It is a challenge to review a restaurant where the menu frequently changes. Does it make sense in August to recommend The Pub at Cedar Creek's exuberant Summer Salad with its ginger strawberry vinaigrette if that salad will be off the Pub's menu come September?
As problems go, this is a good one. Yes, most of us have a favorite dish at a favorite restaurant, and we want it always to be there. On the other hand, a changing bill of fare means that return visits offer something new to enjoy. In The Pub at Cedar Creek, that "something new" invariably is enticing because the chef, James Darby, is ingenious.
Avid eaters may remember Mr. Darby for the food truck he helmed a few years ago in the parking lot outside Antiques & More on Pine Log Road. In those days, he offered unusual sausage sandwiches, burgers and vertical rotisserie shawarma. His talents now have taken him beyond street food to The Pub at Cedar Creek. Although it is a casual eatery with bare tables, paper napkins and sunny ambience like a comfortable country club, the dinners he creates are deluxe.
Chef Darby solicits requests for dishes to cook, and it is fun to see how he interprets customers' wishes. Relentlessly creative as he is, not all his work is novel. Filet mignon on the current menu is an impeccable classic: a mesa of butterknife-tender, gentle-flavored beef enveloped in robust red wine demi-glace, accompanied by roasted garlic mashed potatoes and some interesting mushrooms.
Creative intrigue marks this summer's salmon, its firm flesh heaped with crabmeat and mounted on a spill of asparagus risotto, festooned with capers and a rainbow of tiny eatable blossoms and microgreens, all in a veil of tomato-basil beurre blanc.
One week last month, Prince Edward Island mussels, accompanied by littleneck clams, morsels of sausage, stewed tomatoes, saffron and fennel, came in a bowl of intensely flavorful shrimp stock. Thank heaven for tiles of bread that came alongside to sop up the savory marine broth.
Back in June, Chef Darby offered garlic yogurt lamb chops and beef vindaloo with grilled naan. In May, you could come for fried chicken and waffles with bourbon walnut glaze.
Last April during Masters week, dishes were named for what past winners requested when they hosted their Champions Dinner: The "Tiger Woods" was a porterhouse steak. The "Jordan Spieth" was smoked chicken with BBQ beans. Lobster ravioli was named "Phil Mickelson."
Desserts made elsewhere are first class. Tiramisu, made here, is among the best anywhere: nearly weightless yet deeply chocolaty with a provocative coffee jolt under a puff of whipped cream and sliced strawberries.
Do note that lunch at the Pub is a different experience. The menu is unchanging: sandwiches, hot dogs, soups and salads. Aside from a hamburger I got last week that was incinerated, it's fine pub food, albeit not too interesting – unlike dinner, which is a meal to remember.
The Pub at Cedar Creek: 2555 Club Drive, Aiken, S.C. 803-648-6200
