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 Oil Painting of Hugo
Reviews
Reviews
Warm, sophisticated Hugo feels, tastes like South Carolina
Review
By Polly Campbell • pcampbell@enquirer.com • February 19, 2010
The weather outside Hugo, the restaurant in Oakley, was saying “Fargo, North Dakota,” as the wind whipped snow across the parking lot and froze car windows shut. Inside, though, the food kept insisting “Charleston, South Carolina.” It took some suspension of disbelief, but for a couple of hours, the food and atmosphere won. We spent an evening as if enjoying balmy Southern breezes.
Almost three years after opening, Hugo’s chef/owner Sean Daly is still realizing his vision, serving sophisticated food inspired by Southern traditions.
There were not too many people braving the weather that night, but we didn’t feel alone in the dining room. Our table offered a comfortable, padded privacy, something I often miss in today’s louder, open restaurants. There were people in the lounge, where you can eat from a casual tapas menu, which adds vitality.
Hugo’s menu is designed for three courses of starter, salad and entrée. We collapsed the first two categories and ordered just two. (Well, three with dessert.) The sweetbreads ($11) were small nuggets, firm but creamy inside a light crust, served on creamed corn. The she-crab soup ($9), a Charleston classic, was creamy and rich, the crab roe giving it a vibrant coral color. Corn bread croutons floated on top, and lots of fat shreds of crab lay on the bottom, waiting to be scooped up, while a heady dose of sherry gave it old-school luxury.
The butternut squash salad ($8) with walnuts was simple and good. The scallops’ ($13) delicate flavor and texture were bolstered by a small amount of cauliflower purée and thick meaty chunks of Southern bacon. Bacon and ham is a signature flavor, lending several dishes a meaty Southern bass note.
Our servers were great on the wine, on information about the food, and on timing. All the dishes were served simultaneously and with flourish.
The pork loin ($23) was pure South: an oval bed of rich, soufflé-like spoon bread topped with greens and sliced pork loin, surrounded by a pretty, light carrot sauce. The fish of the night ($25) was salmon, crusty skin left on, atop roasted onions, with a subtle mustard sauce.
Rabbit ($22) was cooked into a ragu, served on top of fettucine. Shrimp and grits ($26) are still the star of the menu: three perfect, jumbo shrimp served on top of a thick spoonful of rich, textured grits, gilded with a pool of cheese sauce and another, spicier sauce. What can I say? It rocked.
Speaking of rocking, I love the music at Hugo, which sticks to rootsy and Southern, grounding the atmosphere much as the bacon and ham ground the food.
Only one dish didn’t measure up – the blueberry cobbler – too cakey, not enough blueberry, too hot for cold ice cream. (Desserts are $8.50.) The peanut butter pie, however, contributed exactly the right warm Southern note to finish off our visit.
Hugo
Where: 3235 Madison Road, Oakley
When: 5:30 – 9:30 p.m.Tuesday-Thursday; 5:30-10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday
The scene: Sophisticated, upscale in dining room, casual in lounge
Reservations: Taken at restaurant or at www.opentable.com
Prices: Appetizers $8-$13; second-course salads $8-$9; entrées $22-$26, desserts $8.50
Vegetarian choices: No entrées on menu; some appetizers, salads
Miscellaneous: Accessible to disabled, full bar, outdoor seating; crawfish boils in the summer. Private dining.
Phone: 513-321-4846
Web site: www.Hugo-restaurant.com
We knew we were going to like Hugo as soon as our server approached the table. And not just because he made for some pleasant eye candy. This guy knew his menu, every item, down to the sauce. When we hesitated on our drink choices, he emerged with glasses of wine that were just what we wanted. When we questioned whether we'd like a certain dish, he gave his promise we would - or he'd whisk it away and have the kitchen whip us up a quick replacement.
No need. During this meal, we'd be sending nothing back.
