Quiet RIOT
HUSH PUBLIC HOUSE an understated culinary wonderland
I want to tell you about this chicken. It’s a little like the chicken Marsala from your local Italian joint just got back from finishing school. It’s nearly half a bird — thigh and breast — completely deboned but left in one piece with the skin intact. Its shape allows the skin to lie perfectly flat as it sears, so when the bird is flipped for service, the succulent meat is capped with an architectural plank of glistening, salty skin that crackles against your teeth. Below, a tangle of Swiss chard and shimeji mushrooms melts into a puddle of golden-hued Madeira jus, slick and buttery and brimming with booze and a luscious lick of gelatin courtesy of a rich stock. On the menu, it looks the same as any other boring chicken dish. And it’s all right there on the paper — there are no hidden surprises. But this is what every boring chicken dish aspires to be, elevated to star status by careful, precise execution. That’s what makes Hush Public House tick: a clockwork kitchen that meticulously crafts a smart menu with every detail in place. Maybe that’s all that needs to be said and I don’t have to tell you anything more. But I’m going to do it anyway. Heck, you’re going to want to tell everybody about it, too.
Two restaurant veterans with a plan
Hush opened quietly in February, but it was a matter of days before it started making noise.
Dom Ruggiero and Charles Barber, two metro Phoenix restaurant veterans, decided to strike out on their own. Ruggiero, the longtime executive chef at Chelsea’s Kitchen, and Barber, a fixture behind the bar at Zinc Bistro for over a decade, did their homework, learned their craft and picked their spot — a tight, boxy space hidden in a sprawling strip mall that hugs Scottsdale Road, just south of Kierland Commons.
Into this room, the size of a studio apartment, the duo wedges in a narrow, open kitchen and roughly 40 guests, split between the long bar and a handful of cozy tables.
It’s a bustling little scene in there. Which, frankly, is part of the charm.
A buzzy bandbox of a room
On a mercifully cool night in June, a casual but social crowd clusters at one end of the bar, chumming it up with Barber and taking in a game while sipping a glass of wine or sucking down a T-Bird — a nifty, citrusy cocktail with the tang of grapefruit and a gentle basil lift.
Down at the other end of the bar, the food geeks congregate, trading notes and laughs with Ruggiero while ogling the steady stream of dishes being prepared just a few inches from their noses.
Ruggiero runs an armload of food to a four-top, diners a-tingle with anticipation that kicks up in frequency as colorful plates hit the table, lit by a bright spotlight that cuts through the dim room.
It’s like watching the runway at Chewandswallow International Airport. Two plates land, and once they’re greedily devoured, two more gently glide in to take their place. Once they start, you don’t want them to stop, and every dish is your favorite until the next one arrives.
That’s good, because they keep on coming.
Sharp appetizers start
Look, just get the hush puppies. I know you’ve had hush puppies before, but let’s be honest — most of them are doughy, dry, leaden lumps of despair. Here’s the antidote.
Heavenly brown orbs with wispy little crisps, crowned with scallion curls. Crack them open to find the tender and steaming cornmeal core, stuffed with blue crab and anointed with sweet corn remoulade.
Linger in the south for a little while. Plump shrimp are infused with a pickly-tart zing, surfing a wave of eggy gribiche on a fried green tomato longboard, topped with shards of crisp celery, free spirits flaunting their essential nature, naked as can be and wanting for nothing.
The seafood keeps coming. Creamy blue point oysters lounge in a butter bath with a little habanero hot sauce sizzle, flecked with Grana Padano and served with crusty bread.
A Calabrian chile-laced ponzu and chunky fried shallots feel a touch heavy for buttery slabs of hiramasa crudo. But even one of Hush’s lesser offerings would make a solid dish anywhere else. Slices of raw halibut, however — bedecked with citrus, pickled Fresno chiles and ribbons of licorice-scented fennel — are seasoned with such precision that I can only shake my head and chuckle.
More excellence follows
In between Chelsea’s Kitchen and Hush Public House, Ruggiero spent some time working at The Meat Market in Cave Creek, and his proteins show off some serious savvy.
