When Perry Lane Hotel first opened, its rez-de-chaussée restaurant was decidedly French. Every bespoke design element at The Emporium Kitchen & Wine Market said 8e arrondissement brasserie: round-back wooden bistro chairs, cozy-tight seating, corner banquettes, and brass fixtures throughout.
Par conséquent, the original menu was replete with de rigueur bistro fare: coquilles St. Jacques, salmon en papillote, rabbit ragout, a fruits de mer tower, and a proper omelette.
Over the last half decade, as has been the case with many marquee hotel eateries in Savannah, The Emporium underwent leadership changes in the kitchen which begot culinary concept shifts, the most recent tacking toward this side of the Atlantic.
Come June, Executive Chef Daniel Herget will mark his second year helming all gastronomic operations at Perry Lane, and the timing seemed right to return The Emporium to its edible origins.
Ça a du sens as this pairs perfectly with Herget’s own culinary journey, and it is plain to see how excited he is to launch The Emporium’s new menu this month.
PARIS, JE T’AIME
“Initially, it was a French brasserie. That’s what the restaurant was always intended to be,” said Herget, who took the executive chef toque at The Emporium in June of 2022.
“When I started, the menu had been through several iterations,” he shared. “It takes a while to find the team, the team that’s going to be here for a while. During that time, the menu had morphed into a contemporary American menu.”
Herget and Perry Lane Hotel general manager Matthew Douzuk found a food kinship in their love of classic French cuisine, and as the boutique hotel was approaching its five-year anniversary, they started some in-depth conversations about the future direction of The Emporium.
“While we were talking about that, I realized that it had been a while since I had really delved into that cuisine as well,” Herget added with a smile. “That’s how I was trained.”
On his own professional cooking CV are stints as chef de partie for Christian Delouvrier and sous chef for Jean-Pierre Petit, both “true-to-form, super-classic French chefs, big names in New York and D.C. during the heyday of American-French ‘revolution’,” per Herget.
During these conversations, he and Douzuk agreed that a fully French menu would be a retrospective of the chef’s career but also a retrospective of Emporium, a “return it to its original form.”
October of 2023 marked the beginning of heading back to the start that saw the addition of a classic trout almondine entrée ($36): North Georgia brook trout seared and sautéed in brown butter and served with blanched haricot verts, sliced almonds, and a squeeze of charred lemon.
“It is really about finding great ingredients, treating them respectfully, and delving into that French ethos of highlighting and elevating instead of trying to cover up and modify and modulate,” said Herget.
BRAND NEW TO THE MENU
On March 22, Herget and his team unveiled more “foundational” French fare in an intentional effort to reestablish The Emporium as a true brasserie.
“We really didn’t want this to be a ‘fusion’ restaurant or ‘American-French’,” he explained. “Too many times, things get lost and muddled. You lose your identity.”
On the carte is a classic scallop preparation in which the main mollusks are seared and basted in brown butter before being plated with a chilled celery root remoulade, a French bistro’s herbaceous answer to a commonplace coleslaw.
“This is one of the first dishes I learned how to cook at Christian Delouvrier’s restaurant because I started on the fish station,” Herget shared. “It’s so simple, but it works so beautifully, especially as we get into the warmer months.”
A rotisserie was an original appliance in The Emporium’s gorgeous theater kitchen but was removed before Herget came onboard, though he anticipates an encore at some point.
For now, the chicken paillard ($32) is the featured poulet, a pounded-out breast that is quickly seared, dressed with natural jus, and served with a salad of endive, poached asparagus, and “half-roasted” tomato confit.
“You almost get the texture, the chewiness of a sun-dried tomato and the concentration of flavor, but they still taste fresh,” the chef said of the dish’s final component. “That’s been one of our top sellers at dinnertime.”
On the weekend brunch menu are merguez and eggs ($21), headlining the lamb sausage that is a bistro standard especially in the south of France, and a classic steak frites ($32) that grows up when the sun goes down giving way to a classic steak au poivre, a prime New York strip with peppercorn sauce and cognac, accompanied by Robuchon potato purée and blanched asparagus ($60).
Herget’s new menu also adds a boeuf bourguignon, whose only “modulation” is using short rib in the place of the customary chuck roast “to give it a little more richness,” and a “super-simple but absolutely incredible” Georgia shrimp entrée prepared with white wine and mâitre d'hôtel butter and served with a fennel salad.
From pastry chef Amber Fitzgerald comes an “old school” Basque chocolate cake “that is absolutely going to blow people’s minds,” said Herget. “The texture is sort of teetering on brownie-level density.”
A common layer cake calls for the sponges to be baked separately and then assembled with its fillings. Not so for this unique Basque classic.
“You have chocolate cake batter that is dense enough to suspend a cherry puree and vanilla pastry cream and then another layer of cake batter on top, and that all bakes together,” explained Herget. “It is astonishing.”
Joining the long list of pastries and breads, all of which are made in-house, is Fitzgerald’s blackberry and coconut Paris brest: a ring of choux pastry filled with a blackberry crème diplomate and coconut cream and topped with tuile made from “super-caramelized coconut meat.”
HOP TO IT
Throughout Easter Weekend, March 29 through March 31, The Emporium has even more in store with certain southern twists.
Speciality bloody marys can be topped with the choice of the following you-pick accoutrements: antipasto with prosciutto, olives, and brie; giardiniera with pickled cauliflower, carrot, and okra; a wagyu beef slider with caramelized onion and American cheese; or a shrimp cocktail with double-smoked bacon, and jalapeño .
Herget is most excited about a braised lamb shank croque madame topped with gruyere and a sunnyside egg and dressed with a tarragon and chive mornay.
If Easter ham is your family tradition, the seared honey Bayonne is waiting for you, accompanied by herb and garlic fingerlings and a spring three-pea salad: charred English peas, blanched sugar snaps, and raw snow peas, dressed with a lemon vinaigrette.
“It’s the most spring thing you can have in one bite,” Herget said of the salad, “that Jean-Pierre Petit used to make with a cobia dish that [he] fell in love with.”
For the holidays, Fitzgerald will offer a French-style chèvre cheesecake with blueberry compote, sour cream mousse, and graham chai streusel.
MAISON SWEET MAISON
Herget originally moved to Savannah to lead the culinary program at The Mansion on Forsyth and moved on when the property was sold and began its transformation into Hotel Bardo.
Prior to, beginning in 2014, the Florida native spent the better part of four years opening restaurants in Nashville for the The Otaku Group as well as the boutique hotel Noelle. From 2017 to 2020, he was the executive chef at The Standard Spa in Miami Beach, a “dream opportunity” he had to take, and then the world stopped.
“The reason we wound up here is my wife and I wanted a change of pace,” Herget explained. “We were quarantined with our dog in a 700-square foot apartment in downtown Miami, and we’re like, ‘Is this really where we want to be?’”
Having visited Savannah often to see friends who attended SCAD, the chef already loved the city and said to his wife, “Let’s go where we want to be.”
“It’s worked out incredibly for us,” he said, still smiling. “It feels like home.”
The Emporium Kitchen and Wine Market (254 East Perry Street in Perry Lane Hotel) is open daily (7 a.m. to 10 p.m.), with breakfast service from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. and lunch service from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
