Description
Much of chefs Kris Tominaga and Brian Dunsmoor's food is on-the-nose Southern: those biscuits, the pimento cheese, fried green tomatoes, a wonderful version of shrimp and grits that absolutely channels the original upscale version of the dish made by Bill Neal at a restaurant called Crook's Corner in North Carolina. If you've never had this dish, or if you've only had hokey, heavy-handed iterations, the version at the Hart and the Hunter in Fairfax isn't a bad place to start. Some of the food is less pointedly Southern: steak tartare, venison carpaccio, kale salad. But the best options are the in-betweeners, the dishes with Southern roots and modern sensibilities. —Besha Rodell
