CRESCENT PEOPLE: Chef Brent Quiggle — Charting a Course for Queen Anne’s Revenge

 

You may have asked yourself after last week, “So, where’d they get the name Queen Anne’s Revenge for a restaurant?” We’re glad you asked. Queen Anne’s Revenge was Blackbeard’s flagship. Yes. THAT Blackbeard. Edward Teach or Blackbeard was no stranger to the Carolina coast.

On November 28, 1717, Blackbeard’s two ships attacked and captured the French merchant vessel La Concorde. He immediately renamed her Queen Anne’s Revenge and outfitted her with 40 gun positions instead of her paltry 26.

By May of 1718, after forming a confederation with a group of other pirates, Blackbeard created a successful blockade of the Port of Charleston preventing any ships from arriving or departing without his blessing.

Queen Anne’s Revenge on Daniel Island is much more hospitable than the quarters Teach would have offered on his flagship, and the food obviously can’t even be compared, but the mystique of Teach’s ship sets a great backdrop for full-service family-friendly dining that hadn’t existed on the island until a decade ago.

Chef Brent Quiggle and general manager Jeffrey Davis discuss the restaurant’s place on Daniel Island, its evolution over the past ten years, and where Queen Anne’s Revenge hopes to go from here.

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The first full-service restaurant on Daniel Island. The island is kind of a bubble unto itself, being a master planned community.  How was the restaurant received when it opened and, now that you’re ten years in, how does the community view it?

BRENT: Well, when we opened ten years ago, I would say that everybody on the island felt it was a blessing to have somebody over here serving food so that they didn’t have to go to Mount Pleasant or downtown Charleston.   They didn’t have to leave the island. Ultimately, what I’ve witnessed, and after living here for ten years, you don’t like to leave the island.  It’s a safe community.  You get here, and you stay here.  So the more options that you have which, over the years, I think we’re up to fifteen restaurants on the island.  For the first five years, I think we never had more than three or four.  Maybe five.  But everybody was extremely happy when we opened because of just that.  There was a place on the island to get some food and entertainment.

JEFFREY: Yeah, I think the recession slowed everything down.  Some restaurants didn’t make it and had to close, unfortunately, but I think you’re starting to see everything spark back to life.  Maybe it’s just my own opinion, but we’ve always been a favorite.  Kind of the island’s restaurant.  I think we kind of held on to that and love being part of that community.  Kind of like when there is a special occasion, when there is a get-together, when the neighbors are doing something, they come here.  And I personally take a lot of pride in the fact that they do that and they love it, that we’re their choice.

It’s the go-to.  It’s that comfortability. 

JEFFREY: I’d like to think so, yes.  It seems that way.

Now, how does this restaurant different from its sister restaurants?  And you can look at it from a pride standpoint, too. 

BRENT: We’re a family restaurant.  That’s not to say that

aren’t, but they’re special occasion restaurants — as far as McCrady’s goes, and Husk is on to its own re-generating the Southern cuisine, bigger and better and stronger.  It’s bringing ideas throughout the world where people didn’t really notice Southern cuisine as much.

Which is a shame.

BRENT: It is.  Absolutely.  After Sean (Brock) was here last year and helped me do some things with the menu.  I mean, he’s extremely talented and probably the best chef I’ve ever worked with.  You know, just his knowledge of Lowcountry cuisine.  He gave me a lot of ideas and directions and so forth.  We’re family here.  This is a family restaurant where I bring my children.  I’ve got three children under five and they’ve come here since they were one year old. So the difference, the biggest different is just who we’re catering towards.

JEFFREY: Yeah, we’re more a family neighborhood.  The kind that’s where you and I would finish playing golf at the country club or something and come over here and get whatever we want. I think when you get into the downtown restaurants, whether it’s ours (a Neighborhood Dining Group restaurant) or other ones, I think you get into more…

BRENT: Finite.

