Jared Jackson and Nicole Priore were less than two weeks away from packing up and shipping out again, off to another U.S. military base to subcontract cook for the Department of Defense.
The culinary partners were headed to Michigan for another food tour of duty when close friend and fellow chef John Behhase called with a favor to ask: would they consider bringing their Eden Supper Club brand into The Garage at Victory North for maybe a month?
Owner Mohamed Eldibany had reached out to Benhase for consulting assistance as the restaurant underwent a transition.
“He knew it needed a fresh take and had the foresight for that,” Benhase shared. “He asked me to come in and take a look to see what would be a good fit there and what best direction to go in.”
Benhase immediately contacted Jackson and Priore, hoping that they were in between cooking contracts and knowing that the duo would be dynamic in “right[ing] the ship from the kitchen standpoint,” at least for the time being.
“I’ve worked with Jared and Nicole a bunch of times,” he said, recalling when Jackson ran his Loki Food Bus when the Benhases had their first child. “They’ve been some of my go-to people to call.”
Eden Supper Club’s partners put their imminent DOD deployment on hold and reopened The Garage in what Benhase called a “no-brainer plug-in,” executing his menu served by the staff already at hand.
“We were mercenaries,” Jackson said, unintentionally continuing the military motif, “under the guise that we were hired hands for him.”
Within the agreed-upon month, though, both Benhase and Eldibany recognized that The Garage had found its next culinary directors and that the “next logical evolution,” per Benhase, would see Eden Supper Club park it right here.
“A couple weeks into the consulting,” Jackson recalled, “John pulled us aside and said, ‘Hey, I don’t know what you guys were thinking, but if this is something you might want to make yours, there’s an opportunity for that.’”
That first month fulfilled, The Garage closed on August 23 so that Jackson and Prior could set to work on what is being called a residency. A friends and family soft-opening is slated for September 11, and then the restaurant will reopen for dinner on September 13.
“That’s twelve days.” Jackson paused. “Twelve days to put a restaurant together.” His laughter echoed inside what will soon be Eden Supper Club’s dining room, Priore smiling broadly in the adjacent booth.
“There’s a lot to do, but I think we’ve got it,” he said with a puckish grin.
GARAGE CONVERSION
During what amounted to be a four-week guest-stars stint, Jackson estimated that The Garage had maintained a similar number of daily covers but quickly surmised that the general impression of the Victory North eatery was an uncertain one.
“People were just getting tired of not knowing what was going on here,” Jackson suggested, citing changes in executive chef and menu and general turnover in a restaurant whose concept remained largely undefined over nearly two years of business.
“We figured out what was selling and what wasn’t, not necessarily putting our twist on it but trying to make it work for two people in the kitchen,” said Priore of their trial period.
“We started to change little things, but at that point, we weren’t taking any kind of ownership in it,” added Jackson.
At the end of July, around Jackson’s birthday, what had been mentioned a few times, Eden Supper Club’s taking over the space long-term, was more eagerly voiced by Eldibany. They felt the entrepreneur’s belief in them and their concept.
After closing up a couple Fridays ago, they removed all of the car-themed knickknackery pegboard walls so that what was an intentional museum of Victory Drive’s racing history can better portray Eden Supper Club.
“The reason I chose Eden was a play on not just the Biblical story but the concept of eating the forbidden apple,” Jackson said. “I feel like I’ve kind of taken a path that I wasn’t supposed to take as a chef.”
“In this space, we’re going to lean into that a bit,” he continued. Say ‘goodbye’ to mustard brown, gunmetal gray, and dark plaid wallpaper. Their good friend Maggie Hayes will be curating the artwork in an interior transformed with life and light.
New branding on the front widows will bear the Eden Supper Club logo beneath The Garage marquee on the roof. The plan includes better use of the back courtyard bar, which will be named The Secret Garden, and the former front box office will become The Garden itself.
“We’ll bring ourselves into the space in a way that doesn’t feel overly complicated,” said Jackson. “I don’t feel like we need to do too much in here.”
“Little things that will help us feel like it’s ours,” Priore said.
A CHANGEABLE FEAST
After a solid week’s deep-cleaning, Jackson and Prior had time to sit down to think about the food. To fans of Eden Supper Club: do not expect to see anything that you have already eaten at one of its events.
“For people who have been supportive, we want to keep it fresh,” said Jackson, who fully expects his French-kitchen training and “that bistro feel” to come through.
