A friend and I had dinner at Pacci Italian Kitchen + Bar last week, and we’re both looking forward to going back.
Pacci is on the ground floor of Kimpton’s The Brice, which replaced The Mulberry Inn at the corner of West Bay and Houston streets. The new hotel was covered recently in City Talk.
Executive Chef Roberto Leoci — already well-known around town for his work at Leoci’s Trattoria — has designed a versatile and inventive menu with lots of fresh ingredients and an appealing simplicity.
Dominated by blacks and whites, the décor of the new restaurant has an appealing simplicity too. The young wait staff was relaxed, knowledgeable and pleasant. There were lots of smiles, which goes a long way in my book.
We started off by splitting the Tuscan Chicken Liver Paté ($7) and the Beet Salad ($13), both of which I’d order again.
Ditto for our entrees, the Pesto Gnocchi ($16), which featured finely diced asparagus, and the Georgia flatbread ($11), which was topped with a lovely combination of Vidalia onions and ricotta.
We had no trouble finishing off an order of Tiramisu ($8) for dessert, but it would have benefitted from more intense flavor.
Pacci serves specialty cocktails — I really liked the Cucumber Collins ($12) — plus a variety of beer, wine and other spirits.
The dinner menu includes cheeses, meats, traditional entrees and enticing antipasti. Pacci also serves breakfast, and lunch is on the way soon.
Check out http://www.paccisavannah.com for the menus and hours. We didn’t make a reservation, but you might need one if you’re trying to dine at a business time on a busy night.
It will be interesting to see whether Pacci can maintain its own identity while also serving as a “hotel restaurant.”
A number of downtown hotels have opened over the years with attempts at luring local diners and drinkers, but some generally settle for the business from their own guests and from special events.
When a restaurant or bar is tied too closely to its attached hotel, branding issues ensue.
Quick, name the restaurants and lounges at downtown hotels like the Hyatt, Hilton and Andaz. Having trouble?
If you follow the local restaurant scene and can’t come up with those names, then you see what I’m saying.
Pacci has a number of key qualities that should allow it to maintain a singular identity.
For one, there’s a direct entrance off Houston Street. Most local diners will likely be approaching the restaurant from the south, and they’ll see the restaurant’s doorway and signage before seeing the name of the attached hotel.
By bringing Roberto Leoci on board, Kimpton executives have created a sense of local involvement and investment that other hotels never manage to achieve.
And it’s often fairly easy to find on-street parking on the blocks and squares close to Pacci and The Brice. That’s not the case for hotels further west.
City Talk will be writing about a number of new restaurants in the coming weeks. Here’s hoping that they’re all as good as Pacci.
And a word about the “reviews” in this column
A longtime reader recently told me he doesn’t trust the restaurant “reviews” in City Talk.
Well, I don’t really even think of these short features as reviews in a traditional sense.
When writing about new restaurants, my goal is to give a sense of the place, the menu and the experience. I generally stop short of the nuanced evaluative comments that one expects from an expert review.
And I’m generally sampling restaurants relatively soon after they open. In many cases, I’m making a first trip so early it probably wouldn’t be fair to write an extremely critical review.
Like other new businesses, restaurants deserve a little time to settle in before we pass judgment.
Plus, as I have gotten older, I increasingly enjoy meals in ways that many diners do not. I almost always dine late, generally order drinks, often sit at the bar, rarely grow impatient with leisurely service and love to share, mix and match items from all over the menu.
I should also note that I pay for all my own meals, and I routinely enjoy dining alone.
There’s yet another wild card in the deck: sometimes I get recognized, which can change the whole dynamic of an otherwise quiet meal.
So, for a variety of reasons, my experiences might not match those of many of my readers. I’m just hoping to write about new restaurants in enough detail so that you can decide for yourselves whether you’d like to check them out.
City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net. Send mail to 10 East 32nd St., Savannah, Ga. 31401.