The Triangle's Best Restaurants: Top 20

By GREG COX, Correspondent

Frazier's is listed as one of the Triangle's Top 20 Restaurants!
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Greg Cox can be reached at ggcox@bellsouth.net

Second Helpings

One of the problems with reviewing restaurants is that they're always changing … more

Cooking Up An Empire

RALEIGH - Restaurant entrepreneurs Kevin Jennings and Stacey Jennings are firm believers in … more

When a fine bistro keeps fine-tuning

RALEIGH - When Kevin and Stacey Jennings opened Frazier's in 1998 … more

From Apollonaire Magazine … more

Published: Oct 19, 2005 Modified: Oct 20, 2005 7:26 AM

Second Helpings

By GREG COX, Correspondent

Chef Jay Beaver cooking at Frazier's Pancetta-Wrapped Tenderloin with Fresh Pork Belly and White Beans

One of the problems with reviewing restaurants is that they're always changing. And I'm not just talking about the inevitable minor variations, such as the chef having an off night. I'm talking about the chef quitting, and being replaced by a new chef who may be much more talented, or much less. I'm talking about new restaurants that open impressively, then lose steam and settle into mediocrity. Changes of this magnitude can substantially and permanently affect the quality of experience in a restaurant. They happen more often than you may know.

So often, in fact, that I've decided to do something about it. I'm amending my star rating policy so that it can react in a more timely manner to these changes.

Until now, the only vehicle I've used to award star ratings, or to change them, is the full restaurant review that runs every Friday in the What's Up section. Just keeping up with the sheer volume of new eateries opening in the Triangle has precluded me from revisiting the established restaurants as often as I'd like. As a result, I rarely review a restaurant more frequently than once every five years or so.

That's fine as long as a restaurant remains consistent over the years. But for those that change substantially, it's far too long to allow people to be misled by an inaccurate star rating.

So I'm introducing a new feature to this column, called Second Helpings. Based on at least one follow-up visit, I'll announce a change in the star rating for a restaurant in this space, and I'll briefly explain the reason for the change. Second Helpings won't appear weekly -- not even regularly, for that matter. It will appear whenever I need to report a change in rating.

This week, happily, I can report that I am raising the rating for Frazier's (2418 Hillsborough St., 828-6699; www.fraziersbistro.com) in Raleigh from 3 to 3 1/2 stars. I'm basing the new rating on a recent visit during which I got to sample the handiwork of Jay Beaver, who came to Frazier's from New York and took over as chef in July.

Beaver's wild mushroom soup is among the best I've ever tasted, its deep chords of earthy mushroom flavor underscored by perfume of truffle oil. His pairing of foie gras with balsamic onions, vin cotto-dressed hearts of romaine and a quenelle of apple butter is inspired. His pan-seared grouper is flawless, and his take on barbecued pork rates with that of chef Ben Barker of Chapel Hill of Durham's Magnolia Grill as the best I've ever had outside a barbecue joint.

In short, Jay Beaver has wasted no time in elevating the level of cuisine at Frazier's from very good to one of the very best in the Triangle. And since everything else at Frazier's, from pastry chef Sarah Langheinrich's sweet temptations to the generally excellent service to the urban American bistro setting, I'd say it's a good thing the restaurant doesn't have to wait another five years for that extra half star.

Greg Cox can be reached at ggcox@bellsouth.net

From the July 29, 2005 print edition

Cooking Up An Empire

They own two successful restaurants, with another on tap, but they want more

By Kim Nilsen

RALEIGH - Restaurant entrepreneurs Kevin Jennings and Stacey Jennings are firm believers in the cautionary adage about "too many chiefs." Only in their case, it reads, "too many chefs."

While the Jenningses are equal partners in marriage, they are not exactly equal partners in business.

When they set out in the late 1990s to launch a family restaurant company with multiple eateries, all parties involved agreed that someone had to be the majority shareholder. Someone had to have the final say in disagreements.

That role fell to Stacey Jennings, who brought business savvy and accounting skills to the table. The agreement, written into the company's bylaws, has helped the business partners keep peace at home and at work.

The husband and wife have built a restaurant company that's on track to serve up $2.4 million in revenue this year, thanks to patrons of Frazier's and their second restaurant, Porter's City Tavern. Both are located on Hillsborough Street opposite North Carolina State University.

For many restaurateurs, such sales might be enough. But the Jenningses have always had a bigger appetite. They launched Frazier's in 1998, a mere nine days after marrying, with intentions to grow their restaurant family.

