than welcome here, mentioning the local Bikers Against Child Abuse chapter that he has also invited to use Post 660.

At present, the Canteen & Grill is closed only on Mondays, but they “may start back up in January,” said Carvell.

Before we split the bill, Carvell regaled Kohler with the highlights of the most recent wrestling night.

“You missed a good one,” the chef said with a wry grin. “We spent that morning walking around here looking for stuff for them to hit each other with.”

Evidently, the last bout was a tag-team match that spilled out into the parking lot, ending when one of the wrestlers climbed on top of the pumphouse and did a backflip onto two other wrestlers who stood in the gravel lot.

For now, I will stick to 75-cent Wing Wednesdays and Steak Night – right after I go see Juror #2 so that I can see Savannah’s most unheralded bar on the big screen.

VFW Post 660’s Canteen & Grill (5115 Ogeechee Road) is open to all for lunch and dinner six days a week (Tuesday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.) plus full bar service.

Visit www.facebook.com/Post660Canteen for information on weekly specials, Steak Night, and other events.

This article appears in Connect Savannah I July 2024.