Underground spot is at the top of the state’s speakeasies.
LOCATION: 9.1
While it’s not the heart of the Cotton District, or the Square in Oxford, or any of the other super-prime spots in the state, we’re still going to give this a 9.1. It’s in an alley in downtown Starkville, in the shadow of he giant “Greetings from Starkville” mural, and right under its parent restaurant, Restaurant Tyler.
The choice is genius. First, you have to know where this specific alley is, then you look for the entrance, and finally you want to make sure the light is on. The shadowy, “sketch” doorway makes a subtle statement: Oh ye of delicate sensibilities, ye may wish to keep walking. Whether intentional or not, this way of suggesting to less adventurous diners that perhaps they want to avoid it serves as a kind of velvet rope in the subconscious, perhaps helping Guest Room ensure that it gets more of the kinds of patrons it wants. It’s also a great mood-setter for people—especially first-timers—entering the establishment.
ATMOSPHERE: 8.7
There’s a whole lot to like, and maybe nothing to dislike, about the atmosphere. My companion and I visited on a Friday afternoon, at the end of a long day that was itself the end of a tough week, and we decided to take advantage of Guest Room’s happy hour, which started at 4:30. We were inside and ordering cocktails by 4:42.
There are no windows. The walls are exposed brick. The tables and much of the furniture are dark wood. We were seated at the very back, next to the wall-sized mirror that eliminates any feeling of claustrophobia without losing any of the place’s coziness. On the ceiling are old tin tiles.
FOOD: 8.1
I had the shrimp and grits, naturally, because that’s one of the dishes I use to gauge a kitchen’s ability to handle tradition, ingredients, preparation, and creativity. The dish featured bacon-wrapped shrimp and parmesan grits with a cream sauce, topped with creamed spinach. Not exactly traditional, and it was not without its problems, but I give it high marks and I’ll explain why.
First, the problems. Initially I wondered if the dish included any grits at all. When I finally found the tiny mound of them hiding beneath the cream sauce, I was disappointed to find that they were a very fine grind, which almost always means (as in this case) that they don’t really have a flavor of their own; they’re simply a medium for whatever sauce is poured over them. And while that sauce was good—rich and creamy without being cloying or overpowering—the combination of the grits and sauce served more as a neutral canvas on which to pile the shrimp and spinach, rather than what it could be, which is a showcase of what grits can be when the proper product is prepared the proper way. If I were tasked with improving this dish, the first thing I would do is user a coarser grind (and by the way, chef, remember that Delta Grind is right up the road in Water Valley)
Given my choice, I wouldn’t choose bacon-wrapped shrimp, but I wasn’t given a choice, so bacon-wrapped shrimp it was. They were also served with the tails on, which looks nice but presents the diner with two sub-optimal choices: Eat them with fork and knife and miss out on that last little bit of tail meat; or eat them with your fingers, which lets you get every last bit of meat from the tail, but makes you look like a savage in the process. And, unless you eat the tails (which almost no one does here in the south) it forces you to pile them up somewhere, either on your placemat where they sit in a messy little pile, or on the side of your plate, where they tend to fall back into your food.
It’s also very difficult to get the bacon cooked much past raw without overcooking the shrimp, so what you usually get is either properly-cooked bacon wrapped around rubbery, over-cooked shrimp, or properly-cooked shrimp wrapped in undercooked bacon. The latter is what this dish featured. To improve this dish, ditch the bacon wrapping, and instead sprinkle crispy bits of the bacon on top. The texture contrast is always a winner.
I thought the choice of creamed spinach to top the dish was odd, but while the worst-case scenario could have been a Boure-style mess, what came to the table was restrained enough that it didn’t diminish the dish.
So if the dish had these problems, why do I give it such grace?
As I’ve mentioned in my reviews of John Currence’s several mediocre restaurants (two of which feature downright bad versions of shrimp and grits), this dish is a great way to evaluate a chef’s command of simple ingredients, respect for tradition, and ability to bring creativity to a dish that, while not a blank canvas on which to paint one’s wildest culinary visions, nonetheless offers room for creative departure and well-considered variations.
It’s in the well-executed whole of this dish’s preparation—not the minor failures of its components—that makes it a winner. It’s not the effusive kitchen-sink pile that Currence puts out at Boure, not the sad warmed-over and taste-less waste of time and money he trots out at City Grocery, and not the ambitious but ultimately lackluster riff from Commodore Bob’s. It works. It doesn’t work spectacularly, but it’s still very good, and it’s clear that the chef could continue to refine and elevate this dish, ending up with a superb improvement while not abandoning the original idea. We cannot say with the same confidence that this is the case at Boure or City Grocery. Commodore Bob’s is a toss-up; a case can be made that they’ve done as good a job as anyone can with the risotto-style approach they’ve taken. Guest Room’s presentation is also the best of the bunch so far.
My companion had the lamb gnocchi, which featured a rich ragout-style sauce over sweet-potato gnocchi—which the menu says was made in-house using sweet potatoes from Vardaman, Mississippi—and a small mound of herbed goat cheese very similar to Boursin. This dish was a knockout, perfect for a crisp winter evening. If we had a complaint—and it was minor, bordering on trivial—it was that the gnocchi were just a tad too sweet. To improve it, dial back the ratio of sweet potato in the gnocchi dough by about 25%.
SERVICE: 8.9
The night before we ate at Guest Room for the first time, we revisited Weidmann’s in Meridian, where our party of four ordered a glass of wine each as we sat down. We were delivered two glasses, and then sat and waited… and waited… and waited… for the next two. Seems the server had forgotten, or something. We noticed that she didn’t do the one thing servers should always do before they step away from the table: Repeat our order back to us. Had she done this, she would have realized she got it wrong. It was an inauspicious start to what would be a lackluster evening of service. We’ll reserve final judgement until our next visit.
But no such disappointments plagued us at Guest Room. Quite the opposite, in fact. Our server, whose name we neglected to get (and it wasn’t on our check), was excellent. He got almost everything right: Repeated our order back to us at every stage from cocktails to dessert, noticed we had drained our water glasses and so refilled them promptly (many servers don’t understand how much this small detail can improve a guest’s experience), and cleared dishes as soon as it was obvious we were finished with them. He was polite and friendly, but didn’t try too hard, didn’t try to be cute, didn’t get too chummy, didn’t stay gone for too long, but didn’t intrude or drop by too frequently.
As of this writing, Guest Room is the most highly-rated restaurant we’ve reviewed on this site. Of the four speakeasies in the state we’ve visited (the others being Nightbird, Bar Muse, and Miscellanea, all in Oxford), Guest Room is easily the best all-around. From the location, to the entrance, to the atmosphere, food, and service, there’s not a forced or self-conscious note. Clearly it’s been designed to ride the relatively recent wave of speakeasy popularity, but it really does feel like it’s been here for a century. We will be back at the first opportunity.