They'll take a step in that direction this fall when they open their third and largest restaurant, Vivace, at Raleigh's Lassiter at North Hills. The Jenningses expect Vivace alone to generate about $2.3 million in annual revenue, giving the collective restaurant group a shot at hitting the high $4 million range in 2006.

So far, they've beaten the long odds that restaurants face. Both had worked in a host of food service jobs, from dishwasher to maitre d' to manager in his case, from waitress to controller in hers. They came to the Triangle with about $150,000, hoping to launch the local operation of the pizza franchise Mellow Mushroom.

But they ended up landing a lease - with no personal guarantee - from businessman and developer Arthur Sandman for space on Hillsborough Street. They were convinced that despite the location opposite the university, the bread and butter of Frazier's would be dinner business drawn from the surrounding residential neighborhood.

They put about $200,000 in the restaurant, opening with $35,000 in credit card debt and no money in the bank, Kevin Jennings says. By year three, they had launched a Holly Springs restaurant, Homegrown Pizza, and were generating about $1.2 million.

The pizza restaurant was sold within about 18 months, and the Jenningses turned their focus to opening Porter's, an urban tavern that arrived in 2003.

The vision for Vivace is something between Chapel Hill's four-diamond Il Palio and Durham's trattoria Pop's. The Jenningses have hired the prolific restaurant architecture and interior design firm, The Johnson Studio, to help them outfit the space, which will have seating for 90 people in the dining room, 28 in the bar and about 40 alfresco.

They've also tapped Texas-based kitchen designer Al Berger to design the kitchen, and they're searching for a skilled chef. For Frazier's, they recently hired Jay Beaver, whose culinary credits include New York's pricey, popular Gramercy Tavern.

The manager who will oversee Vivace is going on a fact-finding trip to Italy to prepare for the project. The location will push the company's employee count from 50 to about 85, Stacey Jennings says.

The Vivace menu will offer dishes at higher prices than those served up at Frazier's and at Porter's, where dinner crowds find some entrees priced below $10. The company's approach has been to avoid the high $20 and $30 entree price range at Frazier's and make up for higher average tickets with more volume.

The investment in Vivace will total about $800,000. With help from their investors, the Jenningses secured a line of credit for the project.

They say the opening probably won't be their last. Later this year, they'll occupy the space that separates Frazier's and Porter's on Hillsborough Street and convert the area to Intermezzo, a private dining facility. And the Jenningses think the Porter's formula could travel to other cities, such as Richmond, Va., or Charlotte.

"We want to be considered a major player in the restaurant market in this area," Kevin Jennings says.

© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.

Published: Feb 25, 2005 Modified: Feb 25, 2005 3:10 AM

When a fine bistro keeps fine-tuning

By GREG COX, Correspondent

RALEIGH -- When Kevin and Stacey Jennings opened Frazier's in 1998, many wished them luck. But, truth be told, few gave them much of a chance to succeed.

Their upscale bistro went against the conventional wisdom that, in order to be successful, a restaurant on Hillsborough Street had to cater to the students at neighboring N.C. State University with cheap food served in abundant quantities.

So much for conventional wisdom. Frazier's has more than held its own among the string of pizza parlors and sub shops that line Hillsborough Street. The Jenningses' first restaurant has done so well, in fact, that they were able to open a second one a couple of doors down the street in 2003. Porter's City Tavern, which offers a more casual alternative to its older sibling but is still a decided notch above anything else on the street, has also thrived.

Having made their point twice, you'd think the Jenningses would be content to rest on their laurels. You'd be wrong. In the spring of last year, the husband and wife team closed Frazier's for major renovations. When they reopened it last September, even long-time regulars -- of which there are many -- hardly recognized the place.

Frazier's 2418 Hillsborough St., Raleigh; 828-6699. Cuisine: New American. Rating: 3 stars. Prices: entrees $17 to $25. Atmosphere: urban-sophisticate. Service: well-trained and attentive. Recommended: foie gras, sweet potato custard, lamb roll, tuna with wasabi mashed potatoes, desserts. Open: lunch Monday-Friday, dinner Monday-Saturday. Reservations: accepted for seatings between 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. and for large parties at any hour. Other: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club; full bar; smoke-free; kid-tolerant. The N&O's critic dines anonymously; the newspaper pays for all meals. We rank restaurants in five categories: 4 stars --Extraordinary. 3 stars --Excellent. 2 stars --Good. 1 star --Fair. Zero stars: Poor For descriptions and reviews of more restaurants, use the searchable restaurant database at http://triangle.com/dining/.

