It was a great summer on Savannah’s food scene. We had new restaurants open, got news of still others planning to open and still other rumors of plans being made of plans to make plans to open. You get the drift. The restaurant scene has been active in the news cycle. Some of those places are falling into place. Others have been opened a few months now.
The one getting the most attention and water cooler buzz, for a number of reasons is The Florence. Savannah’s Italian restaurant on Victory Drive at Whitaker. The biggest reason people are enamored with this place is probably because the owner is on television. Yes, celebrity chef Hugh Acheson makes regular appearances on Bravo’s Top Chef Series. If that’s enough to get ‘em in the door, that’s great. Once they try the food, they are very likely to come back again and again. I find it amusing, though, that for all the attention that The Florence has gotten since they opened their doors in June, we have yet to see the name of the guy that, you know, actually makes the food?
No, sorry to disappoint you guys, Hugh Acheson isn’t back there in the kitchen calling in orders to area farms (Maybe he is? Nah, probably not). Chef Hugh isn’t the guy on the line day in and day out making sure this restaurant is humming like the ice maker at the end of a hotel hallway. The young man running the show here in Savannah is Kyle Jacovino, Executive Chef at The Florence and the food he is turning out at the age of 28 is nothing short of amazing.
Kyle’s path to Savannah is a fascinating one, especially if you love to travel. A Pennsylvania native of Italian decent, he found himself working with Hugh Acheson in Atlanta at Empire State South. It was there that this plot was hatched. “Hugh was very interested in my career”, Kyle says. “He wanted to know what I was looking for in the future. I love Southern food, but I just wanted to slowly move into the Italian scene.”
Anyone else might have said “Great. Let me know how I can help you in the future.” But that wasn’t Hugh Acheson’s response. Instead, what Kyle heard was “Well, let’s open an Italian restaurant. Yeah, let’s do that.”
A concept was born and Kyle was dispatched, literally, to Italy. “One thing led to another. Hugh emailed Mario Batali, they are good friends, and he hooked me up in Italy with a lot of the places he learned.”
The original plan was to open the Acheson’s “Italian” restaurant in the old 5&10 at Little Five Points in Athens. As things go, opportunity presented itself and the concept moved here to Savannah. But not until Kyle went through an Italian “boot camp” of sorts all over the boot. “I was actually in Naples when I found out about that (moving to Savannah).” Spend enough time chatting with him and he’ll tell you some pretty fascinating stories of his four months in Italy. He spent the first week making pizza on the beach in Naples, where his family lives before he moved on to Bologna. “I worked every day”, he says. “I’d grab an espresso and a baguette in the morning, sit outside, then work all day.” Many times seven days a week. “After a while you get used to it”, he says. “I didn’t want to leave.” One of the most memorable stops was in Venice where he worked for a, shall we say, demanding gentleman? “That dude was crazy. He beat me up every day. Yelled at me every five minutes.”
Still, eventually it was time to go and come back to open a restaurant. After a short run at 5&10 in Athens, Kyle moved to Savannah to oversee everything being done in the build out of what became The Florence. Trust me, he was in there last spring. Hard hat, blueprints, covered in dust. “I just want to make sure everything is in the right place”, I recall him telling me back in April.
Now he’s turning out some of the city’s best food and having a blast in the process. “People thought we were doing Florentine food.” He says, “That’s just not what it is.” What it is can be best described as Italian influenced cuisine with Southern ingredients. That’s how he describes it anyway. “I’m not gonna sit here and say we are always gonna do 100% old school Italian. We are constantly trying to grow and expand.” Which means offering items like Squid Ink Bucatini with Sapelo Clams and Tybee Shrimp. It’s one of the most popular dishes at The Florence. At least it was over the summer. Housemade Garlic Sausage, and Chilies from Calabria. It’s an amazing dish and just a sampling of what Kyle is doing for Italian food with the ingredients he has available here. The pizzas are made in an oven he hand picked from his experience in Naples. (They’ll soon be available for lunch).
For now, Kyle learns his new surroundings, figures out which farms he likes best, which suppliers offers the best product. At the end of the day, he was handpicked by Hugh Acheson to get it right. And Mr. Acheson has every confidence that he will.
“We can make a lot of promises as chefs as to what our restaurants are going to be”, Hugh told me last year. “But when the doors open, it has to be that. It has to be really good from day one, and I think Kyle is the type of character that can make that happen.”
Lucky you. You get to Eat It and Like It.
See you on TV.
Jesse