The mood: We hit up Hugo on a Tuesday night. The place was surprisingly crowded, perhaps because of Restaurant Week, its tables filled with couples on dates and co-workers still in their business suits. The cozy dining room was bathed in warm light. We were a little late for our reservation but were seated without hesitation - and with plenty of smiles.
The food: Hugo bills its fare as "sophisticated Southern cuisine," which basically means you can throw all your Southern-food stereotypes out the window. Scallops are served with a delicate truffle sauce and cauliflower puree beside a heap of arugula. The Hugo salad surprises with its bed of potatoes beneath a pile of Romaine lettuce and a smoky vinaigrette.
The main course, though, presented a problem. I looked at the list of entrées - fish, hanger steak, grilled pork loin, roast lamb, chicken, rabbit, shrimp n'grits - and felt a twinge of guilt.
I'd invited a vegetarian to the meal.
Server to the rescue: He asked my friend about her dietary preferences and returned from the kitchen with good news. Chef had just whipped up a batch of butternut squash risotto. She lied and said she loved risotto, and soon it was in front of her: a big bowl of creamy, slightly spicy risotto with broccoli rabe and generous hunks of squash.
Another surprise: My friend actually liked it. She'd later say it was the best risotto she's eaten.
I ordered the restaurant's signature shrimp n'grits, despite having little affection for either shrimp or grits. I ended up cleaning my plate. The shrimp were fat and juicy, and the grits had such a creamy texture and smoky flavor that I almost would have mistaken them for something else.
The sweets: After fawning over our meals, we didn't really love the dessert. We split the restaurant's twist on strawberry shortcake: a shortcake covered in white chocolate accompanied by a strawberry shake and a river of mint sauce. I guess we were supposed to pour the shake onto the cake and then dip the pieces into the mint, but that seemed awfully fussy. I just slurped down the shake and ate the cake.
Why you should go: Hugo's food is surprising and rich without being heavy, and it's served by people who know what they're doing - and actually seem to like doing it. It's easy to spend a lot of money here, but as you savor your first mouthful of creamy grits, you realize it's worth it.
Cincinnati Magazine - March 2009
By Donna Covrett
HUGO makes top 10 in Cincinnati!!
Hugo Restaurant #9 - Year 2 brings more recognition of Chef Sean Daly's unique and delicious take on low country cooking.
..."Daly provides diners with a menu steeped in both soul asnd contemporary swank, building on the fine weave of African, West Indian, and European heritage that influences the cooking inherent to the Carolinas."
Cincinnati Magazine, December, 2008
"Best Short Ribs"
"... With a patient braise ..rendering the meat absurdly rich and tender, as in Chef Sean Daly's luxurious low-country version, which he makes at HUGO, Infused with a woodsy voodoo of a marinade, Daly's short ribs manage to simultaneously comfort and haunt."
Hugo has Southern grace
Polly Campbell | Enquirer 06/08/2007
In the Oakley space where Pho Paris fused Asian flavors and French techniques, Hugo is now serving another fusion cuisine.
Chef-owner Sean Daly uses down-home foods from the American South - humble ingredients such as grits, green tomatoes and butter beans - and treats them with sophistica...
»show more
In the Oakley space where Pho Paris fused Asian flavors and French techniques, Hugo is now serving another fusion cuisine.
Chef-owner Sean Daly uses down-home foods from the American South - humble ingredients such as grits, green tomatoes and butter beans - and treats them with sophisticated skill.
The combination can be a little startling, but it's not gimmicky. In fact, it's a gutsy, delicious breath of fresh air and the next place you should try.
Daly is a Cincinnati native who was trained in Charleston, S.C., when it was reviving after Hurricane Hugo tore through in 1989. He learned about Southern hospitality there too, and Hugo is doing that well, with its welcoming bar area, friendly staff and lots of people to open doors.
The modern-Asian look of Pho Paris has been deftly transformed into a warm and traditional dining room with new French doors, a fireplace, wall sconces and warm colors. Literally, and by service and attention to detail, it's a white tablecloth restaurant, but certain choices make it seem more laid-back.