The dining room has shed its contemporary bistro look and replaced it with an edgier style that might best be described as urban-sophisticate. From the massive acrylic panel emblazoned with a stylized "F" just inside the front door to the abstract splashed canvases on walls clad in textured vinyl and blonde wood veneer, it's the sort of look you wouldn't be surprised to find as the subject of a spread in Architectural Digest. In the rear, the sleek lapstrake lines of a bar made of mahogany-stained Baltic birch are reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Still, there's ample evidence that Frazier's has not forgotten its bistro roots. Tables that sport place mats (albeit designer place mats) rather than linens suggest that the restaurant still welcomes casual diners. The wine list, while modest in length, is exceptionally diverse and well-priced and includes a by-the-glass selection that would do any bistro proud. Wait staff are just as attentive to young couples in jeans as they are to theater-goers in silk. And the menu, which dedicates nearly half of its entree selection to offerings in the $12 to $16 range, assures you that, regardless of attire, you can return with bistro-like regularity.

You'll want to return frequently, too. Chef Jeremy Sabo is one of the most inventive culinary talents around, and he expresses that inventiveness on a daily evolving menu that seldom fails to please and even more rarely fails to surprise.

A recent first-course presentation of foie gras is a sterling example. Sabo could have stopped with the classic combination of seared foie gras and brioche toast points, and he'd have had a winner. By adding the complex sweetness of pears poached in lavender and honey and the salty crunch of finely diced pancetta, he transformed the dish into something memorable.

Nor does the chef require deluxe ingredients to show his stuff. Another starter, a silky sweet potato custard topped with melted blue cheese and garnished with a dollop of fig jam, is a flavor revelation. So are lamb rolls, which serve up lean ground meat wrapped in napa cabbage, their savor set off against mint yogurt and a crunchy green papaya slaw. And tender fried calamari are still crisp-crusted under a liberal dousing of a spicy hoisin barbecue sauce.

In an entree offering of tuna, Sabo sets sushi-grade fish atop a wasabi-pungent dune of mashed potatoes. Baby bok choy and pickled shiitake mushrooms complete the riff on a Japanese theme with a flourish.

Occasionally, the chef can get carried away. A thick veal chop is exquisitely tender, and none of its accompaniments can be faulted on its own terms. But the dish fails to come together as a whole, as the veal gets lost among the competing assertive flavors of smoked mozzarella polenta, piquillo pepper and onion jam, and a rich balsamic veal demi. Similarly, pancetta-stuffed chicken breast is overwhelmed by a swirl of intense flavors, from the piquant red pepper coulis that surrounds it to the thick tweed of shredded pecorino Romano and chopped parsley that tops it.

On the other hand, palm-sized ravioli filled with roasted pears and butternut squash, drizzled with brown butter and balsamic syrup, and sprinkled with blue cheese, dance right up to the line of being overwrought without stepping over it.

Likewise, a pairing of risotto with sun-dried tomatoes, leeks, truffle oil and a trio of jumbo grilled scallops works beautifully, though the rice can sometimes be a shade overcooked. And a butterflied trout fillet served for lunch (another bistro trait -- Frazier's is open for midday meals) atop a bed of French lentils and barely wilted spinach is flawless.

Pastry chef Eric Akbari is up to Sabo's standards, in terms of inventiveness and execution. At one end of the spectrum is a textbook rendition of creme brulee. At the other, an unlikely -- but if you have an adventurous palate, ultimately satisfying -- chocolate-passion fruit sorbet served in a martini glass, surrounded by a pool of chilled pineapple soup and garnished with candied ginger "swizzle sticks." In between, a sweet-tooth nirvana of cheese turnovers, buttery-crusted individual blueberry pies and warm apple and fig crisps with pistachio streusel topping.

As good as Frazier's is, its owners aren't done improving it. They're still fine-tuning the decor, and they plan to expand the dining room into the now-vacant space between Frazier's and Porter's. In the spring, they'll beef up the wine list. And, given Kevin and Stacey Jennings' record, they'll probably find something else to tweak after that. But it's a safe bet they won't forget that Frazier's started out as a neighborhood bistro.

Greg Cox can be reached at ggcox@bellsouth.net