By John Mariani

    With big cities Atlanta, still lacking in Southern soul, and Nashville, finally capitalizing on its Music City heritage, and Savannah jockeying to be queen of historic beauty, with all of them battling it out to be the South’s best food city, a smaller, more interesting competition is going on between two South Carolina smaller cities—Charleston and Greenville, and despite the former’s gastro-surge and national media hype over of the last three years, Greenville is gaining fast.
    Greenville has been called the "#1 North American City of the Future, 2009.”  The source of that assessment, Foreign Direct Investment, is not without reason: thanks to BMW's and Michelin's setting up their North American headquarters here, the highest per capita foreign investment in the U.S.is here. (You may in fact put yourself behind a BeeMer on a track at the company's Performance Center, and Michelin has its own merchandise store downtown.) The city is also home to the International Center for Automotive Research, The Center for Emerging Technologies, Lockheed Martin Aircraft and Logistics Center, 3M, Honeywell, Caterpillar Inc., and , General Electric. all of them pouring millions into Greenville’s development, charity and the arts.
    The Greenville County Museum of Art (left) feature works by Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Georgia O'Keeffe, and more than two dozen paintings by Andrew Wyeth, who called this "the very best collection of my watercolors in any public museum in this country."  There is a performing arts center and little theater in Greenville, too. The city holds a Shakespeare Festival in the summer, a Pumpkin Festival in the fall, and when I visited on a bright late winter day, a mini-marathon was in full flow throughout the downtown area.
    What is really amazing is that within a mile-and-a-half stretch of Main Street, there are now more than 110 restaurants, overwhelmingly locally owned, including a brand new French bakery, Legrand Bakery (left), turning out fine, warm baguettes and croissants just out of the morning's oven, along with French pastries. 

