A bustling modern dining room shows customers eating.
Kettle Black Kitchen’s maple-braised, bone-in pork shank, a classic French dish that stays in the oven for five hours, is a labor of love. Co-owner Brian Hamilton pauses as he describes how he makes the pan sauce for the restaurant’s signature dish, putting his hand over his chest and exhaling. “I swear, every single time I do it, my heart stops a little because it’s so beautiful,” Hamilton says. “It’s this steaming, beautiful, glistening sauce. I will never, never get tired of that sight.”
After years of working in other people’s restaurants, Hamilton is at home in his new Monroe Street space, which opened for dine-in customers the summer of 2021. At Kettle Black Kitchen, he cooks food inspired by years in the kitchen of his childhood New York home with a French grandmother and a Southern mother from Tennessee. “I was at their knee,” Hamilton says. “Every holiday feast, major dinner, I was always there cooking something.” Fast-forward to today and Kettle Black’s menu reveals Hamilton’s roots with a throughline of rich, country French food and influences from the Southern United States, particularly New Orleans. “It’s my wheelhouse for cooking,” he says.
Chef Brian Hamilton (Photo by Nikki Hansen)
NICOLE HANSEN
From the Back-Alley Beginning
As with many new restaurants, Kettle Black’s origin story is grounded in the pandemic. Before COVID-19 hit, Hamilton had secured a temporary restaurant license with the intention of selling food at local festivals. During the winter of 2021, Hamilton started selling meals online under the name Kettle Black Kitchen. Offering frozen dinners, ready-to-eat meals and meal kits prepared at International Catering Collective, Hamilton was also looking for a location to call his own home. “I had already given up [when] I found this [Monroe Street] place on Craigslist,” Hamilton says. He signed the lease in February 2021 and opened the kitchen first, delivering food to people waiting in cars in the restaurant’s back alley. “Every potpie I sold went directly into [the restaurant],” Hamilton says. “It was a hustle.” After months of building out the space, Hamilton opened Kettle Black Kitchen to dine-in customers in August 2021.
Popular in Southern coastal areas and on the West Coast, cooked oysters aren’t as common in the Midwest. “Most northerners have no idea,” says Hamilton, adding that if they do, they likely think Oysters Rockefeller. For his version, Hamilton gets East Coast oysters from Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island and shucks them before basting them in clarified butter seasoned with fresh garlic, smoked paprika and tarragon, “which makes everything a little bit French.” Once basted, the oysters are placed on the grill and left “until they start bubbling and sizzling, and then they are ready to go,” Hamilton says. “And they are delicious.”
Charleston Shrimp and Grit Cakes (Photo by Nikki Hansen)
NICOLE HANSEN
Polenta-Adjacent | Charleston Shrimp and Grits Cakes
This is probably the menu item guests might be least familiar with, says Hamilton. “I joke that if I just called it ‘polenta’ I could charge more and everybody would know what it was,” he says, “but you don’t see ‘grits cakes’ a whole lot.” While the dish is usually served with creamy grits in the South, Hamilton turns the ground cornmeal into cakes for a crispier texture. Hamilton is quite pleased with the result of the dish inspired by his family’s Southern roots. “I often eat the cakes cold out of the fridge,” he says.
The Rooster Sets the Vibe
You can’t miss the framed glass rooster above the bar. It was a “Hippie Christmas” curbside find. Hamilton’s love of secondhand hunting, combined with his attention to detail, helps create a “casually elegant” atmosphere in the restaurant’s intimate dining area. There are two chandeliers, one of which was purchased at an estate sale for $15, and brass pendant lights. A bottle of San Pellegrino water is served in a wine glass from behind the oak bar, while food is plated on fancy, mismatched china purchased from local thrift stores. “Casual elegance,” Hamilton says. “It’s the order of the day — through the menu, the service, through everything.”
