New River Street restaurant offers can't-miss chicken crisps on a menu 'in touch with Savannah'

Though my wife and I go downtown, quite often it seems compared to most locals, we do not find ourselves as far as River Street more than a couple times a year. Until last week, our only meal at one of The Bohemian Hotel Savannah Riverfront’s outlets was a Christmas Eve dinner on the rooftop a couple years before we moved to town.

Of course, I knew of the boutique hotel’s quayside restaurant, Rocks on the River, but figured that it was, as are most River Street options, primarily for the masses from Miami, Milwaukee and Mobile.

Without having any experience at the former for comparison, Coastal 15 has made an immediate impression in the same spot, another property in The Kessler Collection coterie that has upped the dining ante on the city’s most strolled strip.

Under the direction of executive chef Luke Wolf, the menus are part and parcel of a total transformation of concept, physical space, and culinary crew and accurately represent the restaurant’s sumptuous Southern style and cuisine that “stays in touch with Savannah.”

The majority of this stem-to-stern renovation happened prior to Wolf’s appointment, and he credited much of Coastal 15’s menu to The Kessler Collection’s Corporate Director of Culinary Kyle Lipetzky.

In keeping with the seafood-chophouse hybrid, the current dinner entrée rota breaks down appropriately to two steaks, one chicken dish, one pork, one pasta, and four seafood mains, plus more than a dozen total Chilled & Raw offerings, Small Plates, and salads. As behooves a River Street eatery, there is something for everyone without being common.

Compared to its predecessor in the property, Coastal 15’s concept aims to be more refined without losing sight of Savannah cuisine.

Fare with Savannah Savoir-faire

My wife and I cannot eat like we used to, so instead of sampling several starters and entrées, we shared a few Small Plates and one Signature dish, each delicious and distinctively Savannahian in savvy touches.

A restaurant’s in-house bread program is always a reliable litmus test, and the Parker House rolls ($9) passed with flying flavors. A hexagon of pull-apart wedges with baked-in everything seasoning, the pillowy buns are served with a quenelle drumlin of salted chive butter that make the rolls even better. We had to pace ourselves to save one each to go with our main course.

If a kitchen of this quality has hush puppies on the menu, it is your fault if you do not order them. Coastal 15’s lobster rendition ($16) is a pyramid of five perfect ochre orbs atop a sizable schmear of sorghum butter, barely sweet to back up the sweeter corn and lobster in the dumplings perfectly. With plenty of corn flavor, these are grown-up hush puppies.

Though the pimento cheese headlines another starter ($14), its chicken crisp companions are this dish’s star. Enough already: every restaurant needs to make these. This is not an altogether different paté of the South, which is not at all a bad thing, and packs a little heat on the back end thanks to spicy pimentón. What makes this preparation peerless are those chicken crisps, a.k.a flash-fried chicken skins, drizzled with hot honey served in the tiniest honey bear bottle.

As I said to our server, the hush puppies and chicken crisps should be served in Home Depot buckets filled to the brim.

My wife and I wavered between the Chicken & Dumplings ($34), in which ricotta gnocchi playfully takes the part of the co-star starch, and the Agnolotti ($36) with Georgia shrimp. We were certainly happy with the latter, the sweet shrimp seared superbly with just a kiss of Old Bay. The hearty house-made pasta packets are stuffed with ricotta but are still light, balanced by more sweetness from fresh corn kernels and cubelettes of smoky chorizo that uplift the entire dish.

Raising expectations on River Street

A Savannah restaurant through and through, Coastal 15 is new and unfamiliar in all the right ways, especially for its situation along the city’s riverfront.

Clearly Kessler classy, the interior is stunning with iridescent tea green banquettes and an oyster shell chandelier over a center table flanked by semicircular plush navy couches. Between the dining room proper and the trapezoidal bar, gleaming in black-and-gray agate and rich reclaimed wood, leather wingbacks invite loungy drinking and noshing. Along the riverwalk are three new garage doors that promise to bring the outside ambience into Coastal 15.

It was a great sign that Phoenix’s “All Eyes On Me” came through the speakers as we finished our first bites.

All in all, the space is appointed to a tee, elegant but still coastal comfy, and the entire concept elevates River Street far above its accustomed restaurant sea level. Other options for blocks to either side are ‘fine’, aspirated with a resigned sigh. Coastal 15 is fine dining while recognizing where it is on the actual map.

Put on something nice. Drive downtown. Pony up for valet parking. This is a special night out but still order the chicken crisps and eat them with your hands.

Coastal 15 (102 West Bay Street in The Bohemian Hotel Savannah Riverfront) is open daily for breakfast (7 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.), lunch (11 a.m. to 4 p.m.), and dinner (5 p.m. to 10 p.m.), plus bar service available 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah savoir faire at Bohemian Hotel's revamped Coastal 15