Why isn’t Savannah more of a “restaurant town”?

I have not read Damon Lee Fowler’s new book Savannah Chef’s Table: Extraordinary Recipes from This Historic Southern City, but I have read several pieces about it today.

From Cooking, Savannah style in the Winston-Salem Journal:

It may be understandable that Fowler has focused on home cooking in the past. Like Winston-Salem, Savannah “has never been a restaurant town,” he said.

That doesn’t mean the restaurants are bad. “There’s a lot of great food in restaurants,” Fowler said, “but the food in restaurants doesn’t completely define the food culture.”

Fowler did say that Savannah’s restaurant scene is changing — for the better. Tourism — some of which dates to the book and the movie “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” in the 1990s — has been increasing. Also, downtown has undergone a revitalization. A more inviting downtown and more visitors naturally led to more and better restaurants.

Fowler doesn’t see Savannah becoming a restaurant town like Charleston or New Orleans, but he does see more improvement.

One noticeable difference, he said, is that bad restaurants aren’t tolerated.

Before anyone starts getting mad at Fowler — or at me — for that “restaurant town” statement, you should take a moment and consider the diversity of establishments that Fowler includes in the new book. The great piece out of Winston-Salem mentions a few staples, like Elizabeth on 37th, The Lady & Sons, and Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room, but also these: Ele Fine Fusion, Al Salaam Deli, Rancho Alegre Cuban Restaurant, Papillote, Zunzi’s, Butterhead Greens, Cha Bella, Lulu’s Chocolate Bar, and Crystal Beer Parlor, with its emphasis on Greek cuisine.

Most of those restaurants are 21st century incarnations — and most have defined themselves by their departure from what is or was stereotypical restaurant fare here.

If Fowler’s book were coming out next year, I’ll bet he’d include Oliva Restaurant & Bar in it. I wrote about Oliva in a column recently and posted a pic of my grilled octopus; I ate there again last night and had housemade ravioli stuffed with chicken liver paté. Yum.

And of course I’m working on the assumption that a broad swath of downtown’s finer restaurants are included in Fowler’s new book.

But, no matter how you slice it, Savannah simply is not a “restaurant town” like New Orleans or Charleston. We just don’t have enough places with the right combination of consistently great food, excellent value (whether we’re talking high prices or low), and exemplary, easy service.

Is the problem simply demographics? The Savannah metro area has about 360,000 people, while Charleston has about 700,000. Metro New Orleans has more than 1.2 million.

As I’ve noted before, Savannah also has many distinct subgroups (whites, blacks, downtown people, non-downtown people, SCAD students, retirees, tourists, etc.) that effectively limit the potential customer base of any given restaurant. The tourism surge has been both a boon and a bust — certain River Street establishments seem to have all but given up on luring local diners.

I’m guessing that the diligent reporter in Winston-Salem thought to ask Fowler about the “restaurant town” question after reading Jessica Ghormly’s piece at Eat It and Like It, At the Chef’s Table with Damon Lee Fowler.

From that post:

I wonder what he thinks makes Savannah cuisine different: “Well, Savannah cuisine is still not what you find in restaurants. The restaurant culture here is beginning to have its own identity, which is kind of exciting, like Charleston has an identity as a culinary destination and New Orleans has an identity as a culinary destination. Unlike New Orleans, there is a restaurant based cuisine that has a long history and to a certain extent, Charleston does; Savannah really hasn’t had a long culinary history in terms of restaurants. There have been some very good dining rooms here and I talk about them in the book.”

“Savannah’s real culinary identity was home cooking. I mean, the food that people came here to eat that Savannah was famous for was home cooking. It’s the stuff that people have had in Savannah for 100 years.” He points to a lovely lady, Susan Mason, who is a long time caterer in Savannah waiting to have her book signed, “She doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel with it.” She replies, “I don’t do any foam.”

And this:

Curious about Savannah not needing to be a restaurant town, I ask him what he thinks of Hugh Acheson making his Savannah debut. “I think he’ll be able to hold his own against our chefs that are here. Yeah, I think he’ll do okay…I don’t think he’s any better than any of them, I think we have a lot of incredible talent here.”

Ghormly’s Eat It and Like It piece also has some interesting comments on the historical appropriateness of our current farm-to-table movement.

Whether or not we’re ever thought of as a restaurant town, I hope that we’ll continue to see a mix of cuisines that’s fitting for one of the nation’s most important ports, with special emphasis on local ingredients and inventive recipes.