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17 North Roadside Kitchen keeps online friends linked to the menu17 North Roadside Kitchen keeps online friends linked to the menu

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

February 22, 2010

3 Min Read
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Bret Thorn

Brett McKee has put his Facebook friends to work for him.

The co-owner and executive chef of Oak Steakhouse in Charleston, S.C., asked the roughly 5,000 people who follow his online social network to send him family recipes.

He received more than 200 suggestions in a single night. He tweaked the best of them and came up with the first menu for 17 North Roadside Kitchen, on Route 17 in nearby Mount Pleasant, S.C.

“I’m trying to force people to go back in time a little bit and learn about their history, and then we try to incorporate that on the menu,” McKee said.

The result is a menu that appeals to locals and also gives them a sense of ownership and loyalty, he said.

He asks for more suggestions every month, both to keep his customers engaged and to change the menu based on what’s in season. McKee and business partner Steve Palmer have an organic garden, and he lets his customers know what they’re harvesting. He also informs them what seafood his purveyors are selling and what meat he’s getting at good prices, and he challenges them to find family recipes containing those ingredients.

From there he finds a story to tell about each dish. “If I make a fennel-and pepper-encrusted swordfish over sauce puttanesca and quenelles of eggplant caponata, I like to tell the story of the origins of puttanesca,” McKee said of the sauce, whose name, according to some accounts, refers to the prostitutes who invented it.

DATE OPENED: Nov. 2, 2009LOCATION: Mount Pleasant, S.C.WEBSITE: 17north.netCAPACITY: 150COVERS: 200-300 dailyPER-PERSON CHECK AVG.: $30CUSTOMER DEMOGRAPHICS: “soccer moms, good ol’ boys and local millionaires”LABOR COST: about 25 percentFOOD COST: about 30 percentBEST-SELLING MAIN COURSES: fried chicken, cedar plank salmonBEST-SELLING APPETIZERS: deviled eggs, seared scallopsMENU-MAKER: Brett McKee and his Facebook friendsOWNERS: Brett McKee, Steve Palmer

McKee, who is a well-known chef in the Charleston area, intentionally doesn’t spend much time at 17 North, so guests don’t expect to see him there.

“If they want the whole dog-and-pony show” they know to find him at Oak Steakhouse, he said. The Mt. Pleasant restaurant, a former barbecue joint, looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere.

“It’s the only building anywhere around,” McKee said. “But tucked around there are all these multimillion-dollar houses.”

So the customers are a combination of local “good ol’ boys” and Charleston millionaires. They gather at the restaurant’s former smoke pit in the evenings for s’mores and other fireside goodies.

MENU SAMPLER

APPETIZERS Tomato bisque with mini grilled cheese — $5 17 North Salad — Mesclun greens, tomato, artichoke heart, asparagus — $8 Deviled eggs — 2 traditional, 2 with duck confit, 2 with smoked salmon — $6 Fried chicken livers — cheddar grits, fried basil — $8 Jumbo sea scallop, braised lemon butter, leeks with tomato and basil — $9

ENTRÉES Boneless buttermilk fried chicken with tasso gravy — $13 Coriander-crusted cedar plank salmon — $15 Shrimp and crawfish Creole — $15

SIDES — $5 Macaroni and Cheese Braised greens Parmesan, truffled pommes frites Sweet potato purée Carolina Gold rice

The concept has been successful enough that McKee and Palmer are looking to expand. Palmer recently signed a letter of intent to purchase a 40-year-old smokehouse in Charlotte, N.C.

After that the team has its eyes set on Nashville; Washington, D.C.; and Raleigh, N.C. Each new restaurant’s name will be its address followed by “Roadside Kitchen.”

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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