The recorded music, for instance, ranges from Ben Kweller to Bob Dylan, Booker T. and Buddy Miller to the Decemberists. Our server was dressed nicely but casually - sans jacket, tie or apron - giving him more of a feeling of a real person, a host rather than a servant.
My meal started with a real wow of a dish. Two huge and fabulous seared scallops ($13) were served with a little flourish of cauliflower pure, tiny browned cauliflorets, a haunting hint of truffle, and enough arugula to add some bite.
My daughter ordered fritters ($8). They came lined up on a rectangular plate: fresh corn fried with rich mascarpone and a sweet tomato jam to dip them in. I found the fried green tomatoes ($9) a little too thinly sliced and overly breaded. But the haricots verts salad was fresh and balanced: green beans, crisply cooked, with tomato, fennel and olives ($8).
My favorite little bite of the evening was the cipollini onions with the veal chop ($25) roasted sweet and mellow; if I go back, I might very well ask for a bowl of them. They were right for the thick, grilled veal chop, too, and came with fingerling potatoes and julienned snow peas.
I had rabbit ($21), not something you often see on menus. It was braised, very mild and tender, and served atop corn bread and cole slaw.
Pork loin ($23) had the most obvious Southern tastes; a pink, moist piece sliced and served on top of butter beans living up to their name with a creamy, rich texture and assertive greens.
The crowd-pleaser of the dinner menu will surely be the shrimp and grits ($25). This Charleston dish has the divine combination of the creaminess of grits as foil to nicely grilled shrimp and cubes of tasso; the comfort is accentuated with two pools of rich, sharp cheddar cheese sauce that's practically fondue.
Pecan tart, crme brle, a rich chocolate cake and a somewhat odd "Hugenot" pudding of apples and nuts (all $7.50) finished off an evening of gastronomic surprises and Southern graciousness.
Hugo - Four stars out of five (excellent)
Hours: 5:30 - 10 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 5:30-10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Prices: Appetizers $7-$13 (foie gras $26); salads $7-$9; entres $19-$28; desserts $7.50. Seven-course tasting menu $75, $98 with wine.
Cincinnati Magazine- August, 2007
True Grits
At Hugo, Chef Sean Daly takes low-country cooking to higher ground.
By Donna Covrett
Southerners have always cooked more skillfully and eaten better than the rest of us. I know this from personal experience. My childhood was spent in Cincinnati, but my appetite was shaped by the food and lore of the south. Our kitchen was the domain of Essie, who filled our bellies with smoked pork butt and fried catfish, mashed parsnips and wilted greens, lemon icebox cake, and warm blackberry cobbler. Nuggets of wisdom and stories of distant relatives with names like Fat Mouth Dumplin’ or Hushpuppy Sam (who allegedly buried his mama with a 350-pound pig so she would have barbecue in heaven), were delivered with every pitcher of sweet tea and pulled pork sandwich. “Southern women like sugar in their tea and pepper in their men,” she’d wink.
Chef Sean Daly, whose own passion for southern cuisine was cemented at Johnson & Wales University in Charleston, understands. For his new restaurant, Hugo—named after the 1989 hurricane that slammed into the Carolinas—Daly brings precision and refinement to a style of cooking that at its best is essentially local and home-based, applying a chef’s restaurant sensibility to build unique dishes that don’t stray far from tradition. “Southern cooking is like raising a child,” he says. “The love and attention food is given, and how central it is to the quality of life, is just unsurpassed.”
You can taste the love in his biscuits. Instead of relegating them to a bread basket or drowning them under a thick milk and gizzard gravy, three tender biscuits are miniaturized and turned into sandwiches filled with cooked greens, ruddy andouille sausage, and a dollop of white cheddar sauce. Fried oysters are a standard dish on southern coastal menus, but Daly’s small plate version—cooled with a fine chop of cucumber and green apple, and paired with the stronger flavors of tasso and goat cheese—is robustly sophisticated without compromising homespun appeal.
