Interesting Concept

Here Today is an interesting concept from Chef Michael Stoltzfus of Coquette fame. It’s one I admire. I wish more restaurants would embrace healthy eating as a goal. The menu is simple: rotisserie chicken. On the menu are chicken salad, bowls featuring rotisserie chicken, and dinners with rotisserie chicken, quartered, half or whole with interesting sides. Pimento cheese seems to be the only appetizer and a rotating special dessert featuring Piety & Desire Chocolate. I was in the neighborhood at Piety & Desire and I remembered Here Today, so I dropped in to see if anything was different than I remembered.

I had only been once not long after they opened. It was very good rotisserie chicken but I wondered how much demand there would be for this healthy alternative to our beloved fried everything. It was tender and perfectly cooked chicken, but I don’t remember the side I chose. I left wondering how this little place would fare with such a limited menu, and a neighborhood situation that would be daunting for potential customers. It is tucked away off Magazine in a cute little space surrounded by terminal road construction. It was still like that when I went this time. I stuffed my car between two cones hoping not to fall into a hole.

This time I noticed something very appealing on the menu. Even thought the weather had not gone South when I went, it was forbidding outside, with the forecast and a rapid drop in temperature, as well as an increase in wind. The sight of Chicken and Dumplings on the menu intrigued me. Perfect comfort food, though I can’t remember ever having had one I found cliché comforting. Like with pot pie, I find most people who offer this legendary dish from yesteryear often cheat. They just drop biscuits over the chicken and broth, or they do some other way around the bits of pasta that go into the dish. This one promised something better, ricotta dumplings.

I got the pimento cheese and a quarter chicken plate with one side. (It already comes with Chicken Fat rice and a small wedge salad. I ordered the white meat chicken and a broccoli salad as my choices.

When I picked it up, I ate the Chicken and Dumplings first, and I couldn’t stop eating this until I finished it. These ricotta dumplings were fantastic. They were plentiful, plump, soft but not too soft, with a perfect texture when cut and a wonderful taste. In the broth were lots of bits of vegetables and plenty of irregular large and small pieces of tender chicken. This was simply irresistible. I finished it in one sitting. It was the perfect thing to have when the weather was like it was, and it warmed my heart and soul, all the way to my toes.

I ate the pimento cheese more on principal. In direct contradiction to the healthy mission here, the pimento cheese is served with Ritz crackers. But housemade crostini or crackers would balloon the price, so this works. I found this pimento cheese ordinary, but no worse than I usually do with this popular starter. My pimento cheese is the gold standard to me. Like my spin dip, it has only been tweaked over the years. I can’t take credit for its origins. While my spin dip started at Steve Stonebreaker's BBQ spot many years ago, the pimento cheese came from Frank Stitt’s book sharing the recipes from his famous Highlands Bar & Grill.

I think that what I had at Here Today is more a normal version of pimento cheese. Mine is not really made with pimento, it uses roasted red bell peppers. Mine has a lot more flavor, and all others I’ve had usually come up short. The Ritz crackers were perfect for this version though, even though I felt guilty eating them. This dish also came with pickled vegetables, which appear to be served with everything, another restaurant touch I wholeheartedly support. The thinly sliced carrots were not crunchy, which was a disappointment, but these and the cauliflower florets had real vinegar zing to them.

There is a lot of zing to things here. A celery hot sauce comes with most things, and it is assertive. There are seven sauces to accompany all menu items, and there are seven sides. All the plates come with the chicken fat rice, which follows a trend of rice flavored with various proteins. I usually see this as crab fat rice, but chicken fat rice is becoming more common. Essentially this is a brown rice with chicken flavor. Meh.

I did like the broccoli slaw that I ordered as my choice of side. It was slightly creamy with chunks of florets and various bits of interesting flavors. I think the best thing I had on the chicken plate is the little baby wedge. Bibb lettuce and Ranch dressing with celery notes.

The chicken was cooked to the sweet spot and flavorful with more hip herbs. The skin was not crispy but was nice enough. Of all that I had, the Chicken and Dumplings was certainly the star of this meal, and I would go back just to get more of this on a cold day. The rest of it, maybe.