SUMMERVILLE — At the new Bexley Fish & Raw Bar, small plates roll out of the kitchen one by one, tapas style.
Among the quickest to arrive is an oblong wooden board bearing Madison’s bread ($8), four slices from a Japanese-style milk loaf, feathery soft and griddled dark golden brown. Two scoops of sorghum butter add a mild, almost syrup-like sweetness.
The smoked fish dip ($16) lands quickly, too. Spiced crackers are arrayed in one of the long tray’s three compartments, and a colorful spring crudité fills the other — carrots, celery and red pepper drizzled with sweetened vinegar plus a few tangy bread and butter pickles and spicy pickled ramps. The cool, hefty scoop of dip in the center has smoky chunks of trout bound in white dressing and flecked with green herbs.
Smoked fish dip served with buttered crackers, trout roe and spring crudité served at Bexley Fish & Raw Bar on Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Summerville. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
But there’s more. Three piles of orange trout roe add salty accents. Most intriguing is a broad square of trout skin, baked flat and crisp, perched atop the scoop of dip. I have no idea if you’re supposed to break it into accenting shards or use it like a cracker for scooping. I do know that it’s delicious.
There’s a lot going on there for a platter of fish dip, and there’s a lot going on on almost all of Bexley’s plates. The restaurant opened in January in the heart of Summerville, just off Main Street on West Richardson Avenue. In just a few short months, it has secured a cadre of regulars who the staff greet by name, and those patrons happily evangelize their favorite dishes to new guests.
On my first night in, the woman beside us at the L-shaped bar sang the praises of the seafood ceviche ($14), and for good reason. The deep bowl brims with pale yellow broth, a scoop of mashed avocado and a few curls of thinly sliced radish bobbing at the top. It seems more cold soup than marinated fish at first, but each spoonful of citrusy liquid explodes with sweet, herbal flavors. Hidden inside are chunks of shrimp, diced octopus and firm white fish. And the real capper are the corn chips ringing the bowl — long, curving strips of yellow tortillas fried fresh for each order and perfect for scooping.
The ceviche isn’t the only dish taking flavors in unexpected directions. A single thin slice of yellow fin tuna crudo ($16) is as wide as the plate and topped with impossibly sweet local strawberries. Three oblong scoops of beef tartare ($18) are deliciously cool and rich, but the tartar is outshined by the taters — a trio of golden brown triangles that are billed as hashbrowns but are really so much more.
Beef tartar served with hashbrown potato, caviar and uni vinaigrette served at Bexley Fish & Raw Bar on Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Summerville. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
They start off as mashed potatoes in a lasagna pan that are sliced then fried until delightfully crisp outside but still creamy and soft in the middle. They’re stood on end atop a spiral of bright yellow uni vinaigrette and dotted with tiny piles of black caviar and orange trout roe. Like many of the other plates, it’s finished with a scattering of yellow nasturtium petals and black and red flakes of housemade furikake. Those seemingly random colors and flavors come together beautifully, and you may find yourself scraping the dish with a spoon to scoop up every salty and savory bit.
Bexley is the first foray into restaurant ownership by longtime Charleston chef Jeremy Holst. Its name is a nod to North Charleston’s Bexley Street, where Holst grew up. After high school, he headed north to the Culinary Institute of America in New York. Stints followed in fine dining kitchens in Hawaii, Atlanta and Las Vegas, as well as back in the Lowcountry at The Woodlands resort in Summerville.
Holst first came on my radar at Six Tables, an impressive but short-lived tasting menu-only restaurant in Mount Pleasant. He headed next downtown to lead the kitchen at Anson, and then out to Kiawah Island and Jasmine’s Porch. That’s quite a pedigree, and the wide-ranging experience shows in the array of flavors found on each Bexley plate.
Those plates are imminently local, starting with the stoneware dishes themselves, which are handmade and glazed right there in Summerville by Beth Kitch. The veggies and herbs are grown by Dorchester County producers like Yellow Dog Farms and Gruber Farms. The Madison behind Madison’s bread is Madison Stilner, a young local baker who’s in the process of launching a retail bakery nearby.
Call it a hyper-neighborhood restaurant, if you will, and a family restaurant, too, for Holst’s wife Carolyn and son Eli both work alongside him. He’s staffed his team with an extended family of sorts, as well: colleagues from past kitchens, including from way back in his days at the Woodlands.
With 10 small plates and a half-dozen raw bar options, one could assemble a remarkable meal from just the left side of the menu. But that would mean skipping the large plates, which may be the most impressive of the lot.
