With a menu featuring curried succotash potpie, two kinds of fried chicken and a special Southern tasting menu, chef Edward Lee will open his first restaurant outside Louisville with the launch of Succotash on Monday, Sept. 7, at National Harbor.
To start, Succotash will open only for dinner, when guests can experience Lee's unique twists on Southern cooking, which regularly incorporate ingredients from across Asia. The restaurant, the first project of the Washington-based Knead Hospitality + Design, hopes to add breakfast, lunch and brunch services by the end of the month.
Officially, Lee is the culinary director for Succotash and the first chef to collaborate with Knead, a company co-founded by Jason Berry and Michael Reginbogin, who cut their teeth in large hospitality groups such as BR Guest Hospitality, California Pizza Kitchen and Rosa Mexicano. Lee will be in the kitchen for the opening day of Succotash, but its daily operations will be the responsibility of executive chef Lisa Odom, who most recently served as chef de cuisine at Tongue & Cheek in Miami Beach.
Odom will execute Lee's menus (see below), which draw inspiration from both of the Korean-American chef's restaurants in Louisville, the tasting-menu-only 610 Magnolia and the more casual MilkWood. Among the highlights: an appetizer of fried green tomatoes with goat cheese, arugula and peaches; a pimento cheeseburger with slab-bacon jam; cast iron-cooked trout fillets with pecan butter and roasted grapes; curried succotash potpie with lemon miso butter; and two kinds of fried chicken, including one glazed with a sauce composed of honey and fermented Korean chili paste.
For $39, diners can also dig into Lee's "Taste the South" menu, a hearty Southern spread featuring smoked chicken wings, pimento fundido, fried green tomatoes, Weisenberger Mills skillet cornbread, fried chicken and waffles, baby back ribs, shrimp and grits, mac 'n' cheese and a daily farmers market vegetable. The tasting menu, which requires a minimum of four diners, ends with a choice of dessert: either a seasonal cobbler or a chocolate bourbon pecan pie.
A dedicated bourbon drinker, Lee has devoted plenty of attention to his spirits. The cocktail menu is divided into classics and "originals," the latter category including such drinks as the Hey Peaches (vanilla-infused Old Forester bourbon, peach tea, apricot and lemon) and the Kentucky Winter (frozen Jim Beam bourbon, vanilla, cardamom, cinnamon and almond).
Carved out of three previous concepts that abandoned National Harbor, Succotash has been designed with a mix of rustic and contemporary touches. It also includes original artwork, including a mural by Claudio Picasso and Daniel "Krave" Fila as well as a sculpture by Maryland artist Howard Connelly, who used old pianos to build a piece inspired by Kentucky horse country.
Lee, a Brooklyn native, sees parallels between Washington, D.C., and his adopted home of Louisville: They're both cities in the South that are not obsessed with Southern culture.
"They're not constrained by the traditions" of the South, Lee told me in January. "Of course, that's why I like Louisville because people are always open to your new interpretations of things."
Come Monday, Lee will find out if Washingtonians are open to his interpretations, too.
Succotash opens Monday, Sept. 7, at 186 Waterfront St. in National Harbor, 301-567-8900, www.succotashrestaurant.com. The restaurant will serve dinner from 4 to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 4 p.m. to midnight on Friday and Saturday.
Correction: Edward Lee is the culinary director for Succotash, not Knead Hospitality + Design. This story has been updated.