A realtor might tell you that The Chef’s House has no comps. As a restaurant reviewer, I’ll tell you the same thing.
About the real estate: The neighborhood is not a neighborhood. It is a four-lane urban artery strewn with fast-food franchises. The Augusta restaurant is sandwiched between the Garden City Car Wash and a PPG Paint Center. On this strip of otherwise unrelieved sprawl, you would never expect to find a nice place to eat, but here it is: a cute pink house that looks as unreal as a magic cottage in a fairy tale. Although nobody now lives here, it’s fun to imagine that once upon a time The Chef’s House really was a home.
Nor is the experience of walking in the door comparable to entering most other restaurants. Host Tammie Darko greets arrivals and directs them to a box of disposable food-handling gloves next to a pump jug of hand sanitizer. Regular customers (who comprise, I’d guess, three-quarters of the clientele) don’t think twice about donning the hygienic gloves. It’s Tammie’s job to tell newcomers that the chef—her husband, George Darko—doesn’t want anybody at the buffet unless they are wearing them.
The buffet is small: two or three entrees, a few side dishes, soup, cobbler, and a salad bar. Some serving trays are sparsely stocked. That’s because they hold things that are at their best piping hot. Throughout the lunch hour, Chef Darko glides out from the kitchen to add a few pork chops or chicken pieces to their respective pans.
While assembling lunch, tell a member of the staff how you like your tea and which of the two dining rooms you prefer; and by the time your plate is filled, the drink will be on its way to your chosen place.
Each day of the week has at least one dish for which it is known. When I came for lunch on a recent Thursday at 10:55 a.m., just before the restaurant opened, I stood outside the door with a few other folks who said they were there because it was pork chop day. The boneless chops are gentle: easy to slice, at once pork-sweet and savory, encased in a delicate coat leavened by their pre-breading egg wash. Thursday also happens to be barbecue chicken day, when sticky-sauced pieces require either surgeon-level knife-and-fork work or, if eaten by hand, many napkins.
Wednesday and Friday are fried chicken days. The pieces are so thickly enrobed in their crunchy coat that it’s almost difficult to differentiate between breasts and thighs. The coat’s flavor is a fetching harmony of nutty richness and pepper punch.
Cornbread is basic, just barely sweet and cake-tender. When Darko makes his oddly uncomplicated gumbo—little more than seasoned broth crowded with cut okra and shreds of beef—there is nothing better for dunking or crumbling into it. Freshly cut from a pan on the kitchen table, the cornbread comes with single-serve cups of butter, not buttery spread.
As much as I like the cornbread, Darko recently convinced me to try a couple of the dinner rolls he had just pulled from the oven. Yeast-leavened, painfully tender, and barely sweet, they soak in as much butter as you apply. Better yet, they’re made for mopping up barbecue sauce off the chicken, lemon butter from a tilapia fillet, even juice from the kitchen’s shockingly spicy, vinegar-forward collard greens.
Dessert always is peach cobbler, its fruit fairly syrupy–nothing dramatic on its own. But the crust on top is mighty pastry, firm and full-flavored. When Darko sees you dipping into the serving pan and retrieving a portion (smoking hot, of course), he asks if you’d like some ice cream to put on top. If so, he goes to the kitchen and gets a scoop that melts into the warm pastry as you spoon it up.
It is pleasant to think that this place once was a family home. It’s still cozy in that way. Frilly valances over the windows, flower centerpieces on the tables, and diverse art on the walls make lunch feel like a casual visit to a neighbor.
And yet for all the homey feeling and the unaffected nature of the menu, it would be wrong to describe George Darko’s culinary style as home cooking. A meal in his restaurant is a tour de force of professional talent that few home cooks have the skill or will to summon. As its name says, it really is a chef’s house.
The Chef’s House: 1729 Walton Way, Augusta, Georgia, 706-733-8622
No Comments