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This 'Drum' still sounding good

Wade Spees
The Post and Courier

The Red Drum Gastropub

In 1991, David Eyre and Mike Belben coined the term "gastropub" and applied it to their public house; a bar/cafe called The Eagle in London's Clerkenwell neighborhood.

By 2004, the concept crossed the big pond and The Spotted Pig opened as a gastropub in the West Village in New York City. In the restaurant landscape, gastropubs were places where the food was more than credible, the prices moderate, the pace, leisurely and pints figured on the menu. It was a concept that intrigued chef Ben Berryhill and his wife, Marianna Michels.

Both had been groomed by the Schiller-Del Grande Restaurant Group at Cafe Annie in Houston; Berryhill as executive chef and Michels as general manager and wine buyer. At Cafe Annie, Berryhill was part of a team honored by the James Beard Foundation, the Zagat Guide, Food and Wine magazine and Gourmet magazine.

With some serious Southwest cooking under his toque, Berryhill came to Mount Pleasant and opened The Red Drum Gastropub in 2005. Critics and the public alike could not get enough of the restaurant's bold flavors, creative presentations, cleverly scripted wine menu and energized bar scene.

Three years later, this gastropub continues to percolate on many levels.

This is a kitchen that conceptualizes its dishes with precision and artistry, both sweet and savory.

It is a handsome restaurant that transitions bar, pub, dining room and private dining spaces with grace. Wood beams give a pueblo-like look to the dining room. Dark floors, butterscotch-colored walls, hand-tooled leather chairs, well-positioned lighting and the generous use of candles make the dining room glow. The use of ironwork, Bermuda shutters and bricks translate the Lowcountry aesthetic to Red Drum's facade.

You can't go wrong with any of the appetizers. Cafe Annie-inspired Crab Meat Tostaditos ($15) are as colorful as they are delicious. Nuggets of fresh crab meat, a relish of avocado and bright red voodoo sauce have been on the menu since the opening. Served on triangles of housemade tortillas chips, they can be a meal all to themselves.

Clams Casino ($9) Southwestern style are seasoned with Guajillo chile butter and lusty bits of venison sausage. The BBQ Spiced Shrimp ($12) harkens back to New Orleans where butter, garlic and pepper enliven these sweet, fresh crustaceans. Wisconsin Cheeses ($15) are served with house-made crackers and the Tortilla Soup ($9) always satisfies.

Mango Salad ($8) layers sweet bits of mango flesh with sun-dried tomato and basil dressing topped with thin strips of crisped tortilla. We wished for more mango to reinforce the operative ingredient in this salad's moniker.

Selecting an entree here is always a challenge. Choices meander through French-inspired butter sauces, wood-grilled steaks and chops, smoky cascabel peppers, complex moles, along with corn pudding and steak frites.

But I will say the one exceptional dish on Red Drum's menu is the Wood-Grilled Chicken Breast ($22), served with a garlic cream sauce, asparagus, avocado and crisped tortillas under the melting glaze of Mexican cheese, showered with tomato bits and cilantro. The dish is a portrait of the chef as an artist — in color, texture, aroma, and best of all, taste.

Triggerfish ($27) was served with a grilled peach chutney enlivened with the sweet heat of jalapeno, the oniony essence of fresh chives, and a hit of lime juice, all bedded down with grits singing a golden corn chorus.

This is a kitchen of discernment. Many techniques are employed to deliver the complexity of flavors and assertive and nuanced dishes.

Save room for dessert. Pastry chef Lauren Mitterer, a 2008 James Beard awards nominee, puts on the show with her deconstructed and reinvented desserts. With an undergraduate degree in studio art, Mitterer has found a new medium in sugar, butter, flour and spice. Like the kitchen staff, she is able to carry the restaurant threads of mixing temperatures, flavors, textures, salty, sweet, chewy and icy all throughout her dessert menu. From granitas to pots de cremes, shortbread to doughnuts, honey flan to hot buttered rum cake, she delivers the goods.

Service is always informed; polished and gracious. However, at the time of our visit, our server had both a private party and a group of tables. It proved too much to handle all these appetites at once.

The owners and staff have found the recipe for success at Red Drum. They have tapped into the chile culture and tropical tastes, married Southwest flavors with refined techniques and with their methodical and deliberate approach to their restaurant, continue to satisfy with equal measure.