The set piece accompanying the fish of the day (golden tile the night I tried it, $34) is a smoky and splendid preserved tomato shellfish perloo that’s studded with shrimp, mussels and charred okra. A dark brown duck leg ($28) anchors a plate that’s otherwise all yellow and green, with a jumble of pillowy seared dumplings, nubs of asparagus and marinated peas scattered atop a foundation of golden sauce.
If I were forced to find fault with something, I might say the duck’s miso glaze is a tad too assertive, muscling over the top when you carve off the first bite. That miso, though, fades pleasantly into the background as tender shreds of rich duck mix with the smooth, creamy sauce and bits of veggie and herbs. The crunch of toasted chili flakes tops off an irresistible mélange of sharp flavors.
The scallops entrée ($36) also left me scraping together disparate bits into gloriously unified forkfuls. Four stout scallops, flawlessly silky beneath a dark brown sear, rest amid pools of foamy white parmesan cream, and a bright green puree of peas and basil. They’re adorned with long, slender mushrooms, rosy watermelon radishes and white shavings of something or other — I lost track after a while. I do know, though, that tucked inside the smooth pea puree are bits of soft, aromatic Carolina Gold rice grits, and they’re heavenly.
Madison’s bread, house-made milk bread served with sorghum butter topped with crunchy sea salt, served at Bexley Fish & Raw Bar on Wednesday June 8, 2022, in Summerville. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
It’s been a long time since I’ve been as impressed with a new restaurant as I am with Bexley. That’s mostly due to the food — flavors layered upon flavors, improbable combinations that somehow come together — but there’s much to like about the setting, too.
It’s a small space in a newish brick building. The décor is clean and neutral with a definite neighborhood feel. Beneath a black-painted drop ceiling, the white wall along the back announces the fish of the day and the oyster selection, spelled out in black letter magnets. A few strategically hung mirrors add the illusion of depth to what might otherwise be a tight dining room.
A few two- and four-tops line the outer walls, but the big L-shaped raw bar in the center is where the real action lies. It’s not billed as a chef’s table per se, but it certainly functions that way. There are no bartenders behind it shaking cocktails. (Bexley sells no hard liquor but does offer a nicely balanced slate of 40 wines and a worthy selection of local canned beer.) Instead, you watch the crew blending tartare, shucking oysters and garnishing plates as they appear in the pass from the small open kitchen. There are tweezers involved.
That open format lets Holst duck into the kitchen to prep a few dishes then step out to greet regulars and chat up diners along the bar. He radiates enthusiasm, eager to explain how a dish was prepared or where the ingredients came from, seeming thrilled to be cooking what he wants and serving it how he wants.
Key lime pie semifreddo served at Bexley Fish & Raw Bar on Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Summerville. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
That enthusiasm carries straight through to the end of the meal, which is rare in a era when even our toniest downtown restaurants have dispensed with their pastry chefs. Panna cotta, chocolate cake, an endless parade of tarts — all made in advance and quickly plated by line cooks — may top off a meal with a sugary surge, but they’re usually long forgotten by the time you get home.
No so with Bexley’s.
“I decided to master five desserts that were pastry chef-worthy,” Holst told us during one of his rounds through the dining room.
I can only attest for the two currently on the menu, but he appears to have succeeded.
How do you make a bowl of chocolate pudding ($9) memorable? You drop a big cube of toasted homemade marshmallow on top, drizzle it with gooey salted caramel and sprinkle on cocoa nib crumbles.
A sweet, tangy yellow disc of key lime semifreddo ($9) is certainly a make-ahead item, but the rest of the deconstructed elements evoke a more playful age. Instead of a dense crust underneath, crumbled graham crackers are sprinkled over the top. They’re joined by shards of bright red raspberries, flash-frozen with liquid nitrogen and shattered to bits, plus a few tangy-sweet blobs of lime curd. It’s finished not with whipped cream but a half-dozen ethereally soft marshmallow swirls, which are piped into teardrops and toasted dark brown on the edges.
I can’t stop thinking about those toasty marshmallow swirls, nor about all the other fine details of each Bexley plate.
There was a time when the farther from downtown Charleston one drove, the more dull the dining became. Here in 2022, as my restaurant treks have taken me out over the bridges and farther up the Interstate 26 corridor, I keep discovering unexpected gems.
The arrival of Bexley is big news for diners in Summerville, and for those of us just passing through, too.
