Subverting clichés is the order of the day at Calhoun Beach Club's new Urban Eatery. Its slick corporate feel is no accident. The gastropub/restaurant is the work of the powers behind Crave, and the menu springs from the creative mind of Crave culinary director Jim Kyndberg. Urban Eatery aims to be a contemporary reinterpretation of the Applebee's/T.G.I. Friday's/Bennigan's trifecta, minus the jalapeño poppers and potato skins. When it works, it can be awfully satisfying.
The Urban Eatery kitchen crew's sense of fun is summed up in a single dish called "Pork n' Beans," but no Van Camp's cans were opened in this production. Instead, three thick-cut squares of deliriously fatty, maple-glazed pork belly are cleverly paired with crunchy, bright-green edamame, and the marriage really works.
I could easily make a habit of the Reuben, which subs in that naughty pork belly for the standard corned beef. Even the kitchen's spin on the slider manages to be a contender, borrowing steamed buns, bao-style, and filling them with brightly seasoned ground pork, crunchy carrots and spicy, sriracha-laced mayonnaise.
The bored-with-burgers crowd will get a charge out of a patty composed of ground bratwurst, topped with zesty sauerkraut and a generous swipe of grainy mustard, all stuffed into a pretzel-inspired bun. There's a terrific guacamole, but even better is the cool, snappy shrimp version.
The Scotch egg is a doozy, garnished with a handful of thoughtfully prepared accoutrements, included pickled turnips and fennel. More of the kitchen's way with pickles finds its way into a grilled chicken version of a banh mi. Another highlight: a bathtub-size bowl of steaming miso broth, filled with delicate ramen noodles, shiitake mushrooms and flashes of zesty kimchi.
The sprawling menu isn't just about bar grub. There's a section devoted to comfort-food fare that -- surprise! -- has been done up beyond the same-old, same-old. Pot roast calls upon bison rather than beef, and it's textbook delicious. The chicken pot pie is more than decent.
A full-bodied Bolognese dresses a heaping plate of baked mostaccioli. Plus-sized, garlicky shrimp are served over decadently cheesy grits, and they also play a starring role in a pair of tacos garnished with delicately spicy radish sprouts and an avalanche of avocado, pico de gallo and cilantro. Baby peas, flecked with mint and topped with a pat of herbed, lazily melting butter, add a splash of color to crisp-on-the-outside, succulent-on-the-inside fried Alaskan cod. Most notable are the moderate prices: Most dishes fall in the $11-and-under category. Happy hour is also chock full of deals.
Consistency seems to be a minor kitchen issue. Salmon spread, which turns out to be a good-looking riff on smoked salmon with all the fixings, was irresistible on one visit and inedibly salty on the next. The feisty lamb burger would improve if it didn't spend so much time on the grill. A seaweed salad is topped with bite-sized cubes of crispy fried tofu; unfortunately, the pert, stringy greens were overdressed, or the tofu was brutally overfried, or both. As for dessert, the most constructive information I can offer is to skip it.
The setting incorporates many yup-to-the-minute dining design trends, including walls lined in rough-sawn horizontal wood planks, 1970s-style glass-globe light fixtures and enormous expanses of chalkboard. Given their ubiquity, I sometimes wonder if there's a danger in these elements devolving into the 2011 version of hanging ferns and Tiffany-style lamps. But right now, it's all on trend.
Vibe-wise, what Urban Eatery most reminds me of is the now-defunct Figlio. Like Figlio, the main event at Urban Eatery is its rollicking bar, with the adjacent dining room playing second fiddle. The former feels like the place where the action is, the latter more like the spot where the kids are seated during a big family get-together.
Then again, the odd T-shaped floor plan has always been the challenge of this tough-to-define piece of real estate, which has played host to View, Dixie's and a whole host of other tenants. With Urban Eatery, the Calhoun Beach Club may have finally met its ideal first-floor tenant.
