Brochu’s Family Tradition Explores the Modern South
The Savannah restaurant serves some of our favorite fried chicken and oysters anywhere.
Welcome to the weekend!
One of our all-time favorite Chicago restaurants was the now-closed Roister, where we met chef Andrew Brochu. We spent birthdays, a New Years Eve, and countless Saturday nights there, digging into fried chicken, dark and stormy-glazed pork butt with red peas, and pasta with clams and lime. During the pandemic, Brochu moved from Chicago to Savannah, where he has since opened Brochu’s Family Tradition, a spot that we visited this spring. That excellent fried chicken is on the menu, as is a robust selection of local oysters, and many other great things to eat. For this week’s Cover Story, we got the backstory on his move, opening his new restaurant, and Savannah’s evolving food scene.
If this issue makes you want to visit, be sure to download our brand-new Field Guide to Savannah. It has a three-day itinerary featuring picks for seafood shacks, coffee spots, cocktail bars, and more. It’s free for paid subscribers, or available for $10 on our website. (A paid subscription also gets you our Google Map with every spot we’ve written about since 2023, access to our subscriber chat, plus free access to our library of Field Guides.)
We’ll wrap things up with this week’s Weekend Reading list, which includes the closing of a Los Angeles landmark, the best new Southern restaurants, and a celebration of regional American desserts.
Thanks for reading!
— Amy Cavanaugh & Kenney Marlatt
A New Favorite Savannah Spot
SAVANNAH, GA. — If you’ve had Andrew Brochu’s chicken, you remember it. His signature dish, made with a whole bird, has fried thighs seasoned with chamomile, charred breasts, and a chicken salad served with biscuits, gravy, honey butter, an exceptional sunchoke hot sauce, and pickles. We first tried the O.G. version of this dish when Brochu was the chef at Roister in Chicago, which closed in 2024 after an eight-year run. By the time we were in Savannah this past spring, Brochu had been gone from Chicago for almost five years.
The chicken, along with some other Roister favorites, made the move to Georgia with him. At Brochu’s Family Tradition, which opened in Savannah’s Starland District in December 2022, the menu draws on the chef’s time cooking in Chicago as well as his upbringing in the South.
We came to Savannah this spring because of this restaurant, and it’s our top pick for you on your next trip. Besides that chicken, you’ll find local oysters served in more than a dozen different preparations, frozen margaritas and ice cold mugs of beer, plus a super-friendly staff and some of the best desserts we’ve had all year.
Before Brochu and wife Sophie moved to her hometown of Savannah in October 2020, he cooked at top spots around Chicago, including the three-Michelin-starred Alinea. But before that he grew up in the South. His dad was a director of operations for Red Lobster, and the family moved around Florida before settling outside of Atlanta in Gwinnett County when Brochu was in high school.
Originally, Brochu planned to open his restaurant in Chicago, but when Covid hit, plans fell apart. “I still needed a little more funding, but we had everything in place: the designer, architect, concept, space, everything,” he says. “We were supposed to start construction at the end of March.”
We all know how things went in the spring of 2020, and about six months later, the Brochus moved South. “During that time we realized how bad the pandemic had gotten and we were like, our lease is coming up, so let's go back down South where we know we can still go to the beach and do things like that,” he recalls. “We had talked about just getting an RV and traveling around, and we ended up saying, ‘Let's go to Savannah, be closer to family and see what happens.’”
What happened next was that Brochu came across the space. “It was just an empty warehouse space, but I thought it had potential,” he says. “I decided to do essentially the same concept that we were going to do there. It's obviously evolved a little bit because of time and place.”
While the name of the Chicago restaurant was going to be Brochu’s Fried Chicken and Fancy Seafood, it didn’t feel original enough for Savannah. “There was a lot of going back and forth with it,” Brochu recalls. “Then one night I was up late listening to music and the Hank Williams song [“Family Tradition”] was on.” The lyrics and message of the song meshed with the inspiration for the restaurant.
“This restaurant was supposed to be an homage or amalgamation of everything I've done in my career, even from when I was growing up,” Brochu says. “I grew up in a large family in Florida and we had tons of family gatherings where everybody was always cooking. And that was supposed to be the vibe. The energy of the restaurant was, ‘Hey, this is a place for family, friends, people to come grab some wine, grab some drinks, spread food on the table and have a good time.’ I didn't want it to be this chef-driven place that was only for people that were interested in food. This is an ode to my family traditions.”
Brochu’s is also a family affair. Sophie handles social media and marketing. His sister Jessica Kimbrough does the bookkeeping and her husband Ben, who had been working at Darden Restaurants, runs the front of the house. Rounding out the team are executive chef Dave Baker, who also worked at Roister, and his wife, pastry chef Georgia Vinzant Baker. “Dave's been working with me for almost 12 years,” Brochu says. “They're both partners in the restaurant. We do Thanksgivings together. So it really is three families that are very close operating the restaurant.”
Opening the restaurant in Savannah allowed them to expand the oyster program, which was originally just going to be a small part of the concept. “I've had a cooked or smoked oyster on a lot of the menus that I've done over the years,” Brochu says. “I knew that I wanted Brochu’s in Chicago to have an oyster program, but here, that section just keeps growing and the farmers are dropping them off to us. It’s turned into its own kind of thing.”
They work with one oyster purveyor for the raw program and one for the cooked program at a time. “Instead of having a large selection of different oysters from everywhere, we wanted to focus on oysters that we really loved and offer them in a variety of ways,” Brochu says. Their go-to purveyor for the raw program is Earnest McIntosh at E.L McIntosh & Son Oyster Company, a company that’s an hour south of Savannah. (You can read more about them in this great story in Garden & Gun.)
