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Chef Ed Hardy‘s Scandinavian menu at rum bar Hogo comes to an end after Saturday. Taking his place in the rotating kitchen beginning Tuesday is Rogue 24 chef R.J. Cooper, who will preview potential dishes from his forthcoming Mosaic District restaurant Gypsy Soul.
Cooper calls the cuisine “Southern ground interpretations of regional cooking.” The dishes at his month-long Hogo pop-up with be “very straightforward food, very simple,” he says. “It’s very bar food-oriented.”
The menu will be broken down into snacks, small eats, big eats, and sweet stuff. Among the snacks: pimento cheese with lavash (a flatbread) made with the spelt from a beer that Rogue 24 brews in-house. There’s also grilled squid ink brioche with uni and seaweed jam.
“Small eats” will include blanched and seared green beans topped with a fried egg, shaved botarga, and pumpernickel bread crumbs. Cooper also plans to serve beer-battered sugar toad, a Chesapeake pufferfish whose taste is somewhere between crab and monkfish, with an emulsion of Rappahannock oysters.
“Big eats” include more Rappahannock oysters poached in Virginia sparkling wine with sautéed swiss chard, artichokes, toasted brioche, and lots of chives. You’ll also find a few dishes from Cooper’s Vidalia days, including chicken fried rib-eye with whipped potatoes and morel gravy as well as chicken liver mousse with grilled bread with vidalia onion marmalade. Also from Cooper’s Vidalia archives: a PB&J dessert. Fried apple pie with vidalia onion-bacon ice cream will also on the menu, too.
Expect Cooper to pop in and out of Hogo. He’ll still be in the kitchen at Rogue 24, where he’s debuting a new menu tonight.
Check out the full preliminary menu below. (Note: some dishes may change.)
GYPSY SOUL
“Southern Ground Interpretations of Regional Cooking”
Snacks, $4
· pimento cheese/lavash
· chicken liver toast/onion marmalade
· sea urchin/ink toast/seaweed jam—$8 bucks
Small Eats, $8
· roasted green beans/fried egg/pumpernickel/shallots/botarga
· sweet pea emulsion/chesapeake crab/espelette pepper
· sugar toads/oyster emulsion/watercress
Big Eats, $12
· rapp oysters/artichokes/chard/bubbles/brioche
· veal sweetbreads/celery root emulsion/apple ravigote
· chicken fried rib eye/whipped potatoes/morel gravy (add farm egg for $2)
Sweet Stuff, $6
· PBJ/salted caramel
· fried apple pie/vidalia onion-bacon ice cream
· green mango/chillies/coriander/peanut butter/coconut
Photo by Darrow Montgomery