City Talk covered Kayak Kafe in 2004 when the restaurant opened at 1 E. Broughton St.
We wrote about Kayak Kafe again in 2010 when co-owners Brendan Pappas and Mallie Clark expanded the menu and began staying open for dinner.
Now, as many of you already know from previous coverage in this paper, Kayak Kafe has opened a second location at 5002 Paulsen St. in the space most recently occupied by Blue Turtle Bistro.
A friend and I met at the new Kayak Kafe Midtown for dinner last week. We were both impressed by the bright colors and clean lines of the newly remodeled space.
And we were both really impressed by the food, which is fresh, filling and reasonably priced. If you eat regularly at the Broughton Street location, that’s exactly what you would expect.
We started with a dozen Korean Red Hot chicken wings ($10), which were exceptionally good. I followed that with the West Indian Trader salad ($9), which included a beautifully presented combination of curried chicken salad, walnuts, orange slices, strawberries, tomatoes, cucumbers and other ingredients on a bed of organic greens.
My dining companion raved about the lime chicken and goat cheese enchiladas ($12), but he didn’t offer me a single bite.
We had drinks from the full bar as well, which drove our final bill higher, but a filling dinner without drinks will generally run from $10 to $15.
Kayak Kafe Midtown is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
The proximity to hospitals and medical offices will make the new location a big draw at lunchtime, and it’s easy to imagine folks from a broad swath of the city being attracted to Kayak Kafe Midtown’s inventive menu and reasonable pricing.
As has been noted often in the press in recent months, Savannah is in the midst of a surge in new restaurants, but it’s always worth checking out some longtime spots too. The dinner at Kayak Kafe was the best meal I had last week, but the ribs from Randy’s Bar-B-Q at 750 Wheaton St. were a pretty close second.
More good news for local labor market
There were 1,426 initial claims for unemployment insurance in the Savannah metro area — Chatham, Effingham and Bryan counties — in June. That was down from 1,854 in June 2013.
In Chatham County, the number of unemployment claims in June declined by 25.6 percent, while Bryan and Effingham counties saw smaller declines.
The seasonally adjusted statewide unemployment rate climbed from 7.2 percent in May to 7.4 percent in June — a troubling increase. The unemployment rate is estimated using data from a survey of households, and we won’t see the raw numbers that went into that calculation until next week.
Of course, in a press release about the increase, Labor Commissioner Mark Butler blames “seasonal factors,” which is absurd. The estimate has already been adjusted for usual seasonal trends.
Even though the unemployment rate increased, the ongoing survey of payroll establishments showed that the state has seen job growth of a healthy 2 percent over the last 12 months. The private sector actually added 2.6 percent more jobs, but the state’s rate was dragged down by ongoing government job losses, especially in local education.
It is difficult to see how Georgia can thrive in the future if we continue to cut the number of people working in education at the same time the population is growing.
According to the Georgia Department of Labor’s estimates, the Savannah metro area saw a really healthy increase of 3,600 jobs between June 2013 and June 2014. That’s a 2.2 percent rise, much faster than the rate of population growth.
Again, however, that growth was tempered by government job losses. Excluding public sector jobs from the estimates, we see private sector employment actually grew by 3.1 percent over the last year.
The local job gains have not been broad-based, however. Over the year, we added 1,400 leisure and hospitality jobs and 2,800 in professional and business services.
Local manufacturing and construction employment continue to lag, although we did see 800 jobs added in transportation, warehousing and utilities over the past year.
City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net. Send mail to 10 E. 32nd St., Savannah, GA 31401.