“Earnest is really known as one of the godfathers of Georgia oysters. He doesn't do summers because of the water temperatures, but besides the summers, we normally use him for raw,” Brochu says. “We really love the relationship that we've built with him.” They also sometimes serve May River oysters from South Carolina and Salt Bombs from Tybee Oyster Company on nearby Tybee Island. For the cooked oysters, Brochu serves Naked Jades from Alabama. “I’m a Gulf oyster fan because my dad grew up in New Orleans and I grew up eating that style of oyster,” he says. “The Naked Jades are really plump and when you grill 'em, roast them, anything — rather than shriveling up, they still have this nice texture.”
The menu features eight raw oyster preparations and seven cooked, which include grilled, roasted, and steamed offerings. The toppings are inventive, like yuzu-green peppercorn or garlic-habanero for the raw bivalves, and Bama white butter or beef fat mignonette for the cooked ones. Among Brochu’s current favorites are the raw oysters dressed with shiitake sherry vinegar. “Dave made this sushi rice vinegar with kombu and shiitakes and it’s super umami driven,” he says. “We chop up some pickled shiitakes and it really pops.” They also tap the kitchen’s many spice blends to serve oysters topped with a nori shroom dry rub or a dry mignonette.
The other shift in the concept gets to the Southern heart of the restaurant. “In Chicago, I was doing food that had Southern inspiration but somewhat masked it through global flavors,” Brochu says. “I was not trying to put it at the forefront that, hey, these are Southern dishes. Being back in the South, we were like, okay, well we don't need to mask it anymore. We can actually put it front and center that we are a Southern restaurant. And obviously Dave and I still love global twists, but we are able to really dial in as a local coastal Southern restaurant.”
Brochu and Baker have brought back Roister dishes like the fried chicken and another favorite of ours, cheddar rillettes with giardiniera and puffy bread. “All of those dishes were ones that I came up with when we were designing Roister,” he says. “They’ve become staples that hit every table.” The chicken now comes with biscuits, honey butter, and dill pickles, and you can add on dirty rice with chicken livers to go with it, which is a good move (Brochu says: “almost every chicken that goes out gets dirty rice with it”).
Besides the oysters and chicken, the menu has a strong coastal element with local seafood dishes like peel-and-eat shrimp with honey mustard rub, chilled crab dip, and mahi mahi with andouille-spiced butter. “I was looking at Brochu’s as being this throwback neighborhood gathering space and when I thought about that and growing up in Florida and where we went to eat, there was always an oyster section, a seafood section, and some sandwiches,” he says. “It fits the neighborhood coastal Southern restaurant vibe.”
The sweet side of the menu is also a highlight — we had the passionfruit lush pie with coconut rum whip along with the crème brûlée pie, but the offerings change seasonally and currently include banana pudding with bourbon bananas, dirt and worms pie with coffee dirt and watermelon gummies, and peach buttermilk pie. “Everything Georgia does falls so perfectly under the umbrella of what I had for a vision of this restaurant,” Brochu says. “With that grandma- and family- style cooking and everything she puts up, I'm like, ‘this is my favorite pie.’ She's like, ‘you say that every time.’ And I'm like, well, ‘every time you put a new one up, it's my favorite.’”
A restaurant like Brochu’s speaks to the changing nature of Savannah’s restaurant scene, which has grown dramatically over the last decade. “When Sophie and I were living in Chicago, we came every year and loved going out and eating and seeing that evolution,” Brochu says. “When The Grey opened, we came down and we were like, this is awesome. And The Wyld opened and we were like, this is such a cool restaurant. It's all outdoors. Brandon Carter at Common Thread and Flora and Fauna, I love what they're doing. Zach Shultz at Cotton and Rye, for 10 years they've been doing just traditional Southern food.”
But he also sees that there’s more room for growth. “I would love to see some different cultures come through,” he says. “The best restaurant in Savannah right now in my opinion is E-TANG. It’s a Chinese place where when you go in, almost the whole place is filled with industry people. I'd love to see growth culturally in the food scene. I think it would really benefit the city and help the scene get a little bit stronger.”
The city and its people are what has allowed Brochu’s Family Tradition to thrive. “Sophie and I love being here,” Brochu says. “Our house is up the street. As much as we miss Chicago, and as much as I wanted this restaurant to be in Chicago when we were there, the silver lining is that I believe this is where it works. Savannah is what brought out what I was trying to say when we were building our place.”
2400 Bull St, Savannah, GA | @brochus_restaurant
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CALIFORNIA
Cole’s Will Close After 117 Years: “The recent announcement that Cole’s, the Los Angeles institution credited with inventing the French Dip sandwich, is closing on Aug. 2 was awful news on a colossal scale,” writes
in his newsletter, The Mix. “It is surely the most significant restaurant closing to occur this year as of yet.” Since the closing announcement, the restaurant has seen an outpouring of goodwill from Los Angeles residents and has negotiated with their landlord to stay open a couple more weeks. Simonson talks with owner Cedd Moses about the landmark spot and the events that have led to its closure. (The Mix with Robert Simonson)THE SOUTH
30 New Restaurants to Try Now: Garden & Gun has put together a list of the South’s best new restaurants and there are some real standout spots here. “Some are fancy, some just plain fun, but all make a compelling case that the South’s culinary landscape has never been richer.” We’re already fans of Acamaya and wrote about Palmira a few weeks back, so we can’t wait to check out more of these hotspots. (Garden & Gun)
AROUND THE COUNTRY
America's Favorite Sweet Treats: Amy contributed to this Condé Nast Traveler roundup of regional desserts, and this list has everything including cakes, pies, soft serve, beignets, and more. I still need to get out to Palm Springs for a California Date Shake. (Condé Nast Traveler)
— Compiled by Kenney Marlatt
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