The key, Sebastian Sprouse believes, is simplicity. While the culinary leader at Eliza’s Bar + Kitchen in Mount Pleasant has worked to elevate and reinvent the menu at the restaurant within the Hotel Indigo, there are some dishes where excellence lies in merely allowing the ingredients to speak for themselves.
Such is the case with items like the seafood pasta that’s a recent addition to the large plates section of the menu at Eliza’s. The current version features lobster flambé over a bed of linguine, with scallops and a dollop of caviar. “This dish reflects the beginning of not only providing a bar-centric menu at Eliza’s, but also providing entree menu selections,” Sprouse said.
As with all pasta dishes, the sauce plays an integral role. Sprouse uses pearl tomatoes as the base, roasting and pureeing them, before adding a touch of heavy cream to the linguine. Vodka is added, and after the alcohol is burned off, he swirls the sauce and the pasta together. He adds another splash of heavy cream for color, a pinch of parmesan cheese, and a touch of fresh basil.
Set poolside and surrounded by palmetto trees, and with a name that evokes 18th-century indigo cultivator Eliza Lucas Pinckney, Eliza’s combines Lowcountry classics like crab cakes and shrimp and grits with more innovative selections like the seafood pasta, which traces its origins back centuries to southern Italy. Pasta was brought to America by Spanish settlers, according to PBS, with Thomas Jefferson among the earliest proponents of the dish.
That history lives on at Eliza’s, located at 250 Johnnie Dodds Blvd., where the indigo leaves adorning the restaurant’s menu add a dash of Lowcountry lore. “Our seafood pasta is a new dish on the menu,” Sprouse said, “and I look forward to the feedback of the customers and guests that dine with Eliza's Bar + Kitchen.”
Building Blocks of Charleston Cuisine is a series that celebrates the connection between the Lowcountry and its vibrant food scene. Each week features a dish, restaurant, or chef that’s played a role in keeping the region’s culinary history alive.