A slice of French-style country pâté is downright textbook — a straightlaced, meaty companion to a psychedelic mélange of pickled vegetables and thick cuts of smoky, grilled Noble country bread saturated with olive oil.
The chicken liver mousse is so smooth it defies physics. Luscious and sweet, its gentle, creamy funk is cradled by a boozy cap of cherries so soused that Barber might have to ask them to leave.
What, you want bacon? Okay, fine.
A double-thick slab charred on the grill to a smoky, sizzling crisp would be enough to send any bacon lover home giddy, but add the saline pop of capers and some punchy herbal accents and you’ve got a dish that will titillate anybody who doesn’t hate meat... and maybe some who do. (There are shaved radishes on top. Let’s just call it a salad.)
And there’s still more
The New York strip at Hush is better than almost everything I’ve sampled at places that supposedly specialize in steak, and it all comes down to the basics. Juicy slices of prime beef are deftly seasoned and perfectly cooked, fanned out beneath a blanket of bright, verdant salsa verde and served with a pile of crisp frites.
It’s a good thing Hush isn’t open at 2:00 a.m., because I’d be there four nights a week, crushing the Italian beef. No, that’s not what it is, Chicagoans, but don’t screw this up — just let Ruggiero borrow the name.
The original is a blue-collar icon, but this dish is full-on bougie beef — a mountain of silky stewed oxtail piled on a thick slab of brioche, drowning in demi, capped with a layer with smoked provolone and buried in the spicy-sour punch of finely minced giardiniera. More than a thousand miles away, Bill Swerski’s Superfans can’t figure out why they’re suddenly having palpitations.
Don’t be misled, though. Ruggiero shows the flora just as much love as the fauna.
Vegetables dishes also sing
Sometimes, Ruggiero’s vegetables get aggressive. He tames Treviso radicchio by slapping it on the grill, then supporting its natural bitterness with an anchovy dressing and enough Manchego snow to fill a set from “Doctor Zhivago.”
Other times he takes a delicate approach. A simple salad gets a touch of fire from smoked almonds and thick rings of charred onion, but the focus is squarely on perfect, crisp fingers of gem lettuce, delicately dressed with a whisper of preserved lemon vinaigrette.
Speaking of light, yes, white bean “hummus” is brutally overplayed. But you should probably get it anyway because silky smooth bean spread with a dash of sharp pecorino and a twinge of tart gremolata were cool long before the yoga pants crowd turned them into glue for veggie wraps.
Ruggiero can sing a sweet tune, too. Sugar snap peas that actually snap are dressed with “green sauce” — like a muted, avocado-softened pesto — sweetened with slices of strawberry and offset by slivers of sharp ricotta salata.
And my favorite dessert, even if it isn’t billed as such, is a luscious peach toast, sporting plump, juicy specimens in house-made ricotta with honey, mint and a crumble of spiced hazelnut dukkah. It’ll be gone when the seasons change. This may be the first time I hope the Phoenix summer never ends.
Why Hush is a model restaurant
Actual desserts — whether a dense and rich chocolate pudding or a spongy date cake swamped with bourbon toffee sauce — are stupid simple and predictably perfect. Because at this point, why would you expect anything else?
Let it be known — and try to contain your shock — that I am a data hoarder. I maintain a spreadsheet of every restaurant dish I taste, highlighting the ones I want to remember. Whenever I scroll past Hush Public House, the screen lights up like Clark Griswold’s Christmas display.
As if I were in danger of forgetting.
This kind of consistent excellence is hard to find. And you’d think it would be enough, but when I finally come up for air, I find myself getting hungrier.
These fellows paid their dues. They learned their craft. They didn’t launch with a big PR push. They didn’t blow a ton of money on the space. The line has their heads straight down, carefully watching every little detail. This isn’t whiz bang food. It’s creative, but it doesn’t feel compelled to show off. It’s thoughtful. It’s confident. It’s consistent. It’s awfully damn good. It’s a model.
More, please.