“We’ve known each other for fifteen years,” Brian Torres said of Stephen McLain. “We always said, ‘Man, it would be so good to open a restaurant together someday.’”
Sometimes, we get what we wish for.
At the end of August, Torres took over the title of Food and Beverage Director at Savannah Quarters Country Club, and two days later, the executive chef decided to move on.
“How much better would it be for me to have my own chef here?” Torres asked himself rhetorically but also seriously.
Just two weeks after that, McLain became SQCC’s new executive chef and his great friend’s culinary colleague.
“He’s an incredible chef,” Torres said. “We have a relationship that works perfectly because he knows my way, I know his way.”
McLain quickly returned the compliment, calling Torres a “consummate professional with all points of service.”
“We took this over for one reason: to put our skills into the club life,” said Torres.
“The whole idea, from the GM and Heritage Golf Group, when they brought Brian in and then subsequently brought me in, was they wanted to elevate the style of cuisine, make it very much a member-first focus,” McLain added.
With SQCC’s leadership anticipating adding as many as 800 new members in the coming year, the duo aims “to breathe a little bit of new life into a club that is growing,” according to McLain.
CAREER DOG LEGS
In October, Torres stepped away from Fork & Dagger, which he co-owned and operated in two venues over six years with longtime business partner Sky Hoyt, and soon reunited with food friends Jamie Durrence and Chris Nason, who hired him to work with Daniel Reed Hospitality’s catering branch.
Years ago, the trio had all been together at Sapphire Grille which, incidentally, was where my wife and I ate our first-ever dinner in Savannah when we visited back in 2012.
“They took good care of me,” Torres said appreciatively, though come last summer, he needed to find another full-time gig.
“I just started interviewing, which was uncomfortably weird because I’ve always worked for myself,” he shared, admitting that he initially worried about taking the SQCC job simply because he had never before been beholden to a corporate entity.
“For what I love to do, it’s taking all my passions and putting it in a place that has two-thousand people who come dine all the time,” said Torres, his trademark enthusiasm for this new position evident as he heaped praises on the club’s general manager Chris Bowen and lifestyle director Leigh Ann Bryan, both of whom came on this past June.
Meanwhile, across town: after an eight-year run as executive chef at Alligator Soul followed by a three-year similar stint at La Scala, McLain took an intentional hiatus from helming restaurant kitchens to run his own consulting company, Wildflower Culinary Solutions, whose appellation borrowed his daughter Ava’s middle name.
“I was a little bit burned out with working in fine dining, but I figured that I could take that skill set and that problem-solving ability to help other people,” he said, and from 2021 to 2023, he did just that, facilitating fellow food professionals with recipe creations, new menu designs, and kitchen layouts in everything from new restaurant builds to natural-disaster catastrophe renovations.
During that time, through Torres, McLain “crossed paths” with Durrence and Nason and began first “freelancing with them” until the position became almost full-time, “assisting Nason with Skyfare inflight catering and offsite catering events for the Daniel Reed Group.”
Come October, Torres had asked Bowen specifically to hire McLain.
“I was doing fine and was not looking for anything,” McLain recalled, “but of course, when he reached out to me, that piqued my interest. I respect Brian, especially his knowledge of and palate with wines but also his management style in the front of the house.”
“I forgot how much I missed being creative and teaching other people in the kitchen,” he added. “I’m really happy to be here.”
A NEW APPROACH
In October of 2022, Heritage Golf Group added the Pooler property to its portfolio of 31 golf clubs across thirteen states, and in the last half year, “a strategy for capital improvements” began at SQCC that will continue through 2024 and into 2025, according to Bryan.
“We’ve all become great friends,” Torres said of a leadership team that is taking on a slate of long-range upgrades and significant amenities investment across the property, including a forthcoming poolside restaurant and bar that will further expand food and beverage services.
“They just want it to be better and better. Everything we ask for, they give us,” Torres expressed. “It’s a great feeling of positivity going forward.”
Both he and McLain described a laser focus on the dining experience for the club’s two-thousand members, and when Torres came onboard, it was not lost on him that “so many people were just driving by the front of the club and going to Noble Roots and to Chick-fil-A.”
“Your goal is a hundred regulars who come twice a week,” he said of a private restaurateur’s mindset, which is quite different from this culinary concern. “Here, you have to have those hundred people want to come every day.”
McLain echoed this estimation, saying that the mission is “the membership of the club, we really owe it to them.”
“It’s a fun balance of what we know and the passion side of food and beverage and fine dining and then also a country club because we do have a ‘captive audience’,” Torres explained.
