St Roch Fine Oysters + Bar, Raleigh NC
29 December 2021
https://www.strochraleigh.com/
Dinner at St Roch was one of our last meals before leaving the United States, and was a suggestion of Jane’s dad and sister. It was 29th December 2021, and I guess you could say that our moods were starting to dip a little - our three week holiday was coming to an end, thoughts were starting to turn towards work and other ghastly elements of ‘real life’, and we were beginning the preparations for our three flight, undoubtedly Covid-riddled journey home.
St Roch opened in 2017, and the chef and owner is New Orleans native Sunny Gerhart. With Cajun food being in short supply in the UK (there is one small chain of restaurants in London that attempts to do something vaguely Louisiana-y with shrimp… but the less said about them the better) my knowledge of it is poor, but Jane is a big fan. We have promised ourselves a trip to New Orleans at some point in the next couple of years, and Jane already has the itinerary planned in collaboration with her spirit animal, Homer Simpson.
The restaurant is on South Wilmington Street in downtown Raleigh, an area thick with great places to eat. Our immediate impression was just how busy St Roch was. On our walk from the car, we passed several restaurants that were all but empty - probably an impact of rising cases of the Omicron variant in the state - but the oyster bar was packed, with all tables and the bar area fully occupied. The restaurant itself had a relaxed feeling, with a number of booths towards the back, a well-stocked bar and outside seating in a covered, arcade-style area at the front.
We started off with a round of cocktails - Eden’s Autumn for Jane (containing gin and apple butter… far too sweet for me, but she loved it) and the house Old Fashioned for me (I’m not a huge fan of bourbon but, when in America… It was very good, by the way) and decided on a platter of oysters to start.
As an aside, neither Jane or I know anything about oysters, apart from the fact that we like the ones we have eaten in the past. And this place was serious… a dozen different varieties on the board above the bar, half from the East Coast of North America and half from the West Coast. We were looking at the ones from North Carolina (because local is always best, right?) when our lovely server, Clay, staged an intervention. East Coast oysters are known to be particularly - some would say ‘unpleasantly’ - briny, whereas West Coast oysters are known for their creamy, less salty quality. Steered by him, we selected a platter of oysters from Fanny Bay (ha!), British Columbia, which also happened to be 50% off. Who can complain about paying less than $2 an oyster?
Clay did not let us down. The oysters were delicious - rich and silky - particularly when paired with the horseradish, apple cider viegar and cocktail sauce accompanying them.
For main course, I opted for the Jambalaya, which promised shrimp and mussels, but ultimately arrived with shrimp only. Honestly, I did not miss the mussels. The dish was delicious, with andouille sausage, chicken, tasso aioli (tasso is a type of ham sometimes served with the southern staple of devilled eggs) and poached egg. I’m a huge a fan of a poached egg on a rice dish, like nasi goreng, because the oozy yolk does something particularly lovely to the rice, so I was really pleased to see it here. I also loved the meaty aioli, which added great texture and a rich, salty kick which cut through the spice in the dish.
Jane ordered the Carolina Calabash. To the uninformed - me included - Calabash is a particular method of frying fish or seafood local to the NC coastal town of Calabash. The batter is light and crispy, and doesn’t mask the taste of the thing it’s covering. When you’re in a state famous for its shrimp, you don’t need to do anything else to make them taste great. To Jane, eating a serving of fried shrimp is akin to a mystical experience and, although I’m deeply glad she chose the UK as her home, I have never understood why someone like her would move from a country with fried shrimp to one without it (the UK’s own fried scampi is not the same thing, to be clear). This particular order of fried shrimp came with potato fries, fried pickles, garlic aioli and a jalapeno-buttermilk dressing. It also came with the most delicious crawfish hushpuppies, which gave the crunchy, sweet hushpuppies an unexpectedly juicy hit. All the fried things, in other words. Jane was in heaven. In fact, to quote her “Despite the fry-fest, the flavours of each element shone through, the acidity of the fried pickels really helping to cut through the rest of the dish, along with the buttermilk dip. It was a Calabash-level fry to be sure.”
A word on drinks: To my absolute delight, craft cider has become a thing in the United States since we last visited in 2018. You have always been able to get a really good beer in NC (at least since I started visiting regularly in 2009) but cider has been largely absent. The cider at St Roch is Wild Thing, a medium-dry made by Artifact Cider Project in Massachussets. It was easy to drink and went well with the seafood and spice. Earlier in our trip, I had tried a really nice medium cider made in Boone NC called Southern Apple from the Appalachian Mountain Cidery. I ordered it because it was made in a ‘cidery’, and I was not disappointed.
But I digress - back to St Roch and dessert.
The sweet thing that St Roch is most proud of is its beignets - a classic New Orleans choux pastry dough fritter covered in powdered sugar, typically eaten for breakfast with cafe au lait. I wasn’t particularly bothered about ordering any, having eaten one from a London bakery once that was more oil than dough and made me feel quite unwell. However, having been duly yelled at by my dinner companions, one was ordered for me and it arrived with an accompanying jug of bourbon caramel sauce. I was glad they intervened. It was delicious - light, caramelised and gloriously sweet with the boozy, sticky caramel.
Our dinner worked out to about $60 a head (tip included) which felt like really good value for the quality of food, drink and service. Definitely one we’ll be revisiting on future trips.
And what about the toast sandwich?
Jane: Crawfish hushpuppies
Sarah: Oyster paired with a dash of apple cider vinegar