    There’s Vietnamese food at Pho Noodleville, Jamaican at Island Blend Jerk & Grill, and a slew of sushi restaurants. 
    Among the best of these is Red Fin whose crew is turning out some of the best Nobu-style sushi I’ve tasted in the South. The place is owned by Matt Wuhrman, who after jumping out of airplanes with the 82^nd Airborne and 25 months of duty in Iraq, came back to the U.S. in 2010, worked bars and nightclubs, moved to and fell in love with Greenville, and, with an investment partner, opened Red Fin, with a night scene downstairs (below) and family dining upstairs.
     The menu is long, starting with various appetizers and salads, with about two dozen sushi and sashimi items listed, though dependent on what's good that day in the market.  The sushi rolls (above) are excellent, ranging from a tuna-avocado roll to specialties like the "bagel roll" with smoked, salmon, creamed cheese, and avocado. No one should miss the dishes cooked on a searing stone of Himalayan salt blocks that you cook on to your degree of doneness, from beef carpaccio to jumbo shrimp. There's a choice of any three items for a remarkable $17.
    As in Charleston, this food revolution has occurred very recently; even five years ago chain eateries dominated the culinary landscape. A catalyst for change early on was the 15-year-old Soby’s where Chef Shaun C. Garcia made a stand for Southern traditions honed to a casual, fine dining glow, as in his lobster mac & cheese with truffled Parmesan streusel, and his shrimp and grits with Low Country ham and creamy wine sauce.
    Devereaux's, owned by the same 301 Restaurant Group that owns Soby’s, is located in the historic American Cigar Factory, packed nightly with an upscale crowd that comes for contemporary American cuisine by Chef Spencer Thompson, like grilled beef deckle with Brussels sprouts and bacon lardons, and “deconstructed s’mores” made with smoked chocolate that evoke the campfire nights. His “Ultimate Menu” at $120 features ten “spontaneous courses.” The wine list is more than 200 labels strong.
    One of the true innovators here—whom I, in Esquire,  three years ago designated a “Chef to Keep Your Eye On”—is Victoria Ann Moore at The Lazy Goat, who brought into the city a wide array of Mediterranean flavors and ideas, from charcuterie of Jamón Serrano Ibérico, Italian salami, and Spanish country cheeses to dishes like succulent braised pork belly with cannellini bean cassoulet and papas bravas potatoes with fire onions, chorizo, and saffron aïoli.
      The historic Westin Poinsett Hotel (below), where every Greenville girl dreams of having her wedding reception and where George Clooney filmed parts of the movie “Leatherheads," has a new gastro-pub called Nose Dive, where Chef Joey Pearson does a sensationally good housemade pretzel (below) lavished with deviled crab and white cheddar that goes well with the array of beers like RJ Rockers Bell Ringer Ale made in Spartanburg, SC, and Thomas Creek River Falls red made right in town.
  For brunch—go early, the place has a line out the door by eleven AM—hit The Green Room for the zesty cilantro-lime remoulade-laced crab cakes, and don't miss the signature meatloaf (left) that never goes off the menu. Start off with a bloody Mary or one of their signature cocktails like the Baked Apple Martini or Pomegranate Margarita, especially good with those crabcakes, then consider the short rib mini tacos with sushi rice, or the shrimp and grits with spicy andouille sausage, diced tomatoes, scallions and a seasoned shrimp broth.
    The city’s newest hotspot is Roost on Main Street, a very handsome, expansive restaurant with open kitchen (below) manned by Chef Trevor Higgins, a wall of hanging country hams, and the sleek Roost Bar. Being in a hotel, that kitchen must do breakfast, lunch and dinner, or as they call it here, supper.  The last might begin steamed buns packed with bratwurst and kimchee, or blue crab beignets drizzled with honey and a little bacon powder.    The wine list is strong and building.  Just about everything is as locally sourced as possible, from lettuce to pigs, from mustards to grits, and it tastes that way in dishes like the yard bird with biscuit dumplings.
    A ways out of town is the area's best Italian restaurants with an inherited name, Coal Fired Bistro & Wine, that doesn't do justice to the depth and breadth of the menu here. A new director of operations has moved CFB&W away from pizza and towards modern Italian cuisine and has stocked the wine list with a good selection of bottlings.  I began with excellent pulled mozzarella on toasted bruschetta with tangy pickled shallots, a splash of balsamic, and oven-dried tomatoes. The Butcher's Board (left) was generously laid out with housemade sausages, rillettes, pâté, pickles and mustards.  I tried four pastas that night, and one was better than the next. First up was tender mushroom ravioli with Oregon truffle and lush mascarpone; then sweet butternut squash agnolotti with sage cream, brown butter, and Benton's country prosciutto.  Cappellini alla carbonara used smoked guanciale, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and Bethel Trails Farm egg yolk to bind it into a glossy marriage of flavors; last was tender tagliatelle with abundant chunks of lobster, spinach, mushrooms, and tarragon-scented brandy cream.
    The 18-pounce bone-in strip steak was highly recommended and I found out why on first bite--it is a great piece of beef impeccably cooked, with a peppery panzanella salad, some strong Gorgonzola, olives, arugula, and sweet onion, a very good buy for this quality at $45.
    Desserts were O.K.,  but didn't quite match what preceded them.
  One of the happiest and most popular openings in town is Joe Fenten’s Dark Corner Distillery (right), which makes—unabashedly—handcrafted moonshine right on the Main Street premises. You can do a tasting there of bottlings named Cock Lightning, Hot Mamma, Honeysuckle, and Green Villain Shines.  The store is named after Glassy Mountain Township known for two centuries as Dark Corner, famous for its moonshine culture.  Their small batch bourbon has been sold out for months now, with another batch along any year now.
    Charleston has a friendly fight on its hands as Greenville grows in sophistication, fueled by foreign investments that makes the idea of my returning regularly to both Southern cities a very delectable prospect.

TWO ITALIANS IN SCARSDALE
by John Mariani

MOSCATO

874 Scarsdale Avenue
914-723-5700
moscatorestaurant.com

    Restaurateur Mario Fava has had a longstanding reputation in Westchester, first for Lusardi's in Larchmont, and, since 2001, for Moscato's in Scarsdale. He has never been one to skimp on service or generosity, and his prices have remained reasonable for a high quality of cuisine.
    The atmosphere inside Moscato is warm both in color and décor as in greeting, and on any given night the majority of guests are likely to be area locals; weekends are always jammed.  In good weather you can happily dine al fresco on the patio, even if the view of Scarsdale Avenue  isn't quite the Via Veneto.
    There are all sorts of ways to go at Moscato, since each food category offers a wide choice; so you might gorge on antipasti, which includes a very good pizza of the day, or order a half portion of pastas and a main course.  My wife and I took the recommendations of the management and dined across the board, beginning with a generous appetizer portion of grilled sausage over arugula, endive, mushrooms, and sliced parmigiano drizzled with truffle oil.  Crespelle alla fiorentina--not found often enough elsewhere--are rolled eggplant crêpes with a rich ricotta filling, spinach, and a light tomato sauce with melted fontina.
    Among the pastas--a choice of 14 each night--are an array of shapes and styles, from agnolotti alla Moscato, filled with Parmigiano in a chunky tomato sauce with peas and mint--a good rendering of a Roman classic.  Trofie al pesto is a fine example of lusty Ligurian cookery, and Emilia-Romagna is just as well represented by the excellent bolognese ragù mixed with wide pappardelle.
    For our main courses we enjoyed a fat veal chop with the added pleasure of figs, in a hearty barolo and cognac sauce, served with green beans, and a mixed grill of dorade, scallops, and Arctic char over a bed of lightly sautéed spinach and a touch of sweet limoncello to give it depth.

