Here’s a first look inside ‘Top Chef’ star’s new Raleigh restaurant, opening Sunday
At High Horse, the newest restaurant opening in downtown Raleigh, there are no knobs or burners or oven doors, only two side-by-side wood-burning grills and a set of pans dancing with the flames.
This is what celebrity chef Katsuji Tanabe moved from Los Angeles to Raleigh to do, to open a new restaurant in historic downtown City Market, cooking only with live fire. It’s cooking by sight and sound, finding the hot spots and the cool ones, moving a hot iron grill closer or farther from the fire, conducting dinner service like some kind of orchestra.
The restaurant is named High Horse, drawing on City Market’s horse-drawn days, Tanabe said, and the building’s former life as a barn and blacksmith shop. It also winks at Tanabe’s celebrity chef persona, cultivated over years of appearing on food television, including three seasons of Bravo’s “Top Chef” and the opening of restaurants across the country. Tanabe isn’t living life on a high horse, he said.
“I think we can embrace getting on your high horse, it can be fun,” Tanabe said. “I don’t take myself too seriously, I’m about fun. I take my food very seriously.”
Located at 208 Wolfe Street in downtown Raleigh, High Horse plans to open this weekend, Sunday, Nov. 17 for its first service, then Tuesday through Sunday from 5 to 11 p.m. and later on Fridays and Saturdays.
It’s a fast turnaround for Tanabe, who inherited a half-finished restaurant and quickly made it his own. The larger details, the construction and layout of the restaurant, were already in place when the space was being planned as the wood-fired Hearth Kitchen. Tanabe finished the trappings, installing lighting and art, including stuffy horse paintings accented with horseback-riding Barbies, and the beating heart of High Horse, the $100,000 wood-burning grill and hood system.
High Horse has an out-in-the-open kitchen, where the grills are the highest point in the restaurant, situated as if on a platform, if not a stage. The crackle of the burning wood can be heard across the dining room, and the grills’ co-stars are a cotton candy machine and a $12,000 hand cranked deli slicer, cherry red, bought exclusively to shave paper thin slices of North Carolina country ham. Make no mistake, this is performance dining.
“It’s a stage, they’re coming to see us,” Tanabe said of the restaurant. “We’re not in the food business, we’re in the entertainment business. People pick restaurants as entertainment. ... Here, because it’s an open kitchen, there’s no space for being an ass, there’s no space for egos.”
A natural entertainer
Tanabe is a natural entertainer. He’s worked in restaurants his entire life, but is best known for his stints on “Top Chef,” becoming one of the best known personalities of the show.
Entering High Horse, you’ll see Tanabe’s chef’s whites from Top Chef hang in frames by the door, but he said he’s banking on more than his celebrity chef status. Tanabe moved to Raleigh earlier this year, and will be joined by his wife and two daughters around Christmas-time.
In making Raleigh his home, he’s been a siren sounder at a recent Carolina Hurricanes game and plans to volunteer at downtown nonprofit restaurant A Place at the Table on Thanksgiving morning.
“I want to embrace my new city, I want to embrace the flavors of the area,” Tanabe said. “The Kool-aid pickles, the Carolina shrimp. And everything compared to LA, we have seasons.”
High Horse is a large restaurant, with a wrap-around bar stretching from the entrance around to the kitchen. An outdoor patio will add seating for another 150, and there will be areas for private events.
The menu includes a flat iron steak cooked directly on the embers, paired with a burned and smoky salsa. There’s a charred octopus with olives and celery root, spare ribs with a tamarind vinegar sauce and salmon with roasted peppers and chilies. Smaller plates include a foie gras torchon with flaky salt and olive oil, alongside a bright red Kool-Aid pickle and a trio of North Carolina hams treated like the cured hams of Spain or Italy.
“It’s not a Japanese restaurant, it’s not a Mexican restaurant, it’s what’s happening as an immigrant, it’s an American story. It’s rustic American. ... I’m embracing the local flavors, it’s heavy on everything that’s North Carolina, different regions of hams, shrimp from the coast, the produce, local radishes, local beets, it’s about embracing the city, my new city.”
This story was originally published November 12, 2019 at 5:32 PM.
