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A Sean Brock protégé has transformed an old drugstore into one of Wilmington's most exciting restaurants, RX Restaurant and Bar.
(Photo: Courtesy of RX Restaurant and Bar) |
Sample North Carolina’s spoils at Canapé, a locavore restaurant that started as a pop-up and moved to its current brick-and-mortar home in the burgeoning Brooklyn Arts District this March. Ingredients from area producers like Muenster Farms, Red Beard Farms, and Shelton Herb Farms show up on the short and unfussy list of rotating seasonal entrées with quintessentially Southern flavors, like shrimp with bourbon, vanilla, bacon, and beans ($16) and pork loin with local peaches ($17). More exotic dishes draw on varied American, Spanish, Italian, and Asian influences, such as a lunch ramen noodle bowl ($7) or a New Mexican–style sopapilla, a fried dough pocket stuffed with spicy pork, cabbage, and cotija cheese ($6.50).
Taste the Port City’s freshest seafood at Catch Wilmington. James Beard nominee and Top Chef: Texas competitor Keith Rhodes, a Wilmington native, uses only wild-caught or sustainably farmed seafood in dishes like pan-seared red grouper with a spring succotash of baby limas, sweet corn, and jumbo crab ($32). Non-pescatarians need not worry: Rhodes also holds a deep-seated affinity for vegetables, especially those grown in North Carolina soil—try his sweet-potato salad with baby spinach, goat cheese, and toasted hemp seeds ($10). At its heart, Catch is a showcase for traditional Southern flavors with a creative twist: Shrimp and grits “remix” comes with sherry gravy and chorizo ($26), while calamari gets the “Kentucky-fried” treatment, served alongside Sriracha aioli, jalapeños, and micro cilantro ($10).
Explore the modern Southern cooking at chef James Doss’s Rx Restaurant and Bar. Doss cooked at Sean Brock’s award-winning Charleston restaurant Husk before bringing that restaurant’s haute take on regional cooking above the border to North Carolina. Opened in 2012 in an old drugstore in the Castle Street neighborhood, Rx has become a local favorite thanks to familiar-yet-contemporary dishes like Heritage Farms Buffalo pig ears with celery and bleu cheese dressing ($9) or okra fries with roasted-tomato-chili aioli ($7). Outside, there’s a rooftop garden and window boxes overflowing with herbs, while the warm interiors include tables made with wood salvaged from co-owner Josh Novicki’s grandparents’ tobacco barn and a huge canvas covered in rows upon rows of canning jars.