Marketing Europe in the Low Country

Nation's Restaurant News, March 8, 1993 by Jack Hayes

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- How do you market European-styled cuisine in a traditional American city where the Atlantic coast regional fare is called Low Country?

Charlie Farrell, 28, the chef-owner of Saracen Restaurant here -- who cooked and studied in London, Paris and southern France for three years -- is trying to figure that out.

"I'm being forced to put she-crab soup on the menu," lamented Farrell, who will celebrate her second anniversary in March although her strikingly designed restaurant has yet to hit its weekly break-even point.

With an architectural theme that melds Gothic, Hindu, Moorish and Persian influences, Saracen runs a dinner check averaging $50. Entree selections begin at $15.95 for free-range chicken breast with mushrooms, pancetta and capers and climbs to $19.95 for an aged beef filet with roasted garlic, balsamic vinegar sauce and gorgonzola fritters.

This month Farrell will try her own version of another coastal dish: red rice with house-made shrimp sausage. She has some trouble admitting that customers in Charleston will order more quail entrees when they're romanced as Carolina quail.

Farrell is also learning that hotel concierges have difficulty recommending a restaurant when they can't keep up with its ever-changing menu. Yet those who try Saracen's marinated pork tenderloin with caramelized onion over polenta or its tempura of softshell crab with black-bean vinaigrette often come back.

"I'm used to creating daily menus," said Farrell, who worked briefly with Dominique Bouchet at La Tour D'Argent in Paris, following him to Cognac when the opened Le Moulin de Marcouze. "Hell, in Atlanta I could do wonders."

But with a $600,000 investment to make good on here, Farrell is finding that she has to market harder. Claiming she had a public-relations company "that didn't get a damned thing done for me," she has called on a professor of marketing at the College of Charleston.

"I want somebody who's hungry and aggressive just like me," said Farrell, insisting her food and labor costs are well under control at 27 percent and 29 percent, respectively.

"The problem is when I'm not in the kitchen, they jump 10 points just like that."