Paulius Musteikis
Order the shrimp and grits and you may believe you’re in Charleston.
Southern food is undergoing a renaissance. It’s not just barbecue or Cajun or Creole-influenced Louisiana food. We’re talking the foods of the South Carolina Lowcountry, southern Appalachia and points up and down the Atlantic Coast. It’s a movement of simplicity, seasonality and flavor over presentation.
Given all that, it’s a puzzler that Madison — locavore, comfy-casual Madison — hadn’t fully embraced the breadth of Southern food before the opening of Julep on East Washington Avenue last October.
Julep’s full menu isn’t all that large, but that’s by design. A modest handful of dishes occupy three sections of the menu: Snacks, Little Plates and Dinners. A tidy menu and a straightforward culinary emphasis demand confidence and solid kitchen execution; there’s nowhere to hide if the kitchen misses on one of three ingredients.
Embrace simplicity and start with the Snacks. Perhaps challenging to the average diner is the smoked ham hock terrine, but be not afraid; two thick, playing card-sized slices of gelatin-rich terrine deliver porky, smoky flavors that are deftly cut by lightly pickled green beans and a demure whole-grain mustard. The price and proportions are perfect. There’s even enough of the accompanying bread.
Julep’s buttermilk biscuit is large and bronzed, with a crisp buttery exterior, but needs more moisture in its crumb. The pimento cheese has a pleasant texture, even with the atypical addition of chopped pecans, but is disappointingly bland. Classic dishes like these give fans of Southern cooking familiar dishes, though, and their presence on the menu is valuable.
The cocktail menu is wisely built to withstand a lot of rich flavors throughout the Snacks, Little Plates and Dinners. You could order a House Julep, but the ¡Mendoza! is more fun — a healthy dose of cinnamon, tangy port and mezcal.
Dishes from the Little Plates section are proportioned ideally for eating at the bar. The Nashville salad is great if you love bacon bits; the crispy pig ear slices are very crispy indeed. A smoldering crock of crumb-topped mac and cheese, delicious on its own, begs for a splash of the Crystal hot sauce, always offered as an option. Give it what it wants.
The modest tea sandwiches called Johnny Cakes beg for nothing, save a judicious application of the crispy ham by the kitchen. (If it’s sliced too thick, as one serving was, it turns into jerky.) Inside the sandwich are dollops of Benedictine, a creamy cucumber spread beloved in Louisville, and a real joy to find in Madison.
Skip the blue crab jasmine rice cake; its mushy texture and oddly Asian flavor profile isolate it as the only complete miss I encountered on the Julep menu.
Julep’s dinners truly shine. Shrimp and grits is served in the creamy style of Charleston. A smooth gravy generously studded with tasso ham cubes is served over large, tender shrimp and excellent grits.
The hefty fried chicken thigh has crunch and juice to spare, and it’s been deboned by the kitchen. Lots of shredded ham hock in the greens improve a too-sweet potlikker.
The perlou is magnificent. Something like a hybrid between jambalaya and paella, perlou features andouille sausage, brilliantly smoky whitefish, and fat oysters in a mess of partially pan-crisped Carolina Gold rice. A persistent hint of spicy heat runs underneath it all; it’s just plain great, and you should eat it soon.
I should mention the desserts, not printed on the menu (a bothersome trend in restaurants these days). You might find a chocolate cake with mint semifreddo, served in the style of that mint julep, but head for the sweet potato pie. Or the apple cobbler, served with an adorable mini-bottle of cream.
I’m eager to enjoy the open-air courtyard at the Robinia complex of restaurants (Julep along with A-OK Coffee and Barolo wine bar), and to see what new seasons will bring to the Julep menu. All the way up to the two bottles of high-tone Van Winkle family bourbon on the back bar, Julep is doing right by the South in an East Washington corridor on the rise.
Julep 829 E. Washington Ave.; 608-237-1904; facebook.com/julepmadison; 4-10 pm Mon.-Thurs., 4-11 pm Fri.-Sat., 5-9 pm Sun.; $4-$22
