If you’ve been in the market for a modern steakhouse — one that serves delicate, flavorful hamachi crudo alongside a big, bold bone-in tomahawk, look no further. On June 12, local hospitality group, Neighborhood Dining Group (NDG), opened Marbled & Fin at 480 East Bay St.
Like all of NDG’s restaurants (which include Husk, Delaney Oyster House, Minero and The James), Marbled & Fin is the product of a carefully constructed concept come to life. As general manager Geno Dew said: “It’s a competitive market. You’ve got to do it right — you don’t get second chances.”
The attention to detail begins the moment you step into Marbled & Fin; the vaulted ceilings and chic interior bely the building’s history as a dry cleaners. Reservations are recommended for the dining room at this buzzy new spot, but guests are always welcome to belly up to the 25-seat bar, first-come, first-served.
“We are hoping for the biggest bulk of our business to be locals,” said Dew, who noted that a reservation-free bar area makes it easy for people to pop into the restaurant for a post-work (or golf game) drink and bite.
Dew said that he thinks Charleston diners are ready for a place like Marbled & Fin. “It makes sense within the city,” he said. “We know from our experiences that you can — without being all things to all people and scattering yourselves too thin — be a chef-driven steakhouse.”
The kitchen is led by executive chef Eucepe “Cepe” Puntriano, who most recently worked as head chef at Meat Market’s Tampa location.
Marbled & Fin’s menu is broken into categories including luxury bites (hello, Kaluga Caviar Tart), a raw bar selection with the option to order cold or hot seafood towers, fine and specialty cuts of beef, entrees and six iterations of potatoes.
The menu features some traditional steakhouse fare, including a salmon dish. But Dew noted that the Ora King salmon with crispy skin, served with beurre blanc and smoked roe, is far from your traditional steakhouse fish dish. “It’s salmon — but it’s so high quality and it’s so original,” he said. “We want to do something new.”
New spot, same hospitality
A recent visit to Marbled & Fin ahead of opening day saw a room full of employees undergoing training. “We’re fortunate that the years of effort of NDG have paid off,” Dew said. “Because, I mean, these are rock stars.”
You don’t have to look far to find headlines that bemoan a lack of ready and willing food and beverage employees. An OpenTable story, “The restaurant labor shortage: how we got here and a 2023 update,” from last year put it simply: “The restaurant labor shortage is still one of the industry’s biggest challenges even three years after the start of the pandemic.”
The shortage, though, stops short of Marbled & Fin. “Our interview process and our method of recruitment is unlike anybody else,” said NDG’s president David Howard. “We spent a lot of time trying to put people together to fit our culture — who genuinely cared about the guests.”
Howard, who founded NDG in 2001, knows a thing or two about Charleston hospitality.
And while the dining group is excited to reveal their latest concept to Charleston, Howard still managed to pay homage to one of NDG’s first restaurants, McCrady’s. Marbled & Fin’s private dining area features a large oil painting of downtown Charleston at night, as well as Ralph Lauren light fixtures, all of which featured prominently in McCrady’s years ago.
Light fixtures in Marbled & Fin’s main dining room complement those classic McCrady’s ones, bridging the gap between the past and future.
Diners may feel as if they’ve traveled a bit into the future with one of Marbled & Fin’s cocktail creations, including the Metadetector, a take on a white negroni that evolves as the ice in the drink melts. The cocktails were crafted by NDG’s head of project development, Kevin King, who got his start with the company as a bartender at Husk’s Nashville location.
Each speciality cocktail is listed with its “inspiration” — the Metadetector’s includes “self awareness.” The playful and inventive drink list speaks to what Dew and Howard said Marbled & Fin is trying to offer: quite simply, something new.
“I think Charleston is in for a bit of a surprise,” Howard said. “We like to push a little bit. Come on everybody, don’t get sleepy. We’ve got to keep it fresh.”
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