As for Priore’s culinary influences, she credited her paternal grandfather, Vincent Prior(e). She added the ‘E’ a few years back to reclaim the family surname’s original spelling.
“He always had a red pasta sauce on the stove on Sunday,” she shared. “They had a larger family, and pasta is one of those things you can feed a large family with pretty inexpensively. He was great at doing that and still having really good food.”
“Spain has always influenced me,” she continued, “the openness and saltiness of the air, how much fresh seafood they have and nothing crazy is done to it. We’re just eating it with some things that highlight how delightful it is on its own.”
“I was telling Nic, I kind of look at it like an album of sorts, how we creatively put it together,” said Jackson. “We’re telling a story, and this will be our first iteration of a menu.”
A dozen items of varying sizes will aim to “teach people how to order food and how to eat out”: sharing plates as much as conversation over food and drink.
Jackson recounted a recent exchange with Andrew Brochu (Brochu’s Family Tradition) and the latter’s lengthy tenure in Chicago’s restaurant scene, specifically the pitfall he saw when a restaurant was made “for foodies,” thereby running the risk of alienating the masses.
“The happy medium for us is to create a menu that feels approachable with things that feel familiar, but also if you know food, you’ll realize why these mussels aren’t just mussels. You’ll get a sense of what we’re trying to do,” Jackson explained.
Prior to their public events, they have never preshared a menu, but people still bought tickets to the shows, if you will. To wit, Eden Supper Club’s menus will not be pigeonholed to a particular cuisine but will draw on the duo’s Western European culinary training and traditions. Moreover, the eatery will be whatever they decide it will be in the given moment.
“If we can gain the trust of our guests, it won’t matter what’s on the menu because they know they’re going to find something that’s good,” Jackson promised.
TWO COOKS’ TOURS
For the last year and a half, Jackson and Priore have been on the road, “going from national guard base to national guard base, feeding the troops,” he said, “which, I don’t think, either one of us thought would be something that we would do.”
One shift was serving three squares daily to the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group, stationed on the grounds of Camp Beauregard near Alexandria, Louisiana.
“That was pretty cool,” said Jackson. “They had El Chapo’s handcuffs.”
“That was nice because we actually got to use their facilities, too,” Priore said. “They had a full set-up: cafeteria, hot line, full-service kitchen.”
“They were the boys that rescued Britney Griner,” she added with a smile.
Lasting between two and four-week, their cooks’ tours saw them serve as many as 600 soldiers three meals a day, most often all prepared in an off-base kitchen space.
“Pros and cons to everything, but we were pretty content doing our contract work. It allowed us to travel,” Jackson said and began the list of bases. “We were at Camp Swift a lot. We went up to Rochester, Massachusetts,” Jackson said.
“Yeah, we were in Cape Cod last summer,” said Priore. “We’ve been to Yakima, Washington, three times.”
“Florida, Tennessee,” he continued.
“A shout-out to Uncle Joe,” she said, crediting contractor and Plateshub CEO Joseph Crapanzano for the unique opportunity.
A Cleveland native, Priore moved down South in 2018, “hopefully never to see snow again,” like so many of us.
“I traveled for six years before I settled in Savannah,” she said. “Savannah was, honestly, just supposed to be another stop in my little wanderlust, but it just sucked me in.”
While living in Florida but knowing that she did not want to stay there, Priore saw that The Wyld and its then sister resto El Coyote were hiring. She took two days off from work, staged, and drove the four hours back to Florida just to put in her two weeks’ notice.
“He was a wonderful chef to work for,” she said of The Wyld chef-owner Tony Sechrist, “and I could not have asked for a better person to have my initiation into Savannah cooking.”
After a year and a half, Priore moved on to be one of two sous chefs at The Fat Radish for roughly eight months before realizing that she needed a break from an industry kitchen. She was Cantina Tulum’s general manager before COVID hit and effectively closed its doors.
Feeling for her fellow F&Bers, she took it upon herself to relieve area restaurants that had closed down of what was going to be unused food and cooked it to feed hospitality workers and friends who were out of work.
By September 2020, she was back, becoming Sea Wolf Tybee’s chef de cuisine a month after it opened. A year later, she was on the opening team at Thompson Savannah as Bar Julian’s CDC.
“Kind of worn out from managing,” Priore worked a.m. prep at Brochu’s. “It was exactly what I needed to be back in a very healthy, very meticulous working environment. Andrew [Brochu] and Dave [Baker] are two people that I really look up to.”