    The wine list at Moscato should fulfill anyone's pleasure, and the prices are reasonable.

    It is easy enough to enjoy Moscato for the food alone, but you will most probably be won over as a regular by the sense of hospitality here that makes you feel like one the moment you arrive.

Moscato is open  daily for lunch and dinner. Antipasti $13-$15, pastas (full portions) $17-$21, main courses $22-$28.

MASSA'
2 Weaver Street
914-472-4600
massascarsdale.com

    The building in which Massa' is housed has a long history, first as a carriage house, then a train station for a railroad that once ran through this part of the county, a brothel convenient for those getting on and off the train, and a series of restaurants over the past 60 years, most of them negligible.  Yet it's a very charming space--one of the most impressive in the region, with vaulted cathedral ceilings and a turret-like  structure with echoes of faux-Tudor and Bavarian in its lines.  Heathcote itself, named after colonial Lord of the Scarsdale Manor, Caleb Heathcote, is now mostly an intersection, and coming upon this odd building is something of a fairy tale surprise.
    Father and son Pasquale, the executive chef,  and Francesco Coli renovated the interior with century-old reclaimed wood salvaged from New England barn houses, a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace and wood floors. From the outside it doesn't much resemble the architecture of  the masserias, farmhouses in Puglia from which the restaurant takes its name, but inside it is one of the most beautiful restaurants in the TriState region.  The touches of refinement add to the pleasure of dining here, from two starched white tablecloths to votive candles, which throws an enchanting light once common to civilized dining.  A good basket of bread is set on the table with olive oil for dipping; a plate of complementary parmesan chunks is set before you, along with olives.  If you forgot your eyeglasses, they will bring you a selection to choose from. Your contentment is considered part of the ambiance here.
     On the second floor, there is a popular wine bar with a small menu of appetizers and a fuller menu available to go with Massa's excellent wine list, with offerings by the glass (50 selections), quartino, bottle and large format. The bar makes signature infused vodkas for their special cocktails. Try a couple; they're very good.
    Pasquale and chef Michael Mazzei set a menu with just enough variety to cause you either to come back for favorites or to try something new month after month.  An appetizer of bluefin tuna carpaccio over crisp arugula, shaved fennel, and capers dressed with olive oil is a first-rate starter; fried zucchini with a marinara dipping sauce were addictive, if a little oily that night.  Of the pastas we tried, the pappardelle with a very rich, chunky wild boar ragù was outstanding--one of the best renditions of this dish I've had.  But I swooned over the manicotti here, with a light tomato sauce, partly out of nostalgia for a dish that once graced every Italian menu but has long out of fashion, but also out of the realization of how very delicious the dish can be when made with a light hand and a finely textured pasta.  I would be hard put not to order this again and again here.
     I might mention that, despite the Coli's proud Puglian heritage, there isn't much that could be called Puglian on the menu besides an orrechiette pasta with sweet sausage and cavatelli with broccoli pesto. It would be wonderful to see specials like the layered tiella, the calzone-like puddica, triglie (mullet) alla pugliese, and gnummeridi of lamb offal. Nevertheless, I can't argue with the quality of a huge, juicy breaded veal chop topped with Parmigiano, melted mozzarella and tomato sauce (the leftovers made for a good lunch the next day). And what's not to like about an American rack of lamb roasted to perfect succulence, with a balsamic reduction: again, the portion was gargantuan, and, at $34, a steal.
    The desserts at Massa' go beyond the usual: panettone cake was a warm bread pudding with silky crème anglaise and whipped cream, and a "deconstructed cannoli" was a little messy to eat but delicious.
    Massa's wine list is solid--the wine bar upstairs demands it--justly heavy in Italian bottlings with a good bounty of global wines too.  There are plenty of offerings under $50, which makes me wonder if they chargr $52 for the dreadful but bewilderingly popular Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio just so people are driven to try something better and less expensive.
    There's live music Thursday and Friday nights upstairs, but I like to sit on the balcony overlooking the main dining room, sip my wine, watch the votive candles flicker out at night's end, and feel that everything at Massa' has coalesced into a beautiful evening of good taste from start to finish.

Massa' is open for lunch Mon.-Fri. and for dinner nightly. Appetizers run $11-$16, pasta (full portions) $16-$20, main courses $17-$36.

At the moment, Hudson Valley restaurant Week is in full swing,
until March 24th, featuring specially priced menus at scores of
restaurants from the south, east, west, and north of Westchester
County and up the Hudson River. For a list of participating restaurants
click the link above.