The common misconception of southern food, and its regional sub-culture of Carolina low-country cooking, is that it is a tasty but unhealthy, fried-everything bonanza. In fact, southern cuisine is far more innovative and flexible than the stereotype. Influences from England, North Africa, Spain, France, and Barbados combine with an abundant variety of ingredients supplied by delta flatlands, miles of coastline, marshland, and mountains for an ageless slice of Americana. Daly loves the freedom. “I stick to the tradition of slow cooking, but I like to twist it up, and lighten it up,” he says. Garnet jewels of Kobe beef are sliced and fanned out over couscous that’s been fried or baked to the consistency of Grape-Nuts and a radiant deep-pink fantasia of beet demi-glace. The massage-tender meat melts over your tongue, and you may not even realize you’re chewing until you hit the couscous crunch. Too fey? Nope. Daly throws in a raggedy, salty, piece of oxtail to humble it up. It’s brilliant.
Similar down-home strokes show in most every dish on the 18-plate menu. Chicken is slow-cooked to a luxurious confit and served over greens and Hoppin’ John (black-eyed peas and ham hock traditionally served for good luck on New Year’s Day), while halibut perches on a Brussels-sprout-and-potato hash. Daly’s signature shrimp and white cheddar grits, a carryover from his tenure at Tink’s, are on the menu as well, a luxurious William Faulkner-with-a-French-accent dish.
I like that Daly honors the long-simmering techniques of southern cooking—his demis have a bone-deep flavor and the greens taste as if the seasonings have permeated them—but his pork hand can be too heavy at times. In addition to the hog butt fat used for cooking and flavoring (as it should be), tasso, pancetta, country ham, bacon, pork belly, and andouille all make appearances on the menu. I love the smoky, intensely flavored tasso, but it takes over the nose and the palate in a vinaigrette tossed with frisee, blue cheese, apples, and cranberries.
The only thing southerners like sweeter than tea is their dessert, and it takes some resolution to finish the chocolate torte, pecan tart with maple ice cream, or the “Huguenot”—a combination walnut and apple pie with bourbon vanilla ice cream. Not bad desserts per se, but the one-two sugar punch flattens the flavor. I’d rather taste chocolate first, sugar second.
Daly made an interesting move in regard to the restaurant’s interior. He downsized the former Pho Paris space to create the cozy charm and hospitality he loves about South Carolina. The wine and hunter green textiles, paisley wallpaper, and leather chairs evoke some of the genteel southern tradition, but feel more like Indian Hill living room–meets–hunt club. That said, Hugo has the most interesting soundtrack I’ve ever eaten fried green tomatoes to: Morphine, Amy Winehouse, Bob Dylan, and Booker T. and the MGs.
Hospitality is gracious for the most part, with hosts to anticipate your arrival and hold the door, and service ranging from solidly polished professionalism to not-so-polished—a server who tried to talk us out of ordering several dishes because he didn’t like them (not because he thought we wouldn’t like them), and a bartender who spoke in a high-pitched preschool patois. “Ladies, did we enjoy that? Are we finished with our plates, and would we like anything else to drink? Would we like the check?” We slunk lower and lower in our chairs every time she approached.
Like most young restaurants, Hugo still needs some maturation, but like its namesake storm, it is poised to be a presence. If Essie was here, I know just what she would say. “This food has a real whang to it. That boy must’ve stole somebody’s mama.” Perhaps he did.
Hugo, 3235 Madison Rd., Oakley, (513) 321-4846
Hours
Tues–Thurs 5:30 pm–10 pm, Fri & Sat 5:30 pm–10:30 pm
Atmosphere
Casual southern with metropolitan flair. Hunt club decor with contemporary blues soundtrack. Handsome semi-private wine room with a romantic table for two.
Prices
Moderately expensive. Small plates $7–$13, large plates $19–$28.
Taste Magazine - Winter 2007-2008
Profile: Sean Daly
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