“Just come in, tell me what to do, do it, and I go home,” she said with a laugh.
“That’s a liberating feeling,” her Eden Supper Club partner agreed.
Born in Boston, Jackson moved to Savannah with his family in his preteen years, graduated from Savannah Arts Academy, and earned a degree in architectural drafting from Savannah Tech.
“I definitely grew up in a household where my mom cooked every night, so that was built into my framework,” said the chef whose entrance into the industry was as a dishwasher at a neighborhood country club.
Jackson described “a wandering path, figur[ing] out what [he] wanted to do,” along which one stop was the food writer for CONNECT, working for Jim Morekis.
From 2012 to 2018, off and on in the later years, he “played a lot of roles” at Circa 1875, starting as a dishwasher and moving up the ranks, at the same time going back to Savannah Tech to earn a culinary degree.
“I learned a lot from David Landrigan. I love David. He’s the one I call ‘Chef’ with the most regard,” Jackson said.
He cooked at The Grey before its Netflix moment and was the recipient of the first Chef Edna Lewis Scholarship before he helped open The Atlantic and later, in the same spot, Ardsley Station.
“I hit a point where I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to express myself creatively, looking down the line, for a long time,” Jackson shared, so he made a pivot and began hosting dinner parties, cooking the food he wanted to cook, which gave rise to Eden Supper Club.
GARDEN OF EATING
“Out of that thought of being able to do something creative, I got an opportunity through a good friend of mine,” Jackson recalled the supper club’s inaugural event back in 2019. “She was selling her house and wanted to host a going-away party.”
Fifteen friends brought the wine, and he prepared the coursed-out dinner.
“They loved it, and I left thinking, ‘Maybe there’s something here.’ If I’m honest, that has just continued to happen over the last five years,” he said appreciatively.
He originally partnered with Evan Bruen, and the “passion project” venture grew to serve private catered events and even wedding receptions, organically transitioning into a business opportunity before Bruen stepped aside.
Priore joined Jackson in 2022, after she left Thompson Savannah and while she was working at Brochu’s.“I’ve never thought about it,” Jackson said with a smile, Priore giggling in the background, when I asked how many events Eden has put on since that first dinner party. “I would say, if I had to ballpark it, probably close to fifty or so, maybe a bit more.”
Events earlier this summer have included public pop-ups at Brochu’s and Late Air, and the duo shared that they just talked to Auspicious Baking Co.’s Katie Bryant and Mark Ekstrom’s about catering their wedding later this year: there is no better recommendation.
FEAST OF EDEN
“It’s very much their project, but I’m always going to support them because they’re my people,” said culinary matchmaker Benhase happily.
“If we didn’t have the support and the hands, I’d probably be a little more nervous, but Mohamed’s given us all the resources and John’s been a great touchpoint,” Jackson said. “We’re in good hands to help us make that transition.”
In these early days, Eden Supper Club’s culinary crew will be just the two partners, and they will base additional staffing on need.
“For us, it’s start small and get our asses kicked for a couple of weeks, see how it feels, and if it feels like we need some more hands, we’ll hire some more hands,” Jackson said, he and Priore punctuating the statement with more laughter.
“I’m just used to getting beat up. I wouldn’t want it any other way,” he said with another smile.
In the beginning, it will be dinner service and drinks, though they plan to keep the bar open later to catch their industry mates after service for some “late-night foot traffic,” a crafty plan: with The Jinx’s relocation across the street, even more late-night clientele are only a few months away.
They are also going into the space expecting more interaction with Victory North and the events it hosts.
“Sundays and Mondays, we’re going to make it fun,” said Jackson. “Sundays will be more family-style meals. We might have a paella, or we might do Sunday lasagne, something a little out of the box.”
Because most of their colleagues and friends in the trade have Mondays off, those will be “industry nights, when we do some other cool stuff that’s not on the menu.”
“The ethos of Eden was not only to break away from the gatekeeping but also to create a community,” Jackson explained. “I am my happiest when I am feeding my friends and we’re cracking beers and talking and enjoying some space, trying to create that comfortability.”
“We’ve established a reputation in town for doing things the right way, and I hope that translates over here.”
Eden Supper Club will begin its restaurant residency at The Garage at Victory North (2605 Whitaker Street) on September 13. Anticipated days and hours will offer dinner service Thursday through Saturday (5 p.m. to 11 p.m.) plus Sunday…Monday.
This article appears in Connect Savannah I July 2024.