JEFFREY: Showcase the palate, you know.  I think that we’re like the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the big ship…

BRENT: Our menu is, from lunch to dinner, we’ve got seventy items or something ridiculous.  Our menu is huge in comparison.  We cross the gamut from fish tacos for a lunch entrée to tonight, we’ll have fresh local clams with shrimp and grouper and some pickled ramp cheese grit cakes with lemon butter. The spectrum is much greater here.  We’re selling…in the same lunch, we’ll sell a bunch of $7, $8 lunch items and to the table next door, you’re having $15 to $18 entrees, some $20 entrees for lunch.

But it’s a range where everybody can find something and be comfortable.

BRENT: I don’t know if you’ve been to McDonald’s lately but I don’t even think you can eat there for 7 or 8 dollars, can you?  With a drink and everything.  So, we’re competing with everybody.  We’re not pigeon-holed, I guess, into one.  We can’t afford to be, frankly.  We’re on beautiful Daniel Island.

JEFFREY: You’re appealing to everybody.  You’re appealing to the neighbors who just got through playing tennis.  Or you’re appealing to …you know the guys on the one hour lunch break so there’s a wide range and what makes it exciting that it’s pretty much whatever you’re in the mood for. We might just have that because it’s always a good selection.  What was fun for me is that it’s all food I like, so it was real easy.  It was like, “Do you like fish tacos?”  “Do you like prime rib?”  It is everything…I could sit here and tell you about it all because obviously it’s stuff we went through and it was here before.  We just made sure it was great and we loved it and got a good response from our guests and able to press on like that.

Who came up with concept for the restaurant itself?  With the Queen Anne’s Revenge being Blackbeard’s flagship.  I think every kid has played pirate at some point and the fact that there’s actually some historical basis behind it.

BRENT: That would be the owners.  They like the pirate memorabilia and had a vast collection. We’re definitely considered part museum. There’s some great stuff.  The ship (He points to the contents of a nearby display case.) was made by a ship builder who has ships in the Smithsonian.  It took a year and a half to make that ship.

That’s really cool. 

BRENT: It is. It’s a six foot replica of the Queen Anne’s Revenge.  But a recent renovation last year, we tried to focus more on the food and a little bit less on the pirate aspect and the museum part of it.

Going for a more contemporary look and totally revamping the menu, as well.?

BRENT: Yes.

What was the progression from what it was to what it is, and is it about where you want it, or do you already have visions of where you want to take it down the road?

BRENT: You know, the vision that I have.  You know, I don’t know if everybody is ready for it on Daniel Island.  Our pocketbooks aren’t quite ready for it, and that is, I would love to have local produce, only.  It’s tough because you can’t find that stuff.  You have to increase the prices and when you increase the prices, people can’t come out as much.  So you have to juggle.  There’s a lot of juggling.  When we’re talking about people with families, we can only go up so high.  You know?  When you take your son and your wife out, and all of a sudden the place you’ve gone to for years charges an extra dollar for their salads, frankly it’s tough.  It’s not easy making that transition.  Being here ten years, the original idea was to go fully, all-out, all local, all…  Kind of watch what Sean was doing, and there was a huge, just overpour of people that were excited and wanted to be involved with what he is doing at Husk.  We tried that here and it wasn’t as well received. I think if we were a different restaurant and taken the same stuff and opened up down the block, it would have gone over totally different.

But it was a different vein from what you are institutionally.

BRENT: Yes. Yes, it was.  We were serving good food before, and we changed the food, but we’re still serving good food. It was much more Southern.  It had more…100% more Southern accent to it. Being from Upstate New York or northern, I always took my menu toward this stuff that I’d grown up around, but after working with Sean and seeing these ideas, I will forever be attached to Sea Island red peas.  I will always love Carolina Gold Rice.  You know, now I’ve learned about these things and now we have guests that like them, too.  Because we did…we changed a couple of things, and then we changed them again and again and again and again until we got it right.   I feel like we’re on the road, the path, that Daniel Islanders want or Mount Pleasant.

• Follow Chef Quiggle on Twitter at @ChefQuiggle.
• Follow Queen Anne’s Revenge on Twitter at @QueenAnnesCHS.
• Visit Queen Anne’s Revenge online HERE.

For Part 1, Click HERE. Stay Tuned for Part 3.

 

PHOTO CREDIT: Queen Anne’s Revenge / Neighborhood Dining Group