Under one roof, SQCC welcomes members in its main dining room, the Westbrook Grille & Lounge, and two private spaces, the Norman Grille and the Wine Room, plus more tables on the patio for a total of 185 guests at any one time.
“It’s just a beautiful property,” said Torres, a Brooklyn native who has been part of Savannah’s restaurant scene for twenty years now.
According to Bryan, “For the diversity of business that Brian and Stephen handle, it's pretty common to have a bridal shower in the Norman Grille and then have a wedding tasting in the Wine Room, while still doing regular lunch service and then that night the Grille is packed.”
“Sometimes on Bunco night,” she added, “Brian does wine tastings with the ladies before they play so they can sample a new wine he has brought in.”
Another new collaboration, the last two wine dinners “went so insanely well,” according to Torres, “and the club is buzzing right now with the new menu launch and everything we’ve done.”
Though this is members-only dining, in April and May, the club will host its annual four-day member/guest golf tournaments, April 4 to 6 for ladies and May 22 to 25 for men, both of which will be “styled out with food, drink, music, and specialty parties,” per Torres.
Bowen described the event as “the Super Bowl of golf tournaments for any club in the country,” a chance for bragging rights between clubs and their respective members.
NOT YOUR NORMAL 19th HOLE
McLain and Torres separately agreed that their collective challenge has been adapting their own restauration experience to “club life” and that the first two months were demanding “because there was so much to fix,” said Torres.
At Fork & Dagger, he and Hoyt called their own shots, serving up “[their] grandmas’ recipes, family-style comfort food at the level that [they] wanted” with service to match “for everything, from bagels to duck confit.”
Faced with a new menu launch, Torres needed another knowledgeable and professional lead chef to help train and to watch the consistency of the day-to-day à la carte quality. Whom did he trust most and turn to? Hoyt, who took on a part-time trainer role for about a month.
McLain’s background had “almost exclusively been in privately owned small-business fine-dining restaurants,” so this first experience in a “country club setting” has “definitely [been] a bit of a learning curve.”
Lauding his e.c. for leveling up the approach, Torres said, “He’s doing everything à la minute, all the sauces, all the sides.”
“That stuff, for Stephen and me, is the easy part because that’s what we do,” he added.
One challenge, both metaphorical and practical, is bringing the same standard to a golf clubhouse’s hot dog.
“It’s the balance of all that,” Torres surmised of making one menu equally accessible and elevated. “Even if it’s not all ‘fine dining’, it needs to be the best products to put anything together.”
McLain took the first months on the job to navigate the winter holiday parties that were already on the books, but right at the first of the year, he rolled out his first menu that features new salads and appetizers and entrée-style dishes like a ribeye and a stuffed pork chop “that can be enjoyed anytime of day, really.”
No foie gras or caviar yet, he joked, but they have talked about introducing wild game dishes as specials, “testing the waters to see how adventurous diners are.”
“That’s really where I’ve been able to be a little more creative,” said McLain before describing the recent special of a seared duck breast over truffled cauliflower purée with sautéed baby kale and handmade pierogies filled with butternut squash and smoked gouda.
“It was really well-received by the clientele and guests,” he added happily. “We want to push it a little bit and introduce people to something that, maybe, they haven’t had in that environment before.”
For a little golf club menu humor, he did not do much to change the club sandwich other than playfully renaming it the Caddyshack.
“We put on a really really badass Reuben sandwich. It’s half pastrami, half corned beef,” McLain continued. “We’re sourcing the same pastrami and corned beef as Katz’s Deli in New York, Gruyere cheese, sauerkraut, pickles, Russian dressing on a really nice marbled pumpernickel rye.”
“That’s been really popular,” he added proudly. “It’s one of my favorite sandwiches of all time.”
The take on a wedge salad stars Gorgonzola and bacon lardons, and the Caesar’s facelift comes in the form of house-made croutons: thin slices of fresh baguette toasted with everything bagel seasoning.
“Just little twists and changes to take a classic country club menu to the next level,” said the chef. “Not quite fine dining but meet[s] with what everybody’s expecting when they come off the golf course.”
McLain acknowledged that making changes in a place “that has been pretty well-established for a while” can be a tough lie, so he and Torres have kept their ears open to all suggestions while “maintaining our [their] integrity to stay the course on the vision and purpose for why [they] were brought in: to elevate the style of service and the level of cuisine.”
“We’re happy to be a part of that,” he said.
“It has worked out nicely,” Torres agreed.
