savor — guide to food & dining on the azalea coast
Top: Libertas heads into Motts Channel. Right: Dawn Moffitt of Dawn Moffitt
Design styled the look and Scott Grimm, Dockside chef, prepared a menu of
savory seafood hors d’oeuvres.
The oyster is slurped with what Grimm describes as a classic oyster sauce — the
sherry-flavored mignonette — a condiment traditionally prepared from minced
shallots, cracked pepper and vinegar.
A second oyster, pre-shucked and imported from the Gulf of Mexico, is fried
and then wrapped with a shaving of ahi tuna served over a mirepoix, or fine dice,
of tomato and cucumber.
“I like the texture and the flavor,” Grimm says. “The cucumber and tomato
relish is something kind of fresh this time of year. It’s crisp and clean, which is
kind of my style of cooking — to let the ingredients speak for themselves.”
The appetizer is garnished with a squirt of Texas Pete infused aioli.
With shrimp poached in a traditional tomato-based Bloody Mary mix, Grimm
presents his hors d’oeuvre with celery sticks. Fried gumbo risotto fritters — spiced
with tomatoes, peppers, garlic, cumin, cayenne, thyme and file — are blended with
crabmeat and garnished with roasted tomato Hollandaise.
Grimm started in Dockside’s dish room in 1997 before he started cooking.
The Dockside cooking line is where he discovered he wanted to pursue a culinary
arts career. He worked at the Peninsula Grill in Charleston while in school. In
Nashville’s Hermitage Hotel he worked under Sean Brock, now the famed chef at
Charleston’s Husk, and back in Wilmington Grimm cooked with James Bain and
Dak Millis at Harvest Moon